Commentary: Who to trust, Ms. Pelosi or the CIA?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, made a huge mistake earlier this month when she decided to play politics with national security by accusing the CIA of lying to Congress about "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e. waterboarding etc.).

"It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," replied CIA Director Leon Panetta, another high-powered California Democrat.

So who should we believe on this hot button issue, the CIA or Ms. Pelosi, who self-destructed during a bumbling, semi-coherent press conference? In fact, her public performance was so pathetic that she came under fire from some of her fellow liberals.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen asked the key question: "What did Ms. Pelosi know, and when did she know it?"

"If she (knew) about waterboarding back in 2003, that would hardly make her a war criminal," he continued. "But if she knew and insists otherwise, that would make her one of those people who will not acknowledge that the immediate post-Sept. 11 atmosphere allowed for methods that now seem abhorrent." Well said.

Although he would never admit it, Cohen sounds a lot like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has defended the Bush administration's tough approach to terrorism in the wake of the horrific 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. Cheney argues that the very measures that are now deemed illegal kept us safe from further terror attacks for seven years, and that President Obama's recent national security decisions have made us less safe.

Cheney asserted that two classified CIA memos support his contention that harsh interrogation techniques methods saved many American lives after 9/11, and asked the president to declassify the memos.

"The Obama administration ought to call Cheney's bluff, if it is that, and release the memos," Cohen wrote. I agree. Let's see the memos and decide for ourselves whether harsh interrogations saved American lives.

A Wall Street Journal editorial concluded that "Ms. Pelosi has turned herself into a spectacle about a subject that she and fellow Democrats reduced to a spectacle of demagogic accusation and blame ..." Another California Democrat, Sen. Diane Feinstein, added that "Speaker Pelosi should have known all of this," and if she did, she should have stopped the harsh interrogations when she found about them instead of turning them into a political firestorm seven or eight years later.

Of course, we should abide by the Geneva Conventions, which doesn't mean that accused terrorists have the same constitutional rights as U.S. citizens, because they don't. President Obama should recognize that fact sooner rather than later.

- Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.