Pelosi's Story Falling Apart

Like her lips before all those injections, Nancy Pelosi's story on her knowledge of the waterboarding that was going on is getting thinner and thinner:

A top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended a CIA briefing in early 2003 in which it was made clear that waterboarding and other harsh techniques were being used in the interrogation of an alleged al-Qaeda operative, according to documents the CIA released to Congress on Thursday.

Pelosi has insisted that she was not directly briefed by Bush administration officials that the practice was being actively employed. But Michael Sheehy, a top Pelosi aide, was present for a classified briefing that included Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking minority member of the House intelligence committee, at which agency officials discussed the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida.

A Democratic source acknowledged yesterday that it is almost certain that Pelosi would have learned about the use of waterboarding from Sheehy. Pelosi herself acknowledged in a December 2007 statement that she was aware that Harman had learned of the waterboarding and had objected in a letter to the CIA's top counsel.

"It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred," Pelosi said in the Dec. 9, 2007, statement.

Precisely what Pelosi learned in classified intelligence briefings she received on interrogations has become a flash point in the battle over the effectiveness and legality of the methods used to extract information from alleged al-Qaeda operatives in the first years after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Republicans have accused Pelosi and other Democrats who attended the earliest classified briefings of knowing what CIA operatives were doing and offering their support for the methods, including waterboarding. They argue that Pelosi, who served as the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee until January 2003, objected only after the use of the techniques became public several years later.

"I have every belief that either she or [Harman] were told waterboarding was going on. I have no doubt that the Democratic leadership on this committee in the House knew it was going on," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), who has been the top Republican on the intelligence panel since fall 2004.

She can run but she can't hide.