Pelosi Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002, Didn’t Object….

Posted on December 8, 2007

Pelosi knew the CIA has been waterboarding terrorists to extract information since 2002 and had no objection. Yet she admitted to Chris Wallace in October that she believed it was torture. Here come the single digit approval ratings….p>

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included future-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted its videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Story online soon via WaPo

Here’s a partial transcript from an interview on Fox News (10/7/07) H/T:Elric

WALLACE: So let me ask you directly. Do you think that the interrogation techniques that have been reported — let’s not talk about what’s in the memo, but what’s been reported — in combination, head slapping, water boarding, exposure to extreme temperatures. Torture?

PELOSI: There is a legal definition of torture that I believe this would fit. The president says it is not. Again, we have to see the degree and what he is talking about, because again, to answer on the basis of something that’s been reported in the press that the president has deemed is not torture, it’s just not — I just can’t give you an informative answer on that.

ZIP

Crossposted via Weasel Zippers….

» Filed Under ACLU, News, Politics As Usual, War On Terror

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Comments

One Response to “Pelosi Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002, Didn’t Object….”

Brujo Blanco on December 9th, 2007 7:30 pm

I find it interesting that the likes of Pelosi shows and interest in our guys waterboarding but no interest in terrorists that behead, mutilate sex organs, and set off bombs in restaurants to extract information and get their way. They wish to extend protections to our enemies that they would not extend to our own people.

Now that they are looking into the situation they will want someone punished guilty or not. It is the way of politics today.