In Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) House, policymaking has given way to excuse-making. The chamber's top Democrat continues to bumble her way through the questions about what she did and did not know about the C.I.A.'s waterboarding practice. Earlier this month, Pelosi insisted that she was never briefed about the interrogation of suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah, specifically that the C.I.A. "misled" her on their torture techniques.Asked last week if she was accusing the C.I.A. of lying, Pelosi said, "Yes." The agency's new director, Leon Panetta, fired back with documents suggesting that the Speaker was "briefed truthfully" in 2002. Records also show that a Pelosi staffer was briefed again in 2003. "It is not our policy... to mislead Congress," said Panetta. "That is against our laws and our values."
In the days since Pelosi's disastrous press conference last Thursday, when she left the podium twice to try to get her facts straight, her selective memory loss seems to have abated long enough for the Speaker to concede that she did know more in 2003 than she let on. This matters for several reasons. First, as Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) points out, Speaker Pelosi is discrediting the brave men and women of the C.I.A. while Americans are fighting two wars. Secondly, she has called repeatedly for a "truth commission" to hash out whether the Bush administration was justified in torturing suspects. Obviously, this is problematic if she knew about the tactics years ago and did nothing to stop them.
Regardless of how it may damage her personally, Pelosi owes it to the C.I.A. and her country to set the record straight and apologize. As the second in line for the presidency, the American people need to know that they can trust her. If she refuses to share in the responsibility, then it's up to the House Ethics Committee to move quickly in launching its own "truth commission." Interestingly enough, Speaker Pelosi (despite her vow to "clean up Washington") continues to block the ethics investigations of her liberal colleagues. As this latest scandal suggests, Pelosi continues to be more preoccupied with political security than national security.
