The hits just keep on coming for Madame Speaker, who tried to claim that she had no knowledge that waterboarding was being used on terror suspects. The latest evidence comes from a Washington Post report and, in a particularly stinging development, a source from her side of the aisle.

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.

Unfortunately for Madame Speaker, she and Sheehy were attending briefings long before Harman even attended her first. Pelosi and her top aide were briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) on September 4, 2002 — a full five months before Harman attended her first briefing on the matter. That 2002 briefing included a walkthrough of the EITs and how they were being used on Abu Zubaydah. So Harman first objected to the methods in 2003 — not 2002.

CIA Director Leon Panetta tells Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) that, “classified memos describing what was said at each briefing would be available at CIA headquarters for review by congressional staff”. Yeah, uh, no. The cat’s already out of the bag on the EITs. The Obama Administration released classified memos and opened the possibility for prosection of those who took part in the approval of the EITs. As Ed Morrissey says:

The act of releasing the OLC memos, while not a leak, was another politically selective act intended to give only a small part of the picture for the administration’s purposes.  We need to see all of the documentation, with only the most sensitive information redacted, in order to know exactly what was done, who ordered it, who approved it, and who knew about it — and what we discovered as a result of it.

Box opened. Let’s see the contents.