Does the CIA Ever Lie? Parsing the Pelosi Torture Controversy

The debate over Bush-era torture
tactics like waterboarding has morphed into a full-blown Washington
scandal. But the target isn't the Bush administration officials who
ordered the torture; instead, the corporate media's focus is on House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who claims that she was not fully briefed by the
CIA on the use of waterboarding in late 2002. The prevailing assumption
in much of the coverage is that the CIA couldn't possibly have misled
members of Congress--despite the fact that this has happened
repeatedly.

The media reaction has been intense. Right-wing pundits and the Fox News Channel
are treating the issue as the most important political story of the
moment. Pelosi is "undermining our national security. She's emboldening
our enemies," declared host Sean Hannity (5/15/09). MSNBC's Morning Joe
has covered the subject repeatedly, with host Joe Scarborough
expressing utter disbelief (5/15/09) that the CIA could possibly have
misled Pelosi, since Congress could cut off the CIA's funding. "They
would never lie to Congress, because they would be crushed," Sen. Kit
Bond (R.-Mo.) said on the show.

More centrist pundits tended to focus their criticism on Pelosi's handling of the controversy. MSNBC
host Chris Matthews asked (5/15/09): "Just how much damage did House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi do to herself yesterday? Her accounts of what she
knew about waterboarding and when she knew it are so confusing, so
ever-changing and so convoluted that she's made herself an easy target
for Republicans and now for the CIA itself."

The Washington Post's Dan Balz wrote (5/15/09)
that Pelosi "took the remarkable step of trying to shift the focus of
blame to the CIA and the Bush administration, claiming that the CIA
accounts represented a diversionary tactic in the real debate over the
interrogation policies. That amounted to a virtual declaration of war
against the CIA." It's unclear why it's "remarkable" to suggest that
the discussion should focus on the agency and the administration that
had a secret torture program, rather than on someone who may or may not
have been informed about the program.

While Pelosi's performance at her May 14 press conference has been
derided throughout the media, it is hard to see how Pelosi's story has
been, as Matthews put it, "so confusing, so ever-changing and so
convoluted." A compilation of Pelosi's statements put together by the Washington Post (5/15/09)
show her taking a straightforward and consistent stance that she was
only briefed once about interrogation techniques and was told the U.S.
was not using "waterboarding."

Of course, without having attended the briefings, there is no way to
judge who is telling the truth--the CIA or Nancy Pelosi. But the media
frenzy over the divergent stories seems to discount the idea that the
CIA would ever mislead lawmakers about its actions. This view is hard
to square with history; as Adam Serwer noted at the American Prospect's blog Tapped (5/15/09), a recent book on the CIA by New York Times
reporter Tim Weiner recalled several examples, including former CIA
directer Richard Helms telling the Senate in 1973 that the CIA had no
involvement in that year's coup in Chile, a lie that led to Helms
pleading guilty to perjury in 1977. Weiner also described CIA director
William Casey's frequent dissembling in the Iran/Contra scandal.

In 2001, a plane carrying Baptist missionaries from Michigan was shot
down in Peru as part of a drug interdiction program run by the CIA and
Peruvian officials. The victims' cause was taken up by Republican
lawmakers, and an ensuing internal CIA investigation "concluded that
agency officials deliberately misled Congress, the White House and
federal prosecutors" about the incident (Washington Post, 11/21/08).
"CIA officials in front of my committee may have allowed incomplete or
misleading statements to be made," Rep. Pete Hoekstra told the Post
(R-Mich.). Hoekstra's concerns are ironic considering, as the ranking
Republican on the House Intelligence committee, he has emerged as one
of Pelosi's chief antagonists, calling the speaker's charges that she
had been misled by the CIA "outrageous accusations" (CNN American
Morning, 5/18/09).

As Jason Leopold recalled (Truthout, 5/15/09), the Washington Post
reported in 2006 that Mary McCarthy, the CIA's former deputy inspector
general, believed the CIA was lying about its interrogation practices
when it briefed lawmakers. As the Post
reported (5/14/06), McCarthy "became convinced that on multiple
occasions the agency had not given accurate or complete information to
its congressional overseers."

The evidence against Pelosi, meanwhile, is often wildly overestimated. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote dismissively (5/17/09)
of Pelosi's "campaign for self-vindication," since to him the evidence
is clear: "If you read the CIA's careful 10-page summary of the 40
briefings it has given to Congress since 2002 on 'enhanced
interrogation techniques,' it's pretty hard not to conclude that Pelosi
is shading the truth to retrospectively cover her backside." Not
really; the summaries are short descriptions of the subjects that were
covered in the briefings. Pelosi was briefed on one occasion (9/4/02),
according to the CIA's summary, which does not mention the term
"waterboarding" being used, though it is specifically mentioned in the
summaries of 12 other briefings. Ignatius went on to recall an instance
during Iran/Contra where the CIA was apparently more honest than its
critics in Congress--a rather narrow view of that scandal.

In addition, another Democratic lawmaker--former Sen. Bob Graham--was
listed as having been briefed four times. When Graham--a famously
meticulous diarist--told the CIA that he was actually only briefed
once, they agreed and corrected their records (NPR,
5/15/09). Why such records are treated as if they are beyond question
is puzzling. Rep. David Obey (D.-Wisc.) complained that the summaries
listed a staffer as having been briefed on interrogation techniques
who, according to Obey, had actually been specifically excluded from
the meeting (Associated Press, 5/19/09).

In short, an agency has been accused of breaking the law and has
admitted to destroying key evidence (videotapes of some interrogation
sessions) that could implicate its personnel in that lawbreaking (Washington Post, 12/7/07).
The same agency has a record of misleading members of Congress (among
others) about its activities. And somehow the point of the current
media scandal is whether or not Nancy Pelosi is telling the truth?