As I am sure you all have seen, The New York Times is running a story that basically attempts; albeit rather weakly, to vindicate Nancy Pelosi:
WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.
In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.
In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”
Right on cue, the Liberal Democratically ran and financed media, immediately jumped up and started squawking that it was about Water boarding and all of the other Democrats pet gripes about the Government. Well, not so fast, says Rick Klein of ABC News’s The Note:
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reports: Has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi been vindicated? That’s the way the speaker’s allies see it. Recent revelations by CIA Director Leon Panetta, the speaker’s allies say, prove Pelosi was right when she said the CIA routinely misleads Congress.
That is not, however, the way the CIA sees it.
Pelosi, D-Calif., may feel vindicated, but Republicans are delighted that this latest dust-up revives the controversy surrounding her war of words with the CIA just when it had seemed to fade away.
[…]
In May 15, shortly after the speaker made her allegations, Panetta jumped to the defense of his agency saying, "it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress."
But now, in light of Panetta’s latest revelation, six Democrats on the Intelligence Committee have fired off a letter to Panetta demanding that he retract his statement and acknowledge Pelosi was right.
"In light of your testimony, we ask that you publicly correct your statement of May 15, 2009," the Democrats wrote Panetta.
No dice.
"Director Panetta stands by his May 15 statement," says CIA spokesman George Little. "It is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress. This Agency and this Director believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta’s actions back that up. As the letter from these six representatives notes, it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees."
According to an intelligence official familiar with the briefing, Panetta never said the CIA misled Congress.
"He took decisive steps to inform the oversight committees of something that hadn’t been appropriately briefed in the past," the official said. "He didn’t attribute motives to that."
And, in fact, not even Reyes, the Democratic chairman of the intelligence committee, sees this as vindication for Pelosi.
In a statement released last night, Reyes tried to navigate his way to a position somewhere between Panetta and Pelosi. He says he agrees with Panetta that "the Agency does not and will not lie to Congress … but, in rare instances, certain officers have not adhered to the high standards held, as a rule, by the CIA with respect to truthfulness in reporting."
That’s a far cry from Pelosi’s statement in May that "they mislead us all the time," but it leaves open the possibility they could have fallen short of those "high standards" of "truthfulness in reporting" when they briefed Pelosi back in September 2002.
What you have have here is a rather lame attempt by Panetta to give Pelosi cover from the critics on the right, that say that Pelosi tried to slam the C.I.A., instead, it is blowing up in his face. Because the Democrats in congress want to prove, so badly, that the Bush Administration Lied about torture and water boarding, so, they’re willing to pull little idiotic stunts like this one.
It is plain and simple; Nancy Pelosi should resign and so should Leon E. Panetta. They disgraced their offices and they have allowed partisan politics get in the way of their abilities to their jobs effectively. Of course, I realize that this will never happen. Not with the Communist Democrats in power.
Others: JustOneMinute, Flopping Aces, Right Wing News, Neptunus Lex