Panic Time for Pelosi "The CIA IS in the 'Cover Thy Ass' Mode These Days And Will Do Nothing For These Clown Liberals ! "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had a bad week. Caught between her own involvement in the CIA interrogations now condemned as torture and her party’s inquisitions, Pelosi floundered. Her fear and frustration have apparently given way to panic after word reached her of the CIA’s reaction to the damage she, President Obama and other Democrats have done to the spy agency in the last three months.
Pelosi -- as I wrote earlier in the week -- was one of the few members of Congress briefed in detail on the harsh interrogation methods and who could have stopped them but didn’t. Pelosi first said that she wasn’t briefed about waterboarding. Then she sort of admitted she had, inserting that the CIA only said that they might do it, not that they were going to do it. Which could have been plagiarized from John Kerry’s 2004 circular explanation of his vote for the war in Iraq.
As badly as that hurt Pelosi, what apparently pushed her into a panic was the feedback she and other Democrats are getting from the CIA. Pelosi learned that her actions, and those of President Obama and other Democrats over the past ninety days have so damaged CIA morale that the agency’s ability to function could be in danger.
As a result, two emergency closed-door meetings were called this week on Capitol Hill.The first meeting, on Tuesday evening, was attended by Pelosi, Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx) and others. The following night, Pelosi and some or all of the other attendees met with CIA Director Leon Panetta, also behind closed doors.
No Republicans were invited to either meeting which means the Democrats were assessing the damage and deciding how to maneuver their way out from under the responsibility for it. Spin and strategy. Morale among in the spy agency is so low because of the relentless assault on the CIA in President Obama’s first 100 days. The first blow to the CIA was his decision to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba without any plan on what to do with the 240 dangerous detainees housed there. Many CIA employees believe these people to be killers, responsible for the deaths of CIA operatives overseas. Many in the CIA apparently see this as a betrayal.
The Obama administration plan to set some of these people loose in the US was despite CIA objections.
And then came the president’s decision to release the so-called “torture memos†and the disavowal of CIA interrogation methods. The president’s on-again, off-again promise to not prosecute CIA operatives who had conducted the harsher interrogations has left many in the CIA uncertain of his real intentions. Leaving up to the Attorney General whether to prosecute the Bush-era lawyers who wrote the “torture memos†has added to the already great doubt about the safety and security of CIA interrogators’ jobs, and more.
By the end of the meeting Wednesday, Pelosi, Reyes and Panetta apparently determined that damage control had to begin immediately.
Later Wednesday evening, Reyes sent an unprecedented letter to CIA director Panetta making a sort of apology to the CIA. Reyes’ cover letter asks Panetta to “…disseminate it to the CIA workforce as soon as possible.†(At this writing, the letter has not yet been distributed.) The letter to CIA employees is a very odd mixture of praise for the CIA and CYA for Reyes. (Click here to read the letter)
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31689
