BY: NCViking

In a letter to Leon Panetta, Congressional Democrats accused the CIA director of lying and misleading them, thus trying to vindicate Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre earlier accusations. The claim stems from a briefing that took place where Panetta revealed that the CIA had been withholding information on a secret program since 2001. This led some to speculate that it was about big, bad ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques, but apparently that is not the case. The program in question was one that had been just kicked around by the CIA, but had never been seriously considered or implemented.

From CBSNews.com

DEMOCRATS vs. CIA: “The chairman of the House intelligence committee has accused the CIA of lying to the panel in a classified matter, the second time in less than two months that a top House Democrat has charged the spy agency of intentionally misleading Congress,” reports the Washington Post’s Paul Kane.

“Rep. Silvestre Reyes (Tex.), in a letter sent Tuesday to House leadership, said that CIA officials ‘affirmatively lied’ to the intelligence committee when recently notifying the panel about a classified matter. Reyes wrote that it was one of several recent instances in which the CIA has not fully informed the committee on other classified notifications. …

“The CIA rejected the allegation that it lied to Congress. ‘This agency and this director are committed to a candid dialogue with Congress. When Director Panetta believes something should be raised with the Hill, it gets done quickly and clearly. Our oversight committees recognize that,’ George Little, an agency spokesman, said in a statement.”

Here is the letter:

cialetter –

Some have postulated that the supposed lying was over CIA “enhanced” interrogation techniques, like at the Huffington Post, but Newsweek reports it is not:

CIA director Leon Panetta has ordered an internal inquiry into the agency’s handling of a contentious and still highly-classified intelligence program that has caused a heated dispute between the CIA and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. The move by Panetta appears to be an implicit acknowledgment by the agency that it should have disclosed information about the post-9/11 secret program to Congress much earlier than it did…

CIA and congressional officials have refused to describe the nature of the covert program, but insisted it is not connected to the CIA’s use of controversial “enhanced” interrogation techniques. But the program’s existence erupted into a major political dispute Wednesday night when seven House Intelligence Committee Democrats released a letter charging that the agency had “concealed significant actions” and “mislead” members of Congress by failing to inform the oversight committees about the program until last month…

“This program came in post 9/11, and it was indeed on again, off again, the official said. “You could argue that it never really took shape.” The implication is that whatever the details of the program, it carried risks that some officials at the agency strongly felt might not be worth taking.

“You’ve got a lot of people [at the agency] who, after September 11, were thinking of creative ways of doing things,” said one former senior CIA official. “That doesn’t mean you have to run up and tell Congress about it.”

Adding to this bizarre episode is a Mark Levin interview with Representative Pete Hoekstra (R – MI) that confirms Newsweek’s report and puts the issue into perspective.

Hoekstra: “Leon Panetta called and asked to brief on an issue that he thought was important. (He) came in and briefed us on a program that had some planning done on it. But the program had never taken place. The program had never been briefed to Congress and so some Democrats are now saying ‘See, they’re withholding information from us! They’re not telling us everything that is going on!’”

He later goes on to say that the CIA determined the program wouldn’t fly and didn’t even implement it. “So basically they are raising all of this fuse about a program that never happened!” he concludes.

Here is the audio from Breitbart:

I am with Hoekstra when he says:

“I’ll tell you what’s happening here in the House of Representatives. Watching the Democrats, you know, kind of chew themselves up and spit themselves out on an issue like national security – it’s very bizarre!”

Bizarre indeed.

• Economic Crisis of Confidence - February 8th, 2010
• Cato Analysis and Fact Check of SOTU Speech - January 28th, 2010
• State of the Union Déjà vu? - January 26th, 2010
• Purple Predestination - January 25th, 2010
• Prince Composes New Vikings Fight Song (Oh Yes He Did!) - January 22nd, 2010