Top Pelosi Aide Learned Of Waterboarding in 2003

By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 9, 2009

A top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended a CIA briefing in
early 2003 in which it was made clear that waterboarding and other harsh
techniques were being used in the interrogation of an alleged al-Qaeda
operative, according to documents the CIA released to Congress on Thursday.

Pelosi has insisted that she was not directly briefed by Bush
administration officials that the practice was being actively employed.
But Michael Sheehy, a top Pelosi aide, was present for a classified
briefing that included Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking
minority member of the House intelligence committee, at which agency
officials discussed the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspect Abu
Zubaida.

A Democratic source acknowledged yesterday that it is almost certain
that Pelosi would have learned about the use of waterboarding from
Sheehy. Pelosi herself acknowledged in a December 2007 statement that
she was aware that Harman had learned of the waterboarding and had
objected in a letter to the CIA’s top counsel.

“It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a
letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a
protest with which I concurred,” Pelosi said in the Dec. 9, 2007, statement.

Precisely what Pelosi learned in classified intelligence briefings she
received on interrogations has become a flash point in the battle over
the effectiveness and legality of the methods used to extract
information from alleged al-Qaeda operatives in the first years after
the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Republicans have accused Pelosi and other Democrats who attended the
earliest classified briefings of knowing what CIA operatives were doing
and offering their support for the methods, including waterboarding.
They argue that Pelosi, who served as the ranking Democrat on the House
intelligence committee until January 2003, objected only after the use
of the techniques became public several years later.

“I have every belief that either she or [Harman] were told waterboarding
was going on. I have no doubt that the Democratic leadership on this
committee in the House knew it was going on,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra
(Mich.), who has been the top Republican on the intelligence panel since
fall 2004.

Hoekstra, who requested the history of agency briefings of members of
Congress, is also seeking notes made by the CIA during each briefing,
documents that he said last week include “a very precise accounting of
the substance of each briefing.” He said those memos would detail “not
only the specific information provided, but also the degree of
bipartisan consensus that existed with respect to the programs in question.”

In a letter to Hoekstra, CIA Director Leon Panetta said the classified
memos describing what was said at each briefing would be available at
CIA headquarters for review by congressional staff, according to an
agency official.

Although the CIA did not initiate the requests for the details of its
many briefings of members of Congress, beginning in September 2002,
senior officials have chafed at criticism of their interrogation
activities from lawmakers who, when made aware of the programs over past
years, mostly did not object. One former senior agency official, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity because the substance of the
briefings is classified, said some lawmakers, after being told of the
enhanced techniques, “questioned whether we were doing enough.”

The fierce debate was sparked three weeks ago by the release of Bush-era
Justice Department memos that expanded the legal guidelines for CIA
agents interrogating alleged al-Qaeda operatives. The new documents
released to Congress by the CIA on Thursday stated that Pelosi was
briefed on the “use of” harsh interrogation techniques in September
2002, although the documents do not state that waterboarding was mentioned.

The absence of any description in the new documents of her being briefed
on waterboarding has become a critical distinction for Pelosi. She has
said that briefers discussed waterboarding and other harsh interrogation
techniques as legal options but that they never told her such methods
were being used.

“We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of
these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. What they did tell
us is that they had some . . . Office of [Legal] Counsel opinions, that
they could be used, but not that they would,” she told reporters on
April 23.

A top aide reiterated that position yesterday. “The speaker was briefed
only once, in September 2002,” said spokesman Brendan Daly. “The
briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that
waterboarding had not yet been used.”

Democrats contend that the issue is not what Pelosi knew and when she
knew it, but the restrictive nature of the briefings during the Bush
administration. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate
intelligence committee, is leading a renewed effort to expand the
briefing process. In the first four years after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, only the four leaders of the intelligence panels were briefed
on the most sensitive issues, and they were forbidden from discussing
what they learned with anyone else.

Pelosi’s only briefing came Sept. 4, 2002, a week before the first
anniversary of the attacks, and included then-Rep. Porter J. Goss
(R-Fla.), who at the time was chairman of the intelligence committee.
Along with their chief counsels, they were the first congressional
officials briefed on the interrogation tactics. Pelosi left the
intelligence committee in January 2003 to become the House Democratic
leader, remaining one of eight lawmakers who had the highest clearances
to access classified information.

Five months after the Pelosi-Goss meeting, in briefings for the new
leaders of the Senate intelligence committee, the CIA “described in
considerable detail . . . how the water board was used,” according to
the documents released Thursday. The next day, Feb. 5, 2003, Harman
received a similar briefing as Pelosi’s replacement as the top House
intelligence committee Democrat.

Harman was surprised at what she learned, particularly that intelligence
officials had video of the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida and were
planning on destroying it. Captured in early 2002, Abu Zubaida, whose
real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, faced months of standard
interrogations before being sent to a CIA-run facility where the harsher
techniques were used.

Harman wrote to the CIA’s general counsel on Feb. 10, 2003, to question
whether the methods “are consistent with the principles and policies of
the United States. Have enhanced techniques been authorized and approved
by the president?”

The Washington Post reported in extensive detail on Dec. 9, 2007, about
the briefings that Harman and other leaders of the intelligence
committees received in the first few years of the U.S. campaign against
terrorism. The day of the report, Pelosi issued the statement standing
by her account that she was “briefed on techniques the administration
was considering using in the future” and adding that she “concurred”
with Harman’s protest of the tactics.

Neither Pelosi nor her staff would comment on how she learned of the
techniques she now considers torture, and Harman said in an interview
that she “did not recall” discussing the issue with Pelosi. Sheehy was
Pelosi’s top aide on the intelligence committee when she served as the
ranking Democrat on that panel, and he remained her top national
security aide until he left the speaker’s office this year.

Pelosi never filed any official letter of protest, but some lawmakers
said such objections to the Bush administration at that time were pointless.

“I felt that it was minimally responsive,” Harman said of the CIA’s
response to her February 2003 letter. “It didn’t address the issue I asked.”

A bipartisan group of lawmakers says that the restrictions placed on the
intelligence committee leaders — the “Gang of Four,” which included the
chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate panels — limited
any oversight role Congress could play. In the fall of 2005, a few other
congressional leaders, including those that controlled the CIA’s budget,
were briefed on interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. The
full House and Senate intelligence committees were not briefed on the
matter until September 2006, four years after the initial Pelosi briefing.

Unless the full committee is aware of such issues, Feinstein said in an
interview, Congress has no power to act. “I believe in it very strongly,
no equivocation at all. There must be notification for all committee
members,” Feinstein said.

But some Republicans said Democrats are now looking to cover themselves
politically for not objecting to a process that their liberal supporters
oppose. “There is a protocol for who gets briefed, depending on the
issue,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “It’s an
open forum.”

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.