Porter Goss may have helped to peddle the story that Nancy Pelosi was fully briefed on the Bush administration's torture policies, but he isn't willing to go on the record and confirm it:
Porter Goss, the former GOP Congressman who was in the room with Nancy Pelosi during their 2002 CIA briefing on interrogations, is declining through a spokesperson to say whether the two of them were told that enhanced interrogation techniques had been used. [...]
I asked a spokesperson for Goss if he would confirm that he and Pelosi had been informed of the use of torture. Goss was out of town, so it took her a while to get back to me, but now she has: She declined to answer the question, saying that Goss would not elaborate beyond what he said in a Washington Post Op ed last month. [...]
So I asked Goss’ spokesperson directly: Were he and Pelosi informed that EITs, including waterboarding, had already been used, and were they given a rough sense that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded more than 83 times the previous month?
Her answer: “He believes that his Op-ed makes it very clear and is not engaging beyond it at this time.” She declined repeated requests to elaborate.
As Greg Sargent at The Plum Line points out, in his op-ed, Goss didn't say that they were told torture was used, only that "EITs had been developed," and that members of congress should have "understood" that they would be used in the future.
The entire basis of the Republican attacks on Pelosi is that she knew exactly what was going on since 2002. Of course what Pelosi knew and when she knew it was never the point -- but the deflection has worked out beautifully for the GOP.