House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., reiterated that she never received a briefing on waterboarding, contrary to the former CIA counterterrorism head who says he personally briefed her on the interrogation techniques.
“This is once again totally false,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill told The Washington Examiner. “The independent CIA Inspector General conducted a review and the findings are consistent with what Leader Pelosi has maintained all along.”
In 2009, Pelosi denied knowing that the CIA waterboarded high-value terrorist detainees. “We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used,” she told reporters.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., contradicted Pelosi that same day. “It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002,” the then-ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses.”
Jose Rodriguez, who ran CIA’s counterterrorism operations under President Bush, writes in a new book Hard Measures that Pelosi was told of a technique that was not being used, but adds that it was not waterboarding. Rodriguez claims he told Pelosi about the waterboarding and she did not object. Per Marc Thiessen:
Pelosi confirmed in 2009 that she had heard about waterboarding, but says she was informed that it was not being used in interrogations.
“I was informed then that Department of Justice opinions had concluded that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques was legal,” she said in May 2009. “The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed.”
