NY Post - By Peter Brookes - May 16, 2009
IT'S one doozy of a case of "he said, she said."
House Speaker Nancy Pel osi, a senior Democrat, and the White House-appointed CIA director, Leon Panetta, are having a tiff about "who told whom what when" regarding the interrogation of al Qaeda terrorists.
Pelosi is claiming the CIA misled Congress about the use of waterboarding against al Qaeda operatives when it briefed the House Intelligence Committee back in the War on Terror's early days.
The CIA -- and a host of others -- are saying that it ain't so and that the speaker and the Congress were advised of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques against senior al Qaeda terrorists as far back as 2002.
Panetta yesterday said that CIA briefers dealt with lawmakers honestly but that ultimately it would be up to members of Congress to make their own judgments about what transpired.
President Obama, the ostensible leader of the Democratic Party, has said nothing about the matter so far, but he surely can't be pleased about the rancor within his senior ranks.
Fact is, we'll probably never really know what happened in those CIA briefings to Capitol Hill, because the records of the meetings are likely based on notes scribbled by the staff in attendance.
But the reality is that this brouhaha is more about politics than about our national security -- and that's a shame.
The effort by those on the Left to reach back and possibly punish those who were involved in keeping this country safe in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks is just downright wrongheaded -- and will only hurt our national security.
For instance, the last thing Panetta... (continues)
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