That’s gonna leave a mark. Not only is Leon Panetta the director of the CIA, but he’s a Democrat and political appointee of Barack Obama’s. One can’t exactly claim that he’s driven by partisanship against Pelosi.
CIA Director Leon Panetta challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusations that the agency lied to her, writing a memo to his agents saying she received nothing but the truth.
Panetta said that “ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”…
Panetta, President Obama’s pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton’s former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,’” according to CIA records.
“We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication,” Panetta said in the memo. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”
How Madame Speaker and her Congressional Democratic allies will respond to this is unclear. Panetta isn’t just the highest ranking member of the agency, but he’s a fellow Democrat. If he says Pelosi received an honest briefing back in 2002, odds are he’s not just making crap up.
This basically just confirms what we (and even members of her side of the aisle) already knew: Pelosi is lying through her teeth and continuously changing her story in an attempt to get out of a tough spot. She’s willing to paint the men and women protecting this country as liars rather than take responsibility for not objecting to EITs until they went public. It’s time for her to go.
Update: Allahpundit reminds us that Panetta originally tried to give Pelosi some wiggle room last week. I assume the wiggle room closed up as soon as she began going on television to call the CIA a bunch of liars.
by Stephan Tawney on Fri, May 15, 2009