Panetta Attacks Pelosi: "CIA Told the Truth"

The CIA returned to sender the accusations against “harsh interrogations” raised by Nancy Pelosi, leaving the White House faced with the possibility of a fight between Intelligence and Congress. On Thursday the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and second in the line of presidential succession, accused the CIA of “lying to the Congress” since 2002 about how and when “harsh interrogations” were used on Al Qaeda prisoners.

Yesterday a reply arrived, from the director of the agency himself. “Nancy Pelosi is wrong, CIA have never lied to the Congress,” said Leon Panetta. His written statement sent to reporters via the CIA press office shows the agency’s irritation for the attacks launched by the Democrats in the last weeks. “Our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah; there is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business, but the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level,” writes Panetta.

This comes with strong implications, because if the CIA didn’t lie to the Congress about interrogations with “waterboarding” – simulated drowning identified as torture by Obama – then Pelosi, who received the agency’s briefing on September the 4th, 2002, is the one lying.

The choice of Panetta, an authentic Clintonian chosen by Obama to restore the order inside CIA after Bush, fills the need for tranquility in Langley, where there are a lot of agents ready to reveal embarrassing secrets of the Democratic leaders. The first two symptoms came out yesterday, when, in rapid succession, a “deep throat” revealed to the press that “in 2004 Pelosi ruined an undercover operation”; and the web site Drudge Report published the first photos of the interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan that the White House had forbidden to be shown.

“Washington is full of people who want to tell interesting things” repeat Fox TV commentators, hinting that the intelligence agency spite against Democrats could be just the beginning. The tensions’ origin is in the Obama administration’s choice to disclose the memorandums that reveal the “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Al Qaeda prisoners. A lot of agents think that the President allowed terrorists to take precautions, as well as setting the groundwork for possible legal procedures against them for allegedly conducted “torture”.

The agents’ discontent has been fueled by ex Vice President Dick Cheney, with two TV interviews, in which he accused Obama of “putting Americans in danger,” by revealing the content of the memorandums; and defended strenuously the practice of “waterboarding”, saying it has been used “to get helpful information to protect the country”. To prove his point, Cheney asked for the declassification of two new memos, resulting in a veto by the White House.

[Editor’s note: some quotes may be worded based on translated material].