BREAKING-- Pelosi: Not "complicit" in torture

By GottaLaff

Liveblogging Nancy Pelosi's press conference:

I was informed that the briefing had taken place. BushCo conceived a policy. We later find out that the policy had taken place before we were briefed and CIA said that waterboarding was not being used. I long opposed the policies.

We were being told that WMD were out there, that there was an imminent threat.

At every step of the way, BushCo was misleading Congress of the United States, and that's the issue.

Perhaps they should release the briefing. I would be very happy if they released the briefing. Then you can make a judgment yourself.

They talked about interrogations they'd used, and said they wanted to use enhanced techniques, but hadn't used waterboarding.

They told us they had legal opinions. We now know that there were other opinions within the exec. branch that concluded the techniques were NOT legal.

My job was to change the majority in Congress, get a new president.

I've always been for a truth commission. Until then, the committees of jurisdiction are the appropriate place for that to go.

THIS IS THEIR POLICY. All of them. This is what they conceived, developed, implemented, and denied. Now they're saying "don't put the spotlight on us". They said they told us, they didn't tell us. It doesn't matter what we'd say. I took special interest in this issue of torture. They did not represent the facts.

She says she did write a letter objecting to waterboarding, because she was no longer ranking member on House Intelligence.

By the time we were told, we found out it had been used before. In my briefing, we were told they had legal opinions that waterboarding was legal, but not about dissent. I wasn't briefed, I was told someone else had been briefed about it. I'm only speaking from my own experience, we were told it was NOT being used. I was informed that a briefing took place.

They mislead us all the time. The intel did not support the imminent threat... they don't want the focus on them, so they turned it on us.