Pelosi ally challenges CIA credibility

The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee took a swipe at the CIA’s credibility Tuesday, accusing the agency of keeping inaccurate attendance records for a September 2006 briefing.
 
“In light of current controversy about CIA briefing practices, I was surprised to learn that the agency erroneously listed an appropriations staffer as being in a key briefing on September 19, 2006, when in fact he was not,” Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) wrote in a letter to CIA Director Leon Panetta.
 
{mosads}The letter was mailed to the CIA on Monday, but Obey hand-delivered it to Panetta at a meeting this morning.
 
Obey is an ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is under fire about what she knew about enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) she considers to be torture.
 
Pelosi said that she was misled by CIA briefers in a Sept. 4, 2002, meeting. She said the briefers told her that waterboarding had not been used on detainees.
 
CIA records released at the request of Republicans state that Pelosi was given “a description of the particular EITs that had been employed” on a detainee now known to have been waterboarded.
 
Those records have been parsed in close detail. Panetta has said “our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully” but has also told Congress that, “In the end, you and the committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened.”
 
Whether one aide or another participated in a briefing would not ordinarily amount to much of a debate. But the questions about whether Pelosi or the CIA is correct revolve around subtle turns of phrase in the documents. Obey’s letter appears to question how accurate the CIA records are.
 
Obey’s letter takes issue with a briefing nearly four years later, on Sept. 19, 2006.
 
The CIA’s meeting log, he said, “shows that House Appropriations Committee defense appropriations staffer Paul Juola was in that briefing on that date. In fact, Mr. Juola recollects that he walked members to the briefing room, met Gen. Hayden and Mr.Walker, who were the briefers, and was told that he could not attend the briefing. We request that you immediately correct this record.”
 
Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who was Pelosi’s Senate counterpart in 2002 as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has also said he found inaccuracies in the records, including inaccurate dates for briefings.
 
“It’s not reassuring that one member of Congress has better records than our nation’s intelligence service,” Graham said.
 
He also said that in a briefing he received three weeks after Pelosi’s, he was not told waterboarding was being used.

Republicans disputed the importance of Obey’s statement.

“Chairman Obey’s complaint is beside the point.  The Speaker accused our intelligence professionals of lying to her.  Where’s her evidence to back up this charge?” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). “If she doesn’t have any, she should apologize to these men and women who spend their lives protecting this country.”