“In May, at a point when congressional Republicans and their amen corner in the media were attempting to defend the Bush-Cheney administration’s torture regime, their primary defense was: Pelosi knew. The spin held that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, had in 2002 been secretly briefed about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on terror suspects. Pelosi said the Central Intelligence Agency had failed to inform her about the character and extent of the harsh interrogations. Pelosi accused the CIA of ‘misleading the Congress of the United States.’ Republican senators screamed. ‘It’s outrageous that a member of Congress should call a terror-fighter a liar,’ howled Missouri Senator Kit Bond, the vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee.” (07/09/09)