Topic: Newsmax
A May 7 Newsmax article asserted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "lied" when she said she wasn't briefed about how waterboarding was used about specific detainees, claiming that a recently released report from the National Intelligence Director's office "refutes in considerable detail Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics."
But Newsmax fails to note that a letter from CIA head Leon Panetta accompanied the report as submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee stating that the report is based on, in part, "notes that summarized the best recollections of those individuals" who did the briefings, and that the committee "will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened."
In other words, even the CIA won't vouch for the reliability of the report. But Newsmax won't tell you that.
UPDATE: A May 8 Newsmax article by Chris Gonsalves repeats Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra's call "for the release of more CIA documents, and perhaps even congressional hearings, to determine what fellow lawmakers such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about CIA interrogation methods like waterboarding." At no point does Golsalves mention the cover letter from Panetta raising questions about the report's reliability, or the fact that, as Greg Sargent noted, Hoekstra himself has a copy of it.
