CIA Director Leon Panetta fires back: "We told Pelosi the truth"

CIA Director Leon Panetta with his boss

In a letter to the agency's employees, CIA Director Leon Panetta fired back at Nancy Pelosi's charge yesterday the the CIA lied to her and mislead Congress:

Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.

Today, some Democrats have been trying to muddy the waters to give Pelosi a hand after her disastrous press conference and explosive charge against the CIA by putting the "lying" charge on the "Bush Administration," not the CIA. But this won't fly because the memo detailing the CIA briefings of Congress came from the CIA headed by Obama appointee and Pelosi (former?) pal Leon Panetta. It was the release of this memo last week that forced Pelosi to change her story yet again and led to yesterday's presser. So when she charges the CIA with lying, she's charging Leon Panetta, at a minimum, with collaborating in and perpetuating that lying. Panetta is about to sit still for that, even if his initial public answer comes in the indirect form of a letter to employees. The spokesman for Panetta's agency is also standing by its account.

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