Porter Goss Won’t Say Whether He And Pelosi Were Told About Use Of Torture

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/porter-goss-wont-say-whether-he-and-pelosi-were-told-about-use-of-torture/

Porter Goss Won’t Say Whether He And Pelosi Were Told About Use Of Torture


Porter Goss, the former GOP Congressman who was in the room with Nancy Pelosi during their 2002 CIA briefing on interrogations, is declining through a spokesperson to say whether the two of them were told that enhanced interrogation techniques had been used.

Goss’ reticence raises still another round of questions about the accuracy of the recently-released CIA documents purporting to detail what members of Congress were told about the use of torture.

The CIA documents say that Pelosi and Goss, then the House Intelligence Committee chair, were given a description on September 4th, 2002, of the enhanced interrogation techniques that “had been employed” during interrogations. Republicans have seized on this as proof that Pelosi was told that torture, including waterboarding, was already in use, which she has denied.

I asked a spokesperson for Goss if he would confirm that he and Pelosi had been informed of the use of torture. Goss was out of town, so it took her a while to get back to me, but now she has: She declined to answer the question, saying that Goss would not elaborate beyond what he said in a Washington Post Op ed last month.

In that carefully-worded piece, Goss did not write he had been told that torture had been used. Rather, he merely wrote that members of Congress were told that the CIA was “holding and interrogating” suspects and that EITs had been developed. He said that members should have “understood” that EITs “were to actually be employed” in the future, without saying that they were even told this, let alone told that they’d been used.

This does not contradict Pelosi’s claim that she was only told that such techniques were legal, not that they had been or certainly would be used — the crux of the GOP’s attack.

So I asked Goss’ spokesperson directly: Were he and Pelosi informed that EITs, including waterboarding, had already been used, and were they given a rough sense that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded more than 83 times the previous month?

Her answer: “He believes that his Op-ed makes it very clear and is not engaging beyond it at this time.” She declined repeated requests to elaborate.

So here’s where we are: The Republican Congressman who was in the room during Pelosi’s briefing won’t directly vouch for the accuracy of the CIA’s claim that she had been briefed on the use of torture.

Goss would be shouting it from the rooftops. He is not, therefore it didn't happen. Pelosi should stay on the offensive. We all should.

Seems like an easy enough question to answer and makes him look like he's hiding something.

but who needs to know that? He was just a former Congressman who just happened to be in the room.