Last night, ABC News and the Washington Post "broke" the story of new CIA documents being released that showed Pelosi was briefed on the use of torture, contradicting her claim that she was told only that the administration was considering the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Not so fast. Both Marcy and Greg Sargent debunk the media reports.
Marcy, who must have all these documents memorized:
First, CIA has officially confirmed what I have been saying for weeks. The CIA first briefed Congress on torture on September 4, 2002, 35 days after CIA purportedly began waterboarding and much longer after we know CIA started torturing Abu Zubaydah. Moreover, we have on the record statements from Pelosi and Goss (and I've had even stronger assurances elsewhere) that CIA did not tell Congress they were already in the business of torture. Their discussions of torture were all prospective, and they may even have stated clearly that they had not used these techniques yet, which (if true) would be a clear and direct lie to Congress.
Second, look at when--according to the CIA's specific assertions--they first talked about waterboarding to members of Congress:
February 4, 2003: Pat Roberts and a Republican and a Democratic staffer (but not Jello Jay); according to the CIA there was no specific mention of waterboarding in the February 5, 2003 briefing for Porter Goss and Jane Harman
July 13, 2004: Porter Goss and Jane Harman
July 15, 2004: Pat Roberts and Jello Jay
Now, it's possible that the people trying to smear Pelosi with this are correct and CIA mentioned waterboarding in September 2002. But that's not what the CIA says. Once you account for the fact that Jello Jay did not attend the February 4 briefing, the CIA says it first informed Democrats about waterboarding in July 2004, only after the CIA's own Inspector General had declared the program cruel and inhuman (and note, the Senate intelligence leaders, at least, got a copy of that document in June 2004, so the CIA couldn't very well pretend that they hadn't been waterboarding).
Note, too, that the CIA claims to have discussed legal issues in the July briefing with Harman and Goss, but not in the July briefing with Jello Jay and Roberts. We know this to be false.
Here's what Greg found in looking at the documents:
But the documents are inconclusive on a key charge being made by Republicans — that she had been told of the use of waterboarding, one of the harshest and most controversial torture techniques.
Take a look at a screen capture of the relevant part of the document (click to enlarge):
"EIT" refers to "enhanced interrogation techniques." As you can see, the document says that on September 4th, 2002, she was briefed on the "use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah" and a "description of the particular EITs that had been employed." It’s the only time Pelosi was briefed.
This does not say whether she was told specifically about waterboarding. By contrast, elsewhere in the documents, descriptions of other later briefings to members of Congress repeatedly specify they’d been told about waterboarding.
What's more, as Greg points out in a follow up, in the letter to Congress that accompanied the document release, Panetta said that the documents might not actually be "an accurate summary of what actually happened" because they were "memorandum for the record" based on the "best recollections" of staff. So as Greg says, "the CIA isn’t willing to vouch for the accuracy of the info about the briefings in the docs, and that only further inquiry will produce a reliable recounting of what happened."
He adds:
You can see the letter to Hoekstra right here. What this means is that the Republican who has lodged the highest-profile attacks on Dems over what they knew and when has been directly informed by the CIA that this info may not be reliable.
Obviously Republicans fear what investigations could lead to, as does the CIA. Their leaders committed war crimes and they know it, and if they're going down, they'll take Democrats with them. It's entirely possible that the few Democrats briefed early on were told that waterboarding had been used, but these documents don't prove that.
This episode is further evidence that we need criminal investigations from a special prosecutor, who would be as removed as possible (though obviously not entirely) from the politics of the story.
