Pelosi: CIA Lied about Waterboarding

Membership Ticker

Monika Bauerlein, CEO

Dear reader,

This is big. $25 million big. I'm excited to write to you about The Moment for Mother Jones: a five-year push to make key investments and strengthen our work at a time when journalism faces threats—both political and economic—like never before. We’ve raised more than 90 percent of our $25 million goal, and now that we're in the homestretch, we're asking the entire MoJo community to be part of it. Read more about The Moment and please join us with a donation today: Your gift will be matched dollar for dollar, up to $500,000 total.

$500,000 MATCHING GIFT: Join The Moment for Mother Jones and your gift will be DOUBLED as part of this special, five-year effort to strengthen our journalism at a time when it’s needed like never before.

Nancy Pelosi fights back against news reports that she was briefed on the torture of CIA prisoners in 2002:

In her first public comments on the matter since an intelligence report contradicted her recollections, Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters today that she was never told about the fact that waterboarding had been used on a terrorist suspect, even though terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded a month before she was briefed on the subject in Sept. 2002.

“The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed,” Pelosi said, reading from a prepared statement. “Those briefing me in Sept. 2002 gave me inaccurate and incomplete information.”

Game on! Two questions, though. First, why did it take you a week to remember this? Second, what about reports that one of your aides, Michael Sheehy, was briefed about waterboarding in early 2003 and passed the news along to you? Any comment on that?

UPDATE: Actually, it turns out that Pelosi did address the Sheehy issue. Details here.