Defenders of harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding have generally been nonplussed by the recent news that the CIA destroyed videotapes of several interrogations. For waterboarding’s harsh critics however, the news has caused some heartburn. In particular, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle (and contributor to the site TruthDig.com) wants to know why Speaker Pelosi didn’t speak up about what she knew:
Pelosi’s press aide Brendan Daly told me that the Washington Post report on her CIA briefing was “overblown” because Pelosi, then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee thought the techniques described, which the CIA insists included waterboarding, were planned for the future and not yet in use. Pelosi claimed that “several months later” her successor as the ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman of Los Angeles County, was advised the techniques “had in fact been employed” and wrote a classified letter to the CIA in protest, and Pelosi “concurred.” Neither went public with her concerns… Pelosi testified before the commission on May 22, 2003 but uttered not a word of caution about the methods used…. Hopefully I am missing something here, having admired Pelosi for decades, but if she and the others in the know have another version of these events, it’s time to come clean.
Here’s one possible explanation: Speaker Pelosi recognized the importance of getting information from captured enemies in the period after September 11, but changed her mind about it when she sensed political opportunity in criticizing the Bush administration. Based on the Washington Post‘s reporting of the briefing she received on harsh interrogation, it’s even possible that she was among those who wondered whether the methods were tough enough:
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.
After all, an informed Congressional source tells the Post that Pelosi at least raised no objection to the technique when she learned about it:
Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi’s position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage — they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice — and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.
Reasonable people can and do disagree about whether waterboarding constitutes torture, but given that there’s no evidence the technique was ever widely used, and that it’s use has been discontinued, it’s clear that Democrats are seizing on it for political benefit. Pelosi’s sudden devotion to stopping waterboarding provides even greater evidence. One can only hope that the left continues to press the Speaker for an explanation of her conversion–it’s clear that she long ago stopped listening to the rest of us.
