Posted by
Defend America on Saturday, January 30, 2010 1:17:25 AM
Pelosi stopped one CIA operation. So why not waterboarding?
By Marc A. Thiessen
Friday, January 29, 2010
In mid-2004, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi learned something
from a CIA briefing that made her blood boil. Pelosi reportedly "came
unglued" at the revelation and had "strong words" with national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice, demanding that the CIA abandon its
plans. As a result, a top-secret finding that President George W. Bush
signed to authorize the CIA's activities was revised. Pelosi succeeded
in stopping the agency from moving forward with the controversial
operation.
What drove Pelosi to action? Not the CIA's waterboarding of
suspected al-Qaeda terrorists. In a 2009 interview, a former senior
Bush administration official directed me to a little-noticed item from Time magazine.
According to this 2004 report, Pelosi objected to a CIA plan to provide
money to moderate political parties in Iraq ahead of scheduled
elections, in an effort to counter Iran, which was funneling millions
to extremist elements. "House minority leader Nancy Pelosi 'came
unglued' when she learned about what a source described as a plan for
'the CIA to put an operation in place to affect the outcome of the
elections,' " Time reported. "Pelosi had strong words with National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in a phone call about the issue. . .
. A senior U.S. official hinted that, under pressure from the Hill, the
Administration scaled back its original plans." (Her role was also reported on this page by David Ignatius in 2007.)
Why is this important? Because on May 14, 2009, Pelosi, now speaker of the House, declared in a Capitol Hill news conference
that she had opposed CIA waterboarding but was powerless to stop it. A
former senior intelligence official told me in 2009 that he was shocked
by Pelosi's claim because, he said, "Speaker Pelosi herself has stopped
covert action programs that she has been briefed on by going to the
White House. In that very same time frame [after she learned about
waterboarding] Pelosi had gone back to the White House [over] a
separate covert action program, expressed strong opposition to it. And
the remarkable part to me, the White House backed off the program,
changed one aspect of the program . . . she was particularly opposed
to. And literally, the finding was pulled back and revised." If Pelosi
had truly opposed waterboarding, he said, she had numerous ways to stop
it -- but she didn't try.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012803564.html?hpid=opinionsbox1