Thread: 10 reasons why Nancy Pelosi is in deep trouble over her CIA

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10 reasons why Nancy Pelosi is in deep trouble over her CIA outburst

Posted By: Toby Harnden at May 15, 2009 at 17:08:26
Posted in: Foreign Correspondents

Could Nancy Pelosi eventually lose her job as Speaker of the House over her incendiary allegation that the CIA lied to her and misled Congress? It's possible and here's why:

1. Her shifting explanations about what she knew about water-boarding and when she knew it indicate at the very least inconsistency and economy with the truth. Check out some of her differing statements here.

2. CIA briefers are professionals - being a briefer is a specialism for fast-track career analysts within the Agency's Directorate of Intelligence. A CIA briefing given to two senior members of Congress without their staffs present is not a seat-of-the-pants kind of thing. It's well-documented and very, very carefully done. It's hard to imagine why the CIA would now want to lie about such a briefing. Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a former CIA spokeswoman, was on Fox just now saying she knew the briefer and that he was a model of integrity. That indicates he's well known within the Agency and wil be getting a lot of support.

3. Pelosi's performance at her press conference was pitiful. Check out two great accounts of it from the Washington Post's Dana Milbank here and the Washington Times's Joe Curl here.

4. The derision for her performance yesterday is bipartisan. Republicans are being much more vocal about it but Democrats are laughing too.

5. Obama is trying very hard to placate the CIA, which is very unhappy indeed over his release of the four memos about interrogation techniques. Pelosi has cut right across that. Incurring the wrath of a popular president is not a clever thing to do.

6. The mainstream media - a key factor in the political centre of gravity - is not with her on this one. Check out the sceptical take of the venerated greybeard Dan Balz of the Washington Post here.

7. There's little love lost between Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House. She did't back him for the Whip job, instead pushing her friend John Murtha, Pennsylvania's king of pork. Glenn Thrush of Politico notes that his initial words yesterday were not especially supportive.

8. Leon Panetta - a former colleague of Pelosi's in the House delegation from California - was overruled by Obama on the release of the four interrogation memos. He must be seething about Pelosi's allegation and concerned about his credibility among CIA rank and file. Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, is very well connected among Democrats.

9. Pelosi's attempt to say that the CIA was lied to her about whether water-boarding was being used because it wanted to divert attention from lies over WMD was extremely clumsy and made no sense. As an institution, the CIA was far from slavishly supportive of the Bush administration - something that drew the ire of, for instance, Vice President Dick Cheney. Trying to make the CIA a political football was reckless - the Agency knows how to fight back and get its story out.

10. Her lapse into hard-Left talking points about how the CIA lies all the time so it was hardly worth complaining about is out of tune with the Obama administration, which wants to pretend at least to be trying to occupying the centre ground. Her clear contempt for the concept of "bipartisanship" - she'd rather ram her agenda through on a party-line vote - had already put her at odds with Obama.

Ed Morrisey of Hot Air gets it about right: "I wouldn't predict her ouster, but it wouldn't surprise me, either."

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnd ... a_outburst

There will be dancing in the streets if this yenta gets ousted.

Did anyone notice her body language at the press conference with her trying to defend herself? Her eyes were darting all over, weird hand motions, etc....oh wait, she always does that.

Douse her with water and bring us her broomstick lol.

Well let's see, Obama needs his teleprompter and Pelosi needs her notes so is anyone really surprised? How difficult is it to say what you mean and to tell the truth? I guess, for some people, it's awful difficult.