CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of 'Enhanced Interrogations'
5/8/2009

By Paul Kane
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered "EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah." EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.

The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a matter of heated debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of knowing for many years precisely the techniques CIA agents were using in interrogations, and only protesting the tactics when they became public and liberal antiwar activists protested.

In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi's office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations.

"As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used," said Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman.

Pelosi's statement did not address whether she was informed that other harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah interrogations.

In December 2007 the Washington Post reported that leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees had been briefed in the fall of 2002 about waterboarding -- which simulates drowning -- and other techniques, and that no congressional leaders protested its use. At the time Pelosi said she was not told that waterboarding was being used, a position she stood by repeatedly last month when the Bush-era Justice Department legal documents justifying the interrogation tactics were released by Attorney General Eric Holder.

The new memo shows that intelligence officials were willing to share the information about waterboarding with only a sharply closed group of people. Three years after the initial Pelosi-Goss briefing, Bush officials still limited interrogation technique briefings to just the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the so-called Gang of Four in the intelligence world.

In October 2005, CIA officials began briefing other congressional leaders with oversight of the intelligence community, including top appropriators who provided the agency its annual funding. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam and an opponent of torture techniques, was also read into the program at that time even though he did not hold a special committee position overseeing the intelligence community.

A bipartisan collection of lawmakers have criticized the practice of limiting information to just the "Gang of Four", who were expressly forbidden from talking about the information from other colleagues, including fellow members of the intelligence committees. Pelosi and others are considering reforms that would assure a more open process for all committee members.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/05/cia_says_pelosi_was_briefed_on.html

Of course Nancy knew about this , she was knee deep in the (secret) meetings ...maybe they should fire her for lying..we should be so lucky.

true if that were the case,(firing) we would have an empty white house, and also Bush would have been done away with eight years ago~
if she is ,I agree fire here~

i will attempt to address this by the news i was listening to on tv, ,, it said obama ordered these CIA reports released.. it was the sept, 2002 meeting pelosi was in, it said on tv that it even had the seating arrangement. and where she sat in the meeting. and the fact that she said she knew there was waterboarding but did not know it was being used she states now,. the tv new used the analogy, that the congressmen briefed in world war II . that we are at war and we have this new atomic bomb we can use to bring this to an end and not have to invade Okinawa and japan and save an untold amount of american lives, . . it would be like them saying " well we knew we had it but did not know it would be used, .. pelosi is playing to the simpletons to convince them she knew we had waterboarding as a technique that had been deemed leagal then but she did not know we would use it.. she can play dumb about this and probably get away with it, but frankly i dont care., i dont care that we used it. we were at war, and still are, an army without uniforms which changes the laws on how they can be kept. i think it was meemoon that said they can beat them with tire tools for all he care, and i agree, these ppl will never give up on our destruction . they live for it.. its taught to them at an early age in their schools.we worry about civilian collateral damage at places al quida is found. well watch or read on the fire bombing of the city of Dresden in world war II, if u want to see civilians killed, a war is a war is a war, there all the same..this one is world wide,so ppl need to buck up and face it..one day here in America there will be a biological agent release and kill an unknown amount of ppl , or a chemical agent released. its coming, i hope obama is on the case, and not looking the other way..

it wasn't deemed legal, but bybee, yoo and others tried to make it legal, it was deemed illegal when Reagan was president~ and the texas sheriff and deputy were put in prison for it..I know it is wartime. but torture is still illegal~

MY WORDS , when 9-11 hit the gloves came off as in all wars, this article shows the small insignificant s of the waterboarding, to gain knowledge that found other planed attacks, i will post just incase one has not studied on Dresden. there are differing views of the total amount of dead, but ppl then knew what war was, we still here do not know what war is concerning the radical muslim extreamist, the future of this war lies before us and will grow, so i will post a article on Dresden Germany which by this account was all about civilian death, but no one said war is pretty or clean or without fault. to the winner goes the spoils. what i found facinating on watching a documentary of this is the fire caused an actual tornado, from the intense fire, a tornado or fire, while the atomic bombs bring so much attention, Dresden and Tokyo, are much forgot , war is war, this waterboarding of a army without uniforms is way over blown for political reasons, ,, so here is an article, that some have strong feelings on also, all wars have things, but few have thing like waterboarding for political purposes, read the article that follows,

The WWII Dresden Holocaust -
'A Single Column Of Flame'

"You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

On the evening of February 13, 1945, an orgy of genocide and barbarism began against a defenseless German city, one of the greatest cultural centers of northern Europe. Within less than 14 hours not only was it reduced to flaming ruins, but an estimated one-third of its inhabitants, possibly as many as a half a million, had perished in what was the worst single event massacre of all time.

___

Toward the end of World War II, as Allied planes rained death and destruction over Germany, the old Saxon city of Dresden lay like an island of tranquillity amid desolation. Famous as a cultural center and possessing no military value, Dresden had been spared the terror that descended from the skies over the rest of the country.

In fact, little had been done to provide the ancient city of artists and craftsmen with anti-aircraft defenses. One squadron of planes had been stationed in Dresden for awhile, but the Luftwaffe decided to move the aircraft to another area where they would be of use. A gentlemen's agreement seemed to prevail, designating Dresden an "open city."

February 13/14 1945: Holocaust over Dresden, known as the Florence of the North. Dresden was a hospital city for wounded soldiers. Not one military unit, not one anti-aircraft battery was deployed in the city. Together with the 600.000 refugees from Breslau, Dresden was filled with nearly 1.2 million people. Churchill had asked for "suggestions how to blaze 600.000 refugees". He wasn't interested how to target military installations 60 miles outside of Dresden. More than 700.000 phosphorus bombs were dropped on 1.2 million people. One bomb for every 2 people. The temperature in the centre of the city reached 1600 o centigrade. More than 260.000 bodies and residues of bodies were counted. But those who perished in the centre of the city can't be traced. Approximately 500.000 children, women, the elderly, wounded soldiers and the animals of the zoo were slaughtered in one night.

On Shrove Tuesday, February 13, 1945, a flood of refugees fleeing the Red Army 60 miles away had swollen the city's population to well over a million. Each new refugee brought fearful accounts of Soviet atrocities. Little did those refugees retreating from the Red terror imagine that they were about to die in a horror worse than anything Stalin could devise.

Normally, a carnival atmosphere prevailed in Dresden on Shrove Tuesday. In 1945, however, the outlook was rather dismal. Houses everywhere overflowed with refugees, and thousands were forced to camp out in the streets shivering in the bitter cold.

However, the people felt relatively safe; and although the mood was grim, the circus played to a full house that night as thousands came to forget for a moment the horrors of war. Bands of little girls paraded about in carnival dress in an effort to bolster warning spirits. Half-sad smiles greeted the laughing girls, but spirits were lifted.

No one realized that in less than 24 hours those same innocent children would die screaming in Churchill's firestorms. But, of course, no one could know that then. The Russians, to be sure, were savages, but at least the Americans and British were "honorable."

So, when those first alarms signaled the start of 14 hours of hell, Dresden's people streamed dutifully into their shelters. But they did so without much enthusiasm, believing the alarms to be false, since their city had never been threatened from the air. Many would never come out alive, for that "great democratic statesman," Winston Churchill--in collusion with that other "great democratic statesman," Franklin Delano Roosevelt--had decided that the city of Dresden was to be obliterated by saturation bombing.

What where Churchill's motives? They appear to have been political, rather than military. Historians unanimously agree that Dresden had no military value. What industry it did have produced only cigarettes and china.

But the Yalta Conference was coming up, in which the Soviets and their Western allies would sit down like ghouls to carve up the shattered corpse of Europe. Churchill wanted a trump card--a devastating "thunderclap of Anglo-American annihilation"--with which to "impress" Stalin.

That card, however, was never played at Yalta, because bad weather delayed the originally scheduled raid. Yet Churchill insisted that the raid be carried out--to "disrupt and confuse" the German civilian population behind the lines.

Dresden's citizens barely had time to reach their shelters. The first bomb fell at 10:09 p.m. The attack lasted 24 minutes, leaving the inner city a raging sea of fire. "Precision saturation bombing" had created the desired firestorm.

A firestorm is caused when hundreds of smaller fires join in one vast conflagration. Huge masses of air are sucked in to feed the inferno, causing an artificial tornado. Those persons unlucky enough to be caught in the rush of wind are hurled down entire streets into the flames. Those who seek refuge underground often suffocate as oxygen is pulled from the air to feed the blaze, or they perish in a blast of white heat--heat intense enough to melt human flesh.

One eyewitness who survived told of seeing "young women carrying babies running up and down the streets, their dresses and hair on fire, screaming until they fell down, or the collapsing buildings fell on top of them."

There was a three-hour pause between the first and second raids. The lull had been calculated to lure civilians from their shelters into the open again. To escape the flames, tens of thousands of civilians had crowded into the Grosser Garten, a magnificent park nearly one and a half miles square.

The second raid came at 1:22 a.m. with no warning. Twice as many bombers returned with a massive load of incendiary bombs. The second wave was designed to spread the raging firestorm into the Grosser Garten.

It was a complete "success." Within a few minutes a sheet of flame ripped across the grass, uprooting trees and littering the branches of others with everything from bicycles to human limbs. For days afterward, they remained bizarrely strewn about as grim reminders of Allied sadism.

At the start of the second air assault, many were still huddled in tunnels and cellars, waiting for the fires of the first attack to die down. At 1:30 a.m. an ominous rumble reached the ears of the commander of a Labor Service convoy sent into the city on a rescue mission. He described it this way:

"The detonation shook the cellar walls. The sound of the explosions mingled with a new, stranger sound which seemed to come closer and closer, the sound of a thundering waterfall; it was the sound of the mighty tornado howling in the inner city."

MELTING HUMAN FLESH

Others hiding below ground died. But they died painlessly--they simply glowed bright orange and blue in the darkness. As the heat intensified, they either disintegrated into cinders or melted into a thick liquid--often three or four feet deep in spots.

Shortly after 10:30 on the morning of February 14, the last raid swept over the city. American bombers pounded the rubble that had been Dresden for a steady 38 minutes. But this attack was not nearly as heavy as the first two.

However, what distinguished this raid was the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which it was carried out. U.S. Mustangs appeared low over the city, strafing anything that moved, including a column of rescue vehicles rushing to the city to evacuate survivors. One assault was aimed at the banks of the Elbe River, where refugees had huddled during the horrible night.

In the last year of the war, Dresden had become a hospital town. During the previous night's massacre, heroic nurses had dragged thousands of crippled patients to the Elbe. The low-flying Mustangs machine-gunned those helpless patients, as well as thousands of old men, women and children who had escaped the city.

When the last plane left the sky, Dresden was a scorched ruin, its blackened streets filled with corpses. The city was spared no horror. A flock of vultures escaped from the zoo and fattened on the carnage. Rats swarmed over the piles of corpses.

A Swiss citizen described his visit to Dresden two weeks after the raid: "I could see torn-off arms and legs, mutilated torsos and heads which had been wrenched from their bodies and rolled away. In places the corpses were still lying so densely that I had to clear a path through them in order not to tread on arms and legs."


****************

Kurt Vonnegut was in Dresden when it was bombed in 1945, and wrote a famous anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse Five, in 1969.

In February 1945, Vonnegut was witness to another pretty good imitation of Mt Vesuvius; the firebombing by Allied forces of Dresden, the town in eastern Germany, during the last months of the Second World War. More than 600,000 incen-diary bombs later, the city looked more like the surface of the moon. Returning home to India-napolis after the war, Vonnegut began writing short stories for magazines such as Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post, and, seven years later, published his first novel, Player Piano. ...


Finally, in 1969, he tackled the subject of war, recounting his experiences as a POW in Dresden, forced to dig corpses from the rubble. The resulting novel was Slaughterhouse Five. Banned in several US states - and branded a "tool of the devil" in North Dakota - it carried the snappy alternative title: "The Children's Crusade: A Duly Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, a fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much) who, as an American infantry scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war, witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany - the Florence of the Elbe - a long time ago, and survived to tell the tale: this is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizopfrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamodre, where the flying saucers come from, Peace." ....

In December 1944, Vonnegut was captured by the German army and became a prisoner of war. In Slaughterhouse Five, he describes how he narrowly escaped death a few months later in the firebombing of Dresden. "Yes, by your people [the English], may I say," he insists. "You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. I'm fond of your people, on occasion, but I was just thinking about 'Bomber Harris, who believed in attacks on civilian populations to make them give up. A hell of a lot of Royal Air Force guys were ashamed of what Harris had made them do. And that's really sportsmanship and, of course, the Brits are famous for being good sports," he concedes.

The Independent, London, 20 December 2001, p. 19

***************

The death toll was staggering. The full extent of the Dresden Holocaust can be more readily grasped if one considers that well over 250,000 -- possibly as many as a half a million -- persons died within a 14-hour period, whereas estimates of those who died at Hiroshima range from 90,000 to 140,000.*

Allied apologists for the massacre have often "twinned" Dresden with the English city of Coventry. But the 380 killed in Coventry during the entire war cannot begin to compare with over 1,000 times that number who were slaughtered in 14 hours at Dresden. Moreover, Coventry was a munitions center, a legitimate military target. Dresden, on the other hand, produced only china--and cups and saucers can hardly be considered military hardware!

It is interesting to further compare the respective damage to London and Dresden, especially when we recall all the Hollywood schmaltz about the "London blitz." In one night, 1,600 acres of land were destroyed in the Dresden massacre. London escaped with damage to only 600 acres during the entire war.

In one ironic note, Dresden's only conceivable military target -- its railroad yards -- was ignored by Allied bombers. They were too busy concentrating on helpless old men, women and children.

If ever there was a war crime, then certainly the Dresden Holocaust ranks as the most sordid one of all time. Yet there are no movies made today condemning this fiendish slaughter; nor did any Allied airman--or Sir Winston--sit in the dock at Nuremberg. In fact, the Dresden airmen were actually awarded medals for their role in this mass murder. But, of course, they could not have been tried, because there were "only following orders."

This is not to say that the mountains of corpses left in Dresden were ignored by the Nuremberg Tribunal. In one final irony, the prosecution presented photographs of the Dresden dead as "evidence" of alleged National Socialist atrocities against Jewish concentration-camp inmates!

Churchill, the monster who ordered the Dresden slaughter, was knighted, and the rest is history. The cold-blooded sadism of the massacre, however, is brushed aside by his biographers, who still cannot bring themselves to tell how the desire of one madman to "impress" another one let to the mass murder of up to a half million men, women and children.

gypsy wrote:true if that were the case,(firing) we would have an empty white house, and also Bush would have been done away with eight years ago~
if she is ,I agree fire here~

Thought we were talking about Nancy but of course once again you got you dig in about Bush...

yeppers, i am sure digs will be around for a long while, concerning W

gypsy wrote:yeppers, i am sure digs will be around for a long while, concerning W

only by ppl who cant find real relevant actual news,

really Rosco ??LOL seems i have put very relevant news, maybe it is just something you don't agree with~~so yours is more so?? I think not~

you will never find in the past or future a spotless white house or congress. the game is from both sides dig for dirt,just hope some of the counties business get done, while ppl toil in old silly items, that every administration is guilty of..

never claimed too Rosco~ never said there is, was , or will be perfect government/presidency

diggs about Obama will happen and so will diggs about other presidents` it is part of the package~

well probably most the digging for former President Bush will be on his library foundation,

Very well said Rosco..those who look to the past will never see the future...

very true,and the present is here~ looking forward to each day, hoping the good news continues and the country is prospering once again~ making sure past mistakes aren't repeated~ and that one has learned from them`

Lets just hope the present isn't going to put future generations in financial ruin, rampant spending, irresponsible waste of billions , these times are fast and furious but as the dust settles , this will end up an ugly situation. All the hype to turning things around may blow up in Obama's face. He can't even get a cabinet together , nor fill countless vacancies, are there no honest Dems out there ???

many honest dems, out here, i could ask the same about repubs, in fact we have conversed on that here on this forum where have all the good republicans gone?? this was in reference to a good republican/man Jack Kemp~

the GOP needs to regroup and clean it self up~~
I will say this again i think Obama is doing a good job, of course it is is going to cost future generations, to correct/pay for the past administration deficit /mistakes when clinton left office we had 2billion surplus, can't quote exact amount,but we did have a surplus.. the last eight years have been costly in lives, economy,bank failures etc..

Don't guess it has dawned on you in the past 8 years we had one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in history on our own soil, might just be part of the spending to PROTECT us from future attacks by hunting down and eliminating these dogs. War is costly, but losing countless lives is more devastating.
As far as the Obama cabinet, why so many Dems having tax trouble / Sure has been an instant cluster in nominations...

One thing scary about Obama besides being a spook lol , is his potential of supreme court judges the dems may bring aboard, this is serious, now justice Suter,(spelling) which turned out to be funny, i think Regan or one republican nominated him and he turned out to be more liberal,so all obama can do with him is replace a lib with a lib, so no change, but now is it ginsburg the lady judge that has pancreatic cancer? but alot of what happens depends on the mid term elections,

tax troubles?I would say dems and repubs are equal in that respect.. the republicans outnumber democrats in scandals and dishonesty,I put that article here on one of the forums, as i have said if we went on honesty, scruples we wouldn't have anyone in the government/house/senate.

SSC wrote:Don't guess it has dawned on you in the past 8 years we had one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in history on our own soil, might just be part of the spending to PROTECT us from future attacks by hunting down and eliminating these dogs. War is costly, but losing countless lives is more devastating.
As far as the Obama cabinet, why so many Dems having tax trouble / Sure has been an instant cluster in nominations...

true ,on horrific,attacks on our soil.. and who was on watch?? many papers and warnings issued but it wasn't acknowledged~by Bush adminstration~ and i think all presidents run into appointment problems~~

gypsy wrote:tax troubles?I would say dems and repubs are equal in that respect.. the republicans outnumber democrats in scandals and dishonesty,I put that article here on one of the forums, as i have said if we went on honesty, scruples we wouldn't have anyone in the government/house/senate.

i dont think the congressmen and senators are anymore dishonest that most common everyday ppl, they just have lots of eyes on them to slip up, lol this is the story, told to me by my sargent in the guard who was much older, in the 50s i think we had a governor, named BIG JIM FOLSOM , he ran for second term, and said plain out he will take all he can , well he was popular and was reelected and he took all he could. those were the days,

gypsy wrote:

SSC wrote:Don't guess it has dawned on you in the past 8 years we had one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in history on our own soil, might just be part of the spending to PROTECT us from future attacks by hunting down and eliminating these dogs. War is costly, but losing countless lives is more devastating.
As far as the Obama cabinet, why so many Dems having tax trouble / Sure has been an instant cluster in nominations...

true ,on horrific,attacks on our soil.. and who was on watch?? many papers and warnings issued but it wasn't acknowledged~by Bush adminstration~ and i think all presidents run into appointment problems~~

oh come on now, that attack had been being planned for a long time, i think clinton deserves some blame, acctually i blame no one, because worse than that is on the horizon and i will not blame anyone for what is before us either,

maybe, we don't know how long it was planned, it happened on Bushes watch~just simple thought process there~

gypsy wrote:maybe, we don't know how long it was planned, it happened on Bushes watch~just simple thought process there~

and thank God it did happen on Bushes watch. he had the spunk to go after them, obama probably would call a negotiation , lmao,,