Top Pelosi Aide Learned Of Waterboarding in 2003

"We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. What they did tell us is that they had some . . . Office of [Legal] Counsel opinions, that they could be used, but not that they would," she told reporters on April 23.

A top aide reiterated that position yesterday. "The speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002," said spokesman Brendan Daly. "The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used."

Democrats contend that the issue is not what Pelosi knew and when she knew it, but the restrictive nature of the briefings during the Bush administration. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, is leading a renewed effort to expand the briefing process. In the first four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, only the four leaders of the intelligence panels were briefed on the most sensitive issues, and they were forbidden from discussing what they learned with anyone else.

Pelosi's only briefing came Sept. 4, 2002, a week before the first anniversary of the attacks, and included then-Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), who at the time was chairman of the intelligence committee. Along with their chief counsels, they were the first congressional officials briefed on the interrogation tactics. Pelosi left the intelligence committee in January 2003 to become the House Democratic leader, remaining one of eight lawmakers who had the highest clearances to access classified information.

Five months after the Pelosi-Goss meeting, in briefings for the new leaders of the Senate intelligence committee, the CIA "described in considerable detail . . . how the water board was used," according to the documents released Thursday. The next day, Feb. 5, 2003, Harman received a similar briefing as Pelosi's replacement as the top House intelligence committee Democrat.

Harman was surprised at what she learned, particularly that intelligence officials had video of the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida and were planning on destroying it. Captured in early 2002, Abu Zubaida, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, faced months of standard interrogations before being sent to a CIA-run facility where the harsher techniques were used.

Harman wrote to the CIA's general counsel on Feb. 10, 2003, to question whether the methods "are consistent with the principles and policies of the United States. Have enhanced techniques been authorized and approved by the president?"

The Washington Post reported in extensive detail on Dec. 9, 2007, about the briefings that Harman and other leaders of the intelligence committees received in the first few years of the U.S. campaign against terrorism. The day of the report, Pelosi issued the statement standing by her account that she was "briefed on techniques the administration was considering using in the future" and adding that she "concurred" with Harman's protest of the tactics.

Neither Pelosi nor her staff would comment on how she learned of the techniques she now considers torture, and Harman said in an interview that she "did not recall" discussing the issue with Pelosi. Sheehy was Pelosi's top aide on the intelligence committee when she served as the ranking Democrat on that panel, and he remained her top national security aide until he left the speaker's office this year.

Pelosi never filed any official letter of protest, but some lawmakers said such objections to the Bush administration at that time were pointless.

"I felt that it was minimally responsive," Harman said of the CIA's response to her February 2003 letter. "It didn't address the issue I asked."

A bipartisan group of lawmakers says that the restrictions placed on the intelligence committee leaders -- the "Gang of Four," which included the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate panels -- limited any oversight role Congress could play. In the fall of 2005, a few other congressional leaders, including those that controlled the CIA's budget, were briefed on interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. The full House and Senate intelligence committees were not briefed on the matter until September 2006, four years after the initial Pelosi briefing.

Unless the full committee is aware of such issues, Feinstein said in an interview, Congress has no power to act. "I believe in it very strongly, no equivocation at all. There must be notification for all committee members," Feinstein said.

But some Republicans said Democrats are now looking to cover themselves politically for not objecting to a process that their liberal supporters oppose. "There is a protocol for who gets briefed, depending on the issue," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). "It's an open forum."

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.