How would he know briefers told the truth in 2002? We know they lied about the evidence against Iraq, so why not lie about committing illegal acts?

I think that is essentially the point ericf. I think Panetta can only vouch for the CIA going forward and I think what this letter basically says is that going forward he as the head of the CIA must focus on the mission of the CIA. It would be a disaster for the head of the company to be seen as a enemy to the employees of this company, therefore it would be equally foolish for Panetta to look like a partisan to his co-employees at the CIA. He is asking Congress to look into this matter since that is one of their constitutional duties.

So you have Cheney asking for an investigation into the torture by going on the air all the time, you have many on the left and some in the center who are asking for congressional investigations of torture and you have the head of the CIA now saying if you want to investigate, fine, but I am not going to do the leg work for you.

So let's see that investigation and and then we can all inevitably wait for those lovely witnesses on the stand to start saying those famous words from other investigations during Bush's tenure as POTUS, "I do not recall" or "I am taking the fifth"!

Huffington Post apparently is also easily taken in. Their headline, fronting a reprint from the AP, is "CIA DIRECTOR: RECORDS SHOW AGENCY DIDN'T LIE."

The media insist on viewing this through the optics of whether Pelosi is telling the truth, causing her and her allies to insist further on a truth commission.

Now we know what Tenet really got that Medal 'o Freedom for.

Wow. That is not a denial. Pure and simple.

"It's not our policy or practice to run red lights. But we did."

Ok. So now we know one thing. CIA Officers did the briefing.

That leads to my next questions: What did these officers really know? Did they know torture was ongoing? And backdated from the memos? Did they know torture departed significantly from what the memos described? Had they seen the memos? Seen the interrogation transcripts?

And what were they told to say or not say, regardless of what they themselves knew?

CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah

Panetta left out the SUBJECT of this sentence. The CIA could have briefed a blade of grass and the statement would still hold true. Talk about wiggle room!

I prefer to believe someone who was in the midst of it, like Mary O. McCarthy. Here's a Truthout article about it.

Ex-CIA Official: Agency Brass Lied to Congress About Interrogations
http://www.truthout.org/051509A

The trap is set and Pelosi has shown a great deal of political courage setting it.

Simply, there can be no investigation of torture and anyone's role in it apart from investigating the phony intel of 2002 in the run up to the war

The Speaker's move puts me in mind of Bismarck when he reworded the Kaiser's Ems telegram to Napoleon III. Pelosi has waved a red flag in front of the Republican's bullsh*t

Panetta's letter says nothing. Whatever the CIA's current practices and policies, that doesn't address what the CIA told Congress in the past. OTOH, I wouldn't bet the house on Pelosi's credibility either.

It is important to understand the rules of the game, which I take to be as follows. CIA tells select congresspeople something - but not because they want a conversation or permission. CIA is under the executive branch. It shares information in strict secrecy: if Pelosi objected to anything she heard, or was skeptical, her ONLY option would be to ask to talk with Bush himself. Great! Hearings would just have led to executive privilege, litigation, blah blah.

She could NOT have gone public. CIA would not disclose anything ever again, for years.

She says she thought her best option was to work to bring down the Republicans. I agree. If Speaker Pelosi is listening: thank you for your work to bring down the Republicans.

Our form of government and the Constitution are studiously vague on how the coequal branches of government work out conflict. But at the end of the day, voting is what we have.

Just to clarify this for me - my recollection of these briefings at the time was that congresspeople were given briefings, but not allowed to record, take notes, et al.

Now, if I'm misremembering, or remembering correctly but applying it further than it actually went, fair enough.

But, if neither of those applies . . . how exactly is Congress to prove *anything* about these briefing?

JW

Panetta's statement explicitly excludes any information about the briefings that was gained after 2002. It also excludes information learned about facts that may not have found themselves into the 2002 documents.

Very disingenuous.