Lead story in Sunday's Washington Post (not online yet)
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included future-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
Story online soon at http://www.washingtonpost.com
This is disturbing.
Reminds one of the scene in Casablanca, where the police captain claims to be "shocked, shocked" that gambling is going on in Rick's Cafe
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted its videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.
According to the Washington Post story, some 30 members of Congress were briefed on interrogation techniques including waterboarding.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and fellow Democrats Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), and Republicans Rep. Porter Goss (Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan).
The story says Pelosi had no comment, but a source familiar with Pelosi's positions on the issue said she doesn't recall; and others said they did not recall specifically being briefed on waterboarding.
Rep. Jane Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2oo3, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.