Panetta Says Pelosi Was Told the Truth

Mark Noonan

The story:

CIA Director Leon Panetta challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusations that the agency lied to her, writing a memo to his agents saying she received nothing but the truth.

Panetta said that “ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”

Pelosi (D-Calif.) infuriated Republicans this week when she said in a news conference that she was “misled” by CIA officials during a briefing in 2002 about whether the U.S. was waterboarding alleged terrorist detainees.

Panetta, President Obama’s pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton’s former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,'” according to CIA records.

“We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication,” Panetta said in the memo. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”

I’m glad that Panetta came to the defense of his troops on this – as I said when his appointment was announced, he is one of the few adults in the ranks of the Democrat leadership and he’s earned the gratitude of all Americans. It becomes ever more clear that Pelosi is caught in a trap of her own making – had she just told the truth from the beginning (ie, “I was ok with it back then, but I’ve changed my mind) then she wouldn’t have any trouble. But hatred of President Bush and pandering to the kook left outweighed any sense of honor on Pelosi’s part – Pelosi and Co wanted some sort of war crimes tribunal for President Bush and they could only sustain such insanity by pretending they weren’t living in America in 2002 and 2003 (you know, back when Democrats were attempting to out war-hawk the GOP).

It is clear that Pelosi must resign for the good of the nation – much as I’d like her to stick around as a millstone ’round the necks of Democrats it doesn’t serve America’s interests to have someone like Pelosi in charge of the people’s House.

UPDATE: Legal Insurrection asserts, correctly, that seeing as Pelosi has accused the CIA of criminal acts, its time for her to put up, or shut up.