Despite evidence, helpfully provided by the CIA, to the contrary, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still insists she wasn’t aware that waterboarding would be on the menu of the Bush administration’s interrogation techniques when she was briefed in secret in 2002.

Times Online:

The disclosures on Thursday night appear to contradict repeated statements by the House of Representatives Speaker in which she claimed never to have been told that techniques — since described by President Obama as torture — had actually been deployed.

A ten-page memorandum revealed that Ms Pelosi, at the time the most senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, received a secret briefing in September 2002 about the programme, including an interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.

Although the memo makes no specific reference to waterboarding — which simulates the sensation of drowning and has therefore been described by human rights activists as torture — Justice Department documents disclosed last month show that Abu Zubaydah was the first of three prisoners to be subjected to the technique and underwent the procedure at least 83 times in August 2002.

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