A day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., accused the Central Intelligence Committee of misleading Congress about the interrogation tactics used on detainees, CIA Director Leon Panetta tried to smooth things over with the staff of the spy agency.
At the same time, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., hit radio stations Friday with a withering criticism of Pelosi.
“I think this is the most despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Gingrich said in an interview on ABC Radio. Gingrich called Pelosi a “trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior” and he called for an investigation into Pelosi’s claims that she did not know the CIA was waterboarding detainees.
Meanwhile over at Langley, Panetta sent a memo to employees to let them know that he does not believe the agency misled Congress, as Pelosi alleged in a press conference on Thursday.
“The political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress,” Panetta wrote “Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress.”
Pelosi told reporters that she believes the CIA lied to her in 2002, leading her to believe waterboarding was not being employed as an interrogation tactic on high profile detainees when in fact, it was being used. Pelosi acknowledged during the press conference that her top aide was told of the use of waterboarding in 2003.
Panetta said that in 2002 CIA officers truthfully briefed Congress “about the enhanced techniques that had been employed. Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”
Panetta has a bit of explaining to do himself as Pelosi has repeatedly pointed to his statement that he could not verify whether the memo about the 2002 briefings was entirely accurate.
