FactCheck: Pelosi's Tortured Denials

Non-partisan website FactCheck.org analyzes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's changing story of torture briefings she received from the CIA.

Speaker Pelosi said in February that she was "never" told that the CIA was using waterboarding in interrogations. Then in May she changed her story to say she was told, but still claimed it was not quite as early as the CIA said. On that point she's contradicted, however, both by a CIA memo and by a Republican former congressman who got the same briefing she did. The current CIA director, a Democrat, says his agency's story, though not infallible, is "the most thorough information we have." Prominent Republicans, including former Speaker Gingrich, are saying that Pelosi should step down because of this.

Who's right? It is clear that Pelosi has contradicted herself, and that she knew as early as 2003 that waterboarding was in use, long before she raised any public or private objection. But as to whether she was misled by CIA officials in a 2002 briefing, we can't say on the basis of evidence than is publicly available now. That judgment may have to wait for the history books.

This controversy is one more reason we need a non-partisan Truth Commission to investigate this issue. I fully expect that such a commission would find fault with the handling of this issue on both sides of the aisle. Further, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC that President Obama is against such a commission because he believes it would be too big a "distraction" from other important issues. It is already a distraction and will continue to be as bits and pieces of this story come out. Such a commission is the only way that this issue will not degenerate into the usual partisan shouting match.

--Ballard Burgher