After Claiming He Couldn’t ‘Imagine’ The CIA ‘Would Mislead Us,’ Boehner Acknowledges They May Have (Congress, illegal)

[dukester.2]

Last week, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) asserted in a press conference that she believed the CIA had misled her in a briefing on interrogation, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) scoffed at the idea that the CIA could have been dishonest. “It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone in the intelligence areas would mislead us,” said Boehner in his own press conference.

But on CNN today, Boehner acknowledged that members of his own party, such as Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), have previously accused the CIA of lying to Congress. Pressed by Wolf Blitzer, Boehner did not disagree with Hoekstra’s allegation that the CIA lied to Congress in a previous case:


Think Progress » After Claiming He Couldn’t ‘Imagine’ The CIA ‘Would Mislead Us,’ Boehner Acknowledges They May Have

[saganista]

Boehner is only trying to shore up his stock within his own tiny caucus and among the tiny remaining group of the Republican base. He knows full well that there isn't any documentation of the September 2002 briefing that Pelosi could introduce. It would have been illegal to have produced any. Pelosi is saying that CIA efforts that day were not to disclose the EIT situation as it actually existed, but rather to make the sort of general, CYA, de minimus sort of disclosure through which they could claim to have met their obligation to inform Congress while still having kept various cats of their own choosing inside the bag. The only EIT briefing that Pelosi attended was the first one that the CIA ever did. That she came away from that briefing with an incomplete understanding of the nature and extent of the EIT program would, by itself, seem to be enough to support her claim. But Boehner will keep harping on it, as he needs to get himself out front on something or other (and he seems to have picked this) so as to keep a head up on the likes of Cantor, Pence, and others of such lameness who would be happy enough to take over Boehner's position sooner rather than later.