By Bob Steiner

On May 14th,  this year,  Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,  the third most powerful person in our government, announced that the CIA had been lying to her.  Specifically, she stated that she had not been briefed that  an enhanced interrogation procedure called waterboarding had been inplemented by the agency.  This method of interrogation was being used exclusively on high-ranking Muslim terrorists.  The CIA, as well as other members of the Speaker’s  own intelligence committee, verified that she was indeed present at the waterboard briefings.  In spite of this, the Speaker continues to maintain that she was not given the briefing and that the CIA had “lied” to her.

Since lying to Congress is a violation of law, John Boehner, the house minority leader has  repeatedly suggested that the Speaker document her allegations and  initiate a congressional investigation into the matter. If evidence of any lying is found, the guilty parties should then be prosecuted. If she decided not to pursue this matter, in the interests  of national security, she should  ”swallow her ego” and  apologize to the agency.  Some two months have went by since the Speaker made her accusations and she still has not made any visible effort to bring this matter to an end.  Now, in the last few days, apparently in an attempt to draw the nation’s attention away from her original accusation,  the Democrat leadership in Washington has announced that they have discovered that Vice President Cheney had ordered that certain intelligence be witheld from Congress during the previous administration.  This information  allegedly had to do with strategic planning that could have resulted in leading figures of the terrorist Muslim community being targeted for “ neutralization” (assassination).  It should be noted that while plans for operations had been looked at, the program was never implemented. Thus, I guess one must concede that Vice President Cheney was guilty,  guilty of not  allowing  briefing and trusting  congress on “potential”  operational planning the CIA was considering. Here again, I must emphasize the program was not implemented!  Could it be that the recent focus on Mr. Cheney is just an attempt to distract  attention from Ms. Pelosi and her failure to resolve the “lying” issue?

Since the present administration chooses to go back and look at intelligence activities of previous administrations, I suggest to our readers that they go back and peruse the activities of the CIA and State Department under the leadership of Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam during the ’60′s and early ’70′s.  Specifically,  go to google and  click on “Phoenix Program“. There are at least twenty articles which alledge the U.S. Government did conduct a program of assassinations against Vietnamese Communists.  Before the present leadership in Washington starts criticizing Mr. Cheney for wanting to restrict access to members of congress on”potential planning” activities, They might want to review their own  party’s  alleged  past involvement in the Phoenix Program”.

I hope our readers take the time to google this one.