Yet more evidence that the CIA may not have been totally up front with Nancy Pelosi during that contested torture briefing from 2002…
A former “deep-cover” CIA operative tells CQ’s Jeff Stein that agency briefers often hide facts or shade the truth. “They mumble, they dissemble, and there’s a lot of ‘on the one hand… ‘” said the operative, who has written harsh critiques of the CIA, under the pen-name Ishmael Jones.
He added, referring to the CIA:
Its enormous numbers of employees have led to briefings being handled by groups, with vague chains of command, so that it may have been difficult to pin down what was said, when it was said, and who was in charge.”And he said the CIA doesn’t have a political agenda. Rather, “the CIA is loyal only to itself. As long as Mrs. Pelosi supported its bureaucratic lifestyle, it supported her, but when she attacked it, it fought back. The CIA may not be able to conduct efficient intelligence operations, but it knows how to survive.”
To be sure, Jones is no Pelosi defender. He said she “has been using the interrogation issue as a political tool for years.”
But his characterization of the briefings, which echoes what Lawrence Wilkerson told TPMmuckraker, and appears somewhat borne out by the high number of apparent errors in the briefing document, further undercuts GOP efforts to tar Pelosi by presenting the agency as a pillar of transparency and honesty.