Pelosi: Cheney 'proud' CIA misled
"Cheney set a tone and an attitude for the CIA," House Minority Leader says
Ahead of the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report that is expected to say the CIA misled the government and the American people about its interrogation techniques, Nancy Pelosi is placing the blame squarely on former Vice President Dick Cheney.
"I do believe that during the Bush-Cheney administration, Vice President Cheney set a tone and an attitude for the CIA," Pelosi said in an interview with CNN's "State of the Union" broadcast Sunday. "Many people in the CIA are so patriotic. They protect our country in a way to avoid conflict and violence. But the attitude that was there was very, um, I think it came from Dick Cheney. That's what I believe."
According to the Washington Post, the 6,300-page report — which is currently classified — includes "damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or 'black sites,' that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009."
The report also "describes previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan — a method that bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department-approved list of techniques."
Pelosi said she thinks Cheney, who has long defended the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques, is proud of the CIA's misrepresentation.
"I think he's proud of it," Pelosi said. "I think he's proud of it."
Late last month, Cheney defended another controversial U.S. program: the National Security Agency's spying.
"That we have created in the National Security Agency this monster bureaucracy that's reading everybody's mail, listening to everybody's phone calls, infringing upon our civil liberties and civil rights — hogwash," Cheney said in a speech at a private dinner in Las Vegas. "It probably would've allowed us to stop 9/11.
"We don't have a president who can stand up and defend the program," he continued. "Nobody believes him for good reason: Look what he did with health care."
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