WASHINGTON — In an astonishing broadside from a fellow Democrat, CIA Director Leon Panetta yesterday flatly rejected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s charge that the agency had failed to fully inform her about the harsh interrogation techniques used against terror suspects.
“Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values,” he wrote in a message to his employees, which was later distributed to reporters.
“As the agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,’ ” wrote Panetta, a former congressman from Pelosi’s home state of California.
“Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”
Several hours after Panetta circulated his message, Pelosi issued a response that blamed the Bush administration rather than the CIA for any errors in connection with the briefings.
“My criticism of the manner in which the Bush administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe,” it said.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich teed off on Pelosi in an interview with ABC News radio.
“I think she has lied to the House, and I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal. I don’t think the speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters,” he said.
“I think this is the most despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort I’ve seen in my lifetime. She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes.”
After weeks of dodging questions about when she was informed that Zubaydah had been waterboarded, a technique that simulates drowning, Pelosi this week admitted for the first time that she had known as early as 2003 that the tactic was in use.
Her turnabout came only after the CIA released a chart that showed Pelosi was present at a September 2002 briefing on the tactics used on Zubaydah.
During her contentious press conference, she claimed she heard about it only from other lawmakers and accused the CIA of lying to her and Congress about the procedures.
“At every step of the way, the administration was misleading the Congress,” Pelosi said.
As the San Francisco Democrat found herself sinking deeper and deeper into the most serious scandal of her tenure as the leader of the House of Representatives, reporters continued asking questions about discrepancies, Republicans fanned the flames and fellow Democrats deserted her.
Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said yesterday that the only reason Pelosi or others would not have known about the waterboarding is if they simply didn’t care what techniques were being used so long as they were aimed at preventing further attacks.
“The people who were briefed were asking about the kind of information that was received, and they wanted to know what information had been received,” Bond told NBC’s “Today” show.
“They were not saying, ‘Hey, don’t do waterboarding or any other of the enhanced techniques.’ They said, ‘Are we getting enough information?’ That was the focus at the time.”
Asked yesterday to comment on the serious charges flying back and forth between Pelosi and the CIA, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declined and refused to back Pelosi.
If anything, he took a swat at Pelosi’s constant whine for investigations into Bush officials who oversaw the interrogations.
“I think you’ve heard the president say this a number of times: The best thing that we can do is to look forward,” Gibbs said. “The president is spending his time on any number of issues, including keep the American people safe, by looking forward.”
churt@nypost.com