PELOSI, GOSS, THE CIA AND THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE

Did you read the Washington Post, April 25, 2009 article by Porter Goss? Following are excerpts from this article which prompted Nancy Pelosi to claim that she was never briefed by the CIA of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used, including waterboarding, during a House Intelligence Committee hearing in the fall of 2002:
“Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now. A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation's intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's "High Value Terrorist Program," including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers. Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned….Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:
-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.
-- We understood what the CIA was doing.
-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.
-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.
-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.
I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have. “
Recall, Porter Goss was director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006 and was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997 to 2004. Nancy Pelosi was the ranking Democratic of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during 2002 and has been confirmed as being physically in attendance during the briefings. So, either she was sleeping during the briefings, has brief memory lapses (apparently at the most opportune times) or is simply lying. The facts point to the latter. Pelosi’s credibility (or what little she might have had to most American’s eyes) is eroding away as the minutes march by. If Obama really thinks that the House will effectively be able to pass his desired legislation, he must consider pushing Pelosi into relinquishing her role as Speaker of the House. Personally, I would rather see Pelosi simply disappear from the Washington “world of politics”. Perhaps the other untrustworthy delegates in the House (like Franks and Murtha, for examples) might get the message that “there, by the grace of God, go I” and work on reforming their own principles and values. It’s obvious that so many members in both houses of Congress, from both parties, have no idea of the values and principles followed by our Framers of the Constitution during their successful effort of creating the U.S. Constitution.