Nancy Pelosi -- CIA misled Congress on torture

Under fire from Republicans for what she knew about harsh questioning of terror detainees, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday asserted that the C.I.A. had misled Congress about its techniques, even as she acknowledged that she had learned in 2003 that the agency had subjected suspects to waterboarding.

At a tense press conference, Ms. Pelosi said for the first time that a staff member alerted her in February 2003 that top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the use of tough interrogation methods on terror suspects.

But she said the fact that she did not speak out at the time due to secrecy rules did not make her complicit in any abuse of detainees. She accused the C.I.A. and Bush administration of lying to Congress about what was actually transpiring with the detainees.

“I am saying that the C.I.A. was misleading the Congress and at the same the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction,” Ms. Pelosi said.

The C.I.A., reacting to Ms. Pelosi’s remarks, said that a chart prepared by the Director of National Intelligence and cited last week by congressional Republicans to show that Ms. Pelosi had taken part in a September 2002 briefing on interrogation techniques was “true to the language in the Agency’s records.”