ABC News Should Post A Retraction

All day today the cable news shows have been buzzing over an ABC News story about the CIA intelligence report on the briefings given to Congressional leaders over the torture program. To hear ABC News tell it the report proved that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was lying when she said she wasn't briefed on Abu Zubaydah having been waterboarded. And dutifully all of the cable news shows repeated this throughout the day. Well Greg Sargent over at the Plum Line Blog (did I mention his blog is awesome) actually did some REAL investigative reporting and he called the CIA and came up with this.

In the newly-released documents detailing the torture briefings given to members of Congress, the portion describing Pelosi’s single briefing says she was told about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in general, but doesn’t specify whether she was told about the use of waterboarding. That was specified about some briefings given to others.

I asked CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano why. His answer: Because the notes and memos on the Pelosi meeting that form the basis for the docs didn’t allow them to go that far, meaning that they didn’t specify that she’d been briefed on waterboarding in particular.

In a statement to me, he explained that that “the language in the chart” is “faithful to the language in the records.”

“Nothing is being hidden or hyped,” he continued. “CIA is simply being true to the records. That’s all there is to it.”

Now to be clear this doesn't qualify as proof that Speaker Pelosi wasn't briefed on waterboarding, but what it does do is prove that the CIA didn't have any information that showed that she WAS briefed on Abu Zubaydah having been waterboarded and thus no such information could have been in or inferred from the report. I will now patiently await the retraction from ABC News that I know will not be forthcoming.