A bipartisan group of top lawmakers, including current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was briefed on the details of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques as early as 2002. According to several U.S. officials, over the course of roughly 30 private briefings only one objection to the practice was raised.

Washington Post:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

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#cia#democrats#interrogation#nancy pelosi#terrorism#torture#waterboarding