Some progress in the debate over what Nancy Pelosi knew about torture and when she knew it…
The Pelosi camp is now telling The Politico that Pelosi learned in early 2003 that we were waterboarding detainees, but took no real action out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels.
Pelosi denies having been told in her September 2002 CIA briefing that we had already conducted waterboarding. But in February 2003, Michael Sheehy, a top aide to Pelosi, was briefed, along with Rep. Jane Harman, on the fact that the technique had already been used on Abu Zubaydah. And Pelosi’s camp acknowledges that Sheehy would have informed her about what he was told.
In response to the briefing, Harman sent a classified letter of protest to the CIA. Pelosi’s camp says Pelosi, by then the Democratic leader, told Sheehy to tell Harman she agreed with the letter, but did not ask to co-sign it.
This clarifies things considerably. Whether or not you think that Pelosi acted appropriately here, we’re no longer splitting hairs about questions like whether Pelosi was told that waterboarding had already occurred or just that it had been approved for use, and whether waterboarding as opposed to other forms of torture was discussed. Instead, we’re arguing about whether Pelosi did enough upon learning that we were committing torture.
That’s not a simple question. Steve Elmendorf, who was chief of staff to Dick Gephardt, the Democratic leader until the end of 2002, tells Politico, in Pelosi’s defense: “You have to remember, in the 2002 period, the whole atmospherics, it was all about scaring people every day. People were legitimately concerned that we were going to be attacked again, and there was a constant drumbeat coming from the Bush administration of, ‘Bad things could happen, bad things could happen.’ Nobody wants it to happen on their watch.”
But by the same token, it’s important to hold public officials to high standards. Ideally, we’d have had Democratic leaders at the time who were willing to risk the political consequences and stand up for what’s right.
Does that mean that Pelosi et al were anything like as complicit in the torture program as the Bushies who conceived it, approved it, and carried it out? Of course not. But that’s not the only metric by which we should be judging our leaders.