GETTING UGLY - AT 1:50 P.M. ET:  The dispute over what Nancy Pelosi knew about enhanced interrogation techniques, and when she knew it, is getting ugly, and uglier.  Today the speaker went to war against the CIA, as Fox reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused the CIA of misleading Congress about its use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terror detainees.

"Yes I am saying the CIA was misleading the Congress, and at the same time the (Bush) administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to which I said that this intelligence doesn't support the imminent threat," Pelosi said at her weekly news conference.

"Every step of the way the administration was misleading the Congress and that is the issue and that's why we need a truth commission," she said.

Under a barrage of questioning, Pelosi adamantly insisted that she was not aware that waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation techniques were being used on terrorism suspects.

"I am telling you they told me they approved these and said they wanted to use them but said they were not using waterboarding," she said.

The CIA, now under Democratic leadership, was having none of it:

The CIA immediately disputed Pelosi's accusation, saying the documents describing the particular enhanced interrogation techniques that had been employed are accurate. CIA spokesman George Little noted that CIA Director Leon Panetta made available to the House Intelligence Committee memos from individuals who led the briefings with House members.

Pelosi is in trouble here.  She has not gotten support from anyone briefed by the CIA, including members of her own party.  She also repeats the lie that the Bush administration misled Congress on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  It did not.  It used exactly the same intelligence that President Clinton used.  The intelligence never changed.  It simply proved to be inaccurate in some respects.  No stockpiles of WMD were found in Iraq, but the WMD development programs, and plans to restart them, certainly were found, but never emphasized by the media.

The fact that the current CIA is snapping back against Speaker Pelosi is not good news for her.  On her left she finds the screamers who want a "truth commission," even if it doesn't tell the truth.  On her right and in the middle, she finds people who aren't rushing to her defense after she's presented, oh, maybe five or six versions of what happened in those briefings, held as long ago as 2002.

This story is growing.  It involves the woman second in line to the presidency, and the highest ranking Dem in Congress.  Republicans are licking their lips.

May 14, 2009