Report: Pelosi briefed on waterboarding

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By S.A. Miller and Ben Connery THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A Director of National Intelligence report on congressional briefings about enhanced interrogation techniques conflicts with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that she was never told that waterboarding would be used on terror suspects.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, indicates that a classified CIA briefing of Mrs. Pelosi included specific details of the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," or EITs, on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah.

"Briefing on EITs included use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed," the report said of the Sept. 4, 2002, briefing.

The U.S. government acknowledged in the "torture memos" that President Obama declassified last month that the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah included waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning and is widely denounced as torture, 83 times in August 2002, a month before the Pelosi briefing.

Mrs. Pelosi maintains that in the September 2002 classified briefing on CIA techniques, she was told that the agency considered waterboarding to be legal but was never told of any intention to use the technique.

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the report does not contradict the California Democrat's recollection of the briefings.

"As this document shows, the speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used," he said.

The document emerged on the day that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. acknowledged that prosecuting Bush administration officials involved with its interrogation program could justify prosecutions extending all the way to members of Congress.

But Mr. Holder, who said he was speaking hypothetically about potential prosecutions, was quick to tell members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that no conclusions have been made regarding the authors of the so-called torture memos. Mr. Holder similarly said that no final decisions have been made about where detainees from the naval prison at Guantanamo Bay will be released.

Republicans have warned that any investigation of Bush administration officials should also look at the approval of top Democrats in Congress, who they say had been briefed on what the CIA was doing but kept silent until it was politically opportune to denounce the practices.