The political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress. Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.”On first reading that sounds very tough, so go read it again. Then see Panetta's next sentence:
Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.There is the wimp-out. If, in order to protect Madam Speaker, the Democrat-controlled Congress concludes that the CIA cooked the books, recorded something other than what happened, it is okay with Panetta. He is ready to throw the CIA record-writers under the bus.
You should know three things about this situation: First, Leon Panetta is a former Clinton Chief of Staff, long-time Democrat member of Congress, and no enemy of his party. Second, he was not associated with the CIA when the 2002 briefing took place. Third, Porter Goss who was the Republican Congressional committee chair at the same time that Pelosi was the ranking Democrat minority member, and who attended the same briefings, agrees with the CIA's version of the story.
