Shocking Update: Nancy Pelosi Lied!

Remember this statement from Pelosi regarding her alleged knowledge about waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques?

Just in case you're hard of hearing, she said "We were not...let me repeat, not told that waterboarding, or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods, were used." That sounds almost as convincing as Rafael Palmeiro's vehement denial of steroids use. "I have never used steroids. Period. I do not know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never." We know how that story ended.

So it should come as no surprise now that the evidence is mounting against Pelosi's version of the truth. Porter Goss, the ranking Republican on the House committee at the time, distinctly remembers being briefed, along with Pelosi, on not only the existence of waterboarding, but that it was being used in interrogation sessions. "We were briefed, and we certainly understood what CIA was doing. Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough."

The Washington Post ran a story in 2007 that described a virtual tour that Pelosi and 3 others were given of the detention center, including the harsh interrogation techniques being used.

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 current 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.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

And then ABC, of all people, broke this story yesterday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence’s office and obtained by ABC News.

The report, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Capitol Hill officials Wednesday, appears to contradict Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics. Instead, she has said, she was told only that the Bush administration had legal opinions that would have supported the use of such techniques.

The report details a Sept. 4, 2002 meeting between intelligence officials and Pelosi, then-House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss, and two aides. At the time, Pelosi was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

The meeting is described as a “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed.”

Brendan Daly, a Pelosi spokesman, said Pelosi’s recollection of the meeting is different than the way it is described in the report from the DNI’s office.

I'm sure it is, Mr. Daly. How convenient for you and Ol' Nancy that she "misremembered." To anyone with half a brain, this is complete horbgorble (yes, that's the family friendly version of the word that I want to say). Even if such crap were true, she never even bothered to register an objection about the techniques, which shows that if she was a concerned about them, she obviously didn't care enough to make it known. The article goes on to describe several other meetings that CIA had with members of both parties in Congress.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. My guess is that Pelosi will defend her recollection of the occasion in the face of the facts, and that the MSM will sweep it all under the rug as conservative, hate-mongering propaganda (although the fact that ABC reported this is a promising sign). And as for why she never lodged a complaint? My guess is that the big bad Bush administration threatened her into silence, so she had no choice.

UPDATE: Fox News just ran this story. Let's see if the rest of the MSM pick it up, or if it will die a slow, ignominious death as Obama proclaims some other emergency to get our attention away from the issues that matter.