Definitive Account Of Briefings Still Elusive

Lawmakers Divided After Reviewing CIA's Notes on Pelosi Session

By Paul Kane and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 23, 2009

Sequestered in rooms buried deep within the Capitol and requiring top-secret clearances to enter, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have spent the past week leafing through documents at the heart of Washington's latest who-knew-what-and-when saga.

But rather than emerging with clear agreement on what the memos reveal about the CIA briefing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received in 2002, and whether she was aware that aggressive interrogation methods were being used on terrorism suspects, lawmakers remain as divided as ever about the story they tell.

And unless those detailed documents prove to be more precise than some who have viewed them suggest -- or until the CIA is willing to declassify them -- it is possible that what Pelosi and other lawmakers learned almost seven years ago about the use of waterboarding and other techniques may never be definitively understood.

Republicans who have seen the documents say they present a clear case that Pelosi (D-Calif.) was told about the waterboarding of a key al-Qaeda operative, rejecting her accusation that the CIA intentionally misled her about the interrogation technique, which simulates drowning. "I came away feeling comfortable in saying the speaker owes the [intelligence] community an apology at the least," said Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich.), a former FBI agent.

(More here.)