A top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee says Republicans who criticized Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the CIA lied to her now owe the Speaker an apology.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who has been helping lead a committee probe into the CIA’s process for briefing lawmakers, asserted yesterday that the agency had misled or outright lied to Congress five times since 2001. One of those cases, Schakowsky confirmed, concerned the 2002 torture briefing at which, Pelosi has claimed, she was lied to about waterboarding. Republicans, led by Minority Leader John Boehner, had savaged her for that charge.
Moments ago, Schakowsky was asked on MSNBC whether Republicans now owed Pelosi an apology. “I certainly think they do,” she said.
Speaking about the briefing process more broadly, Schakowsky charged that “the intelligence community on both sides of the aisle” aren’t properly kept informed by the intelligence agencies. “It’s not transparent, there’s no staff, there’s no notes, there’s no nothing,” she said.