Newt Gingrich has been displaying amazing hypocrisy by attacking Nancy Pelosi for not doing anything to stop torture and for asserting that the CIA had not told her they were engaging in water-boarding in 2002. He asserts that she owes the entire intelligence community an apology.
O
ne wonders just what he thinks Pelosi should have done, if she indeed did know about torture. One clue comes from his reaction to Bob Toricelli's attempt to investigate the role of the CIA in death-squad murders of an American citizen, and the spouse of another American citizen in Guatemala. Gingrich was then House Speaker, and sought to have Toricelli removed from the Intelligence Committee and went on a public campaign against him for embarrasing the country. In other words, if Newt had anything to say about it, Pelosi should keep her mouth shut.
Given his vehement defense of the CIA against Pelosi's assertions, it is hard to know what to make of his silence about (Republican) Rep. Pete Hoekstra assertions that the CIA had a role in the deaths of Christian missionaries in Peru a few years ago; Hoekstra is demanding public hearings that would no doubt be embarrassing to the country. Then, too, there is Gingrich's own history of criticizing the Agency. In 1990, for example, he urged the President not to trust the CIA reports on the state of affairs in Afghanistan because they were skewed.
Finally, there is reason to suspect that Gingrich himself may have known about "enhanced interrogation techniques." During the run-up to the Iraq war, he was working as consultant for the Pentagon, representing the Office of Special Plans, and several times visited the CIA to attempt to get analysts to modify their reports on Iraq. See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Given what we know about the use of torture to gather phony intelligence to support the war, and the role of the OSP's role in the process of gathering this intelligence, it is quite likely that Gingrich himself was in the loop.
All in all, this guy has amazing chutzpah.