At Friday’s White House press briefing, Dana Perino insisted, repeatedly, that lawmakers had been briefed on the secret legal opinions from the Bush administration, which endorsed “the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.” By my count, she repeated the claim 14 times during a 27-minute press briefing.
“The appropriate members of the Congress were briefed”; “Intelligence Committee members were briefed”; “I have been told they were fully briefed”; and so on. Asked specifically if lawmakers had been “fully briefed on the actual memos,” the White House spokesperson said, “Yes.”
Since then there have been quite a few lawmakers who’ve said the opposite.
Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he has not been briefed. “I find it unfathomable that the committee tasked with oversight of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program would be provided more information by The New York Times than by the Department of Justice,” Rockefeller told acting Attorney General Peter Keisler.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she has not been briefed. Asked on Fox News this morning whether she’d been briefed about the secret memos, Pelosi said, “No, not about the secret memos.”
And Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee in 2005 and a member of the “Gang of Eight,” said the same thing: “We were not fully briefed. We were told about operational details but not these memos. Jay Rockefeller said the same thing, and I associate myself with his remarks. And we want to see these memos.”
The White House has its own private definition of the word “torture.” Maybe the word “briefing” means something different to the Bush gang, too?
