By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Leadership: The CIA will bite back after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's wild new allegations of a cover-up on terrorist interrogations. When that truth comes out, she'll lose big. It may be the lie that ensnares her.
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Still thrashing after a week of revelations about being briefed in 2002 on waterboarding and raising no objections, Pelosi now claims the CIA lied to her, leaving her in the dark about its enhanced interrogations on the likes of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Now, aside from the fact that Pelosi thinks something's wrong with shaking as much information as possible out of a mass murderer with new plots against Americans, Pelosi's utterly false allegations are unlikely to succeed — and in fact will likely backfire.
For one thing, they're easily disproved. Congressmen attending the same intelligence briefings as Pelosi, like Sen. Joe Lieberman, say the agency did inform Congress, and briefing memos prove it.
The agency is also unlikely to appreciate Pelosi playing innocent. The CIA's a political animal now, and having endured prosecution threats for keeping America safe, it will defend itself vigorously. It will release the notes and expose Pelosi's whopper.
Republicans know this. House leaders John Boehner and Rep. Pete Hoekstra have already called for the memos' release two weeks ago and sought them again Thursday.
Pelosi says go ahead, but she can only be bluffing.
Why is she doing this? Her fast-evaporating political power. Democrats won both the presidency and the Congress she leads, but neither are, like her, a San Francisco Democrat with a far-left political base. Many Dems are showing signs of pragmatism about key issues, sometimes rethinking old positions.
None wants Gitmo terrorists walking around their districts. Most care about recovery and understand how free trade will help. They have questions about the impact of cap-and-trade on the economy. They know voters don't want to be forced into unions with card check. They wonder what health care nationalization will cost.
Pelosi's effort to say she was never briefed by the CIA on interrogations is nothing but an effort to keep the old anti-Bush craziness of her heyday alive among Democrats. That's the premise of her tawdry little lie over events that occurred nearly a decade ago — and it's happening because she is losing power.
Once Pelosi's lie is exposed, the fallout will likely widen the gulf between herself and her fellow Democrats. That opens the door to a challenge to her speakership from a political rival.
House leaders like Steny Hoyer already are making maneuvers consistent with that. If he succeeds, we may see sanity return to the Democratic Party.
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