Pelosi 'misled' on torture

2009-05-14 22:07

Washington - US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush-era CIA on Thursday of misleading her about alleged torture of suspected terrorists and denied her failure to object to such tactics made her complicit.

"At every step of the way, the administration was misleading the Congress. And that is the issue. And that is why we need a 'truth commission' to look into that," the Democrat, a key ally of President Barack Obama, told the media.

Pelosi has drawn fierce Republican charges that she knew years ago about harsh techniques such as the controlled drowning known as waterboarding that she now denounces as torture.

A 'diversionary tactic'

"This is a tactic, a diversionary tactic to take the spotlight off of those who conceived, developed and implemented these policies, which all of us long opposed," she said of efforts to tie her to the extreme interrogations.

Asked whether she was accusing the CIA of lying to top lawmakers, Pelosi replied: "Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States - misleading the Congress of the United States. I am."

The California Democrat echoed calls from Republicans who say the CIA should release the full details of briefings for lawmakers on the harsh interrogations so that the US public could judge who knew what, and when.

"I would be very happy if they would release the briefings," said Pelosi.

Legal advisers concluded it was legal

Pelosi said the CIA briefed her just once on tactics such as waterboarding, in September 2002, and then only told her that then-president George W Bush's legal advisers had concluded it was legal, but not in use, and that lawmakers would be told if interrogators went ahead with the extreme methods.

Pelosi noted that it was later revealed that the practice was already in use at the time, and that the CIA had only acknowledged its use in a February 2003 briefing that one of her top staff attended.

At that point, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Jane Harman, wrote a letter of protest to the CIA's top lawyer - a letter Pelosi says she agreed with, but did not sign, and did not send a letter of her own.

"It does not make me complicit," said Pelosi, who told journalists she had no regrets about not registering her own protest.

"No letter or anything else was going to stop them from doing what they were going to do," she said. "My job was to change the majority in Congress and to fight to have a new president."

- AFP