Nancy Pelosi's Bad Week
Published in Gulf News, 20 May 2009
By Gordon Robison, Special to Gulf News
Is US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a villain? Someone directly responsible for America's Bush-era torture policies? A figure who should now be brought down in an act of collective catharsis?
In a word, no; though one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise after the media coverage of the last week. On the basis of the current evidence Pelosi surely bears a measure of responsibility for Washington's moral failings of the last seven years. It is, however, a comparatively small share.
Republicans have been attacking the Speaker with such ferocity because she makes an easy target. Pelosi is one of the few members of Congress who was regularly and thoroughly briefed on intelligence matters throughout the Bush administration.
In her critics' view that makes her just as responsible for the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay, Bagram and Abu Ghraib as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. Republicans make this point by saying, in effect, "if our guys are guilty of anything then some folks on your side have to be guilty too" (a sentiment that Pelosi's harsher critics on the left pretty much agree with).
Nor has the Speaker helped her case with a string of lame, often contradictory, attempts to defend herself. At one point she denied knowledge of torture with the bizarre explanation that the CIA only told her they were authorised to waterboard people.
Pelosi claimed the briefers never mentioned actually using the technique on anyone. Even if, for the sake of argument, we assume that this is true, what sensible person when given a list of authorised CIA interrogation techniques would not understand this meant that all of those techniques were actually being used?
Taken at face value Pelosi was announcing that she is naive and credulous and asking her listeners to think those are good traits in a senior government official.
Later explanations turned on questions of which briefings Pelosi did or did not attend. Eventually she flat out accused the CIA of lying to her. This is an easy charge since the public is rarely inclined to give the CIA the benefit of the doubt.
There is, however, little evidence to support it and at least some evidence (CIA memos from the briefings and the recollections of other members of Congress who were at the same briefings) to back up the agency's side.
So, Nancy Pelosi may have known a lot more about the Bush administration's torture policies than she let on. Does that make her responsible for them?
A series of intelligence scandals in the 1970s led Congress to demand greater authority over the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and myriad other spooks on the US government payroll. This, in turn, led to the creation of intelligence committees in both the House and the Senate.
Uniquely, the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence do virtually all of their work behind closed doors. Members of these committees are briefed on what the intelligence community is doing in far greater detail than the rest of the Congress.
Within this select group is a star chamber known as the Group of Eight. This consists of the Speaker, the House minority leader, the Senate majority and minority leaders, the chairs of the two intelligence committees and the ranking minority members of both committees. When something is too secret for the full committees, the Gang of Eight alone get the briefing.
Pelosi is uniquely well-informed because before becoming speaker she was the House minority leader and, before that, she was the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee. Her membership in the Gang of Eight goes back to the beginning of the Bush presidency.
But while being a member of the Gang of Eight ensures that you get briefed on government policy, it does not guarantee you a role in forming those policies. That is the White House's job. Even when the Gang of Eight wants to complain, security rules make it almost impossible for them to do so in public.
What is regrettable is that neither the Speaker nor anyone else in Washington seems able to be honest about this: In the days and months after 9/11, the US was scared out of its collective wits. That led a lot of people in Congress to support policies that, in retrospect, were stupid, embarrassing and shameful.
With hindsight they understand that this was wrong. They are sorry, and they are going to try really, really hard, first, to undo the damage and, second, to see that it never happens again.
Why is that so hard to say?
Gordon Robison is a writer and commentator based in Burlington, Vermont. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades.
Is US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a villain? Someone directly responsible for America's Bush-era torture policies? A figure who should now be brought down in an act of collective catharsis?
In a word, no; though one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise after the media coverage of the last week. On the basis of the current evidence Pelosi surely bears a measure of responsibility for Washington's moral failings of the last seven years. It is, however, a comparatively small share.
Republicans have been attacking the Speaker with such ferocity because she makes an easy target. Pelosi is one of the few members of Congress who was regularly and thoroughly briefed on intelligence matters throughout the Bush administration.
In her critics' view that makes her just as responsible for the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay, Bagram and Abu Ghraib as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. Republicans make this point by saying, in effect, "if our guys are guilty of anything then some folks on your side have to be guilty too" (a sentiment that Pelosi's harsher critics on the left pretty much agree with).
Nor has the Speaker helped her case with a string of lame, often contradictory, attempts to defend herself. At one point she denied knowledge of torture with the bizarre explanation that the CIA only told her they were authorised to waterboard people.
Pelosi claimed the briefers never mentioned actually using the technique on anyone. Even if, for the sake of argument, we assume that this is true, what sensible person when given a list of authorised CIA interrogation techniques would not understand this meant that all of those techniques were actually being used?
Taken at face value Pelosi was announcing that she is naive and credulous and asking her listeners to think those are good traits in a senior government official.
Later explanations turned on questions of which briefings Pelosi did or did not attend. Eventually she flat out accused the CIA of lying to her. This is an easy charge since the public is rarely inclined to give the CIA the benefit of the doubt.
There is, however, little evidence to support it and at least some evidence (CIA memos from the briefings and the recollections of other members of Congress who were at the same briefings) to back up the agency's side.
So, Nancy Pelosi may have known a lot more about the Bush administration's torture policies than she let on. Does that make her responsible for them?
A series of intelligence scandals in the 1970s led Congress to demand greater authority over the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and myriad other spooks on the US government payroll. This, in turn, led to the creation of intelligence committees in both the House and the Senate.
Uniquely, the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence do virtually all of their work behind closed doors. Members of these committees are briefed on what the intelligence community is doing in far greater detail than the rest of the Congress.
Within this select group is a star chamber known as the Group of Eight. This consists of the Speaker, the House minority leader, the Senate majority and minority leaders, the chairs of the two intelligence committees and the ranking minority members of both committees. When something is too secret for the full committees, the Gang of Eight alone get the briefing.
Pelosi is uniquely well-informed because before becoming speaker she was the House minority leader and, before that, she was the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee. Her membership in the Gang of Eight goes back to the beginning of the Bush presidency.
But while being a member of the Gang of Eight ensures that you get briefed on government policy, it does not guarantee you a role in forming those policies. That is the White House's job. Even when the Gang of Eight wants to complain, security rules make it almost impossible for them to do so in public.
What is regrettable is that neither the Speaker nor anyone else in Washington seems able to be honest about this: In the days and months after 9/11, the US was scared out of its collective wits. That led a lot of people in Congress to support policies that, in retrospect, were stupid, embarrassing and shameful.
With hindsight they understand that this was wrong. They are sorry, and they are going to try really, really hard, first, to undo the damage and, second, to see that it never happens again.
Why is that so hard to say?
Gordon Robison is a writer and commentator based in Burlington, Vermont. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades.
