Oh my gosh! A politician's saying the CIA lied to a member of Congress! Worse yet, she claims they lie to the Congress a lot! How can we put up with such unpatriotic verbiage from the mouth of this openly LIBERAL congresswoman? Should she resign? Should she apologize? Or...

Is she correct?

OK, it's politic and proper for any minority party in the U.S. to take swipes at the majority party. After all, what else is there to do when your vote in either the Senate or House means nothing at all?  One could go long to get along, or start whining and whimpering about how evil the majority party really is, and how crooked and unpatriotic their agendas certainly are.  And unfortunately that is what we see from the Republicans these days.  Honestly!  They remind me of the Democratcs a decade or so ago!

But, is Nancy Pelosi correct when she says the CIA routinely lies to Congress?   Let's ask some Republicans about that!

Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra. In 2001 a missionary plane was shot down in Peru. Hoekstra said: "This issue goes to the heart of the American people's ability to trust the CIA," the Michigan lawmaker said back then.  "Americans deserve to know that agencies given the power to operate on their behalf aren't abusing that power or their trust."

Hoekstra also accused the CIA of withholding intel about North Korea and claimed the agency fails to treat Congress with the proper respect. "We regret to say the administration has deliberately attempted to sideline Congress in the fear that providing us with information about the North Korean regime's continuing lies and reckless behavior would undermine the current diplomatic approach."

Guess he agrees with Ms. Pelosi.

In 2007 Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner, speaking about the CIA contribution to the National Intelligence Estimate, told Wolf Blitzer of CNN;  "Either I don't have confidence in what they told me several months ago or I don't have confidence in what they're telling me today."

Senator Pat Roberts, also a Republican, said in 2006 when he chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee that he accused the CIA of "egregious intelligence failure" over that agency's apparent buckling under pressure from the Bush White House over whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Here is his quote: "This committee simply cannot accept intelligence assessments at face value. Not having your actions second-guessed is something that is earned."

Oh, and good old Newt Gingrich, who is calling for Pelosi to resign over her statements, in 2007 once said the following: The NIE document on Iran was "fundamentally misleading" and "a deliberate attempt to undermine the policies of President Bush by members of his own government."

So I guess bad old Nancy Pelosi has some pretty good company out there in bash the CIA land.  And worse, yes, it gets worse, there's more - much more. Google the subject and see just how many others in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have made the same or similar claims about the CIA.  It just might open your eyes.

OK, so why should anyone say the CIA lies, especially to members of Congress?  Well, perhaps because, when necessary, it does lie.  It is after all a spy agency!  Now the famous briefing notes taken at the meeting where Ms. Pelosi attended were possibly correct, in which case she should own up to having been told about water-boarding, or they were wrong, in which case she is correct in stating that those minutes of the meeting were incorrectly drawn up. It would not be the first time that such minutes poorly reflected what actually went on, according to many witnesses to such event.  Even current CIA director Leon Paneta does not rule out the possibility that the records of the meeting/briefing were in error.  He said it is up to Congress to determine their truthfulness!  Talk about CYA!

The minutes of the meetings/briefings are not meant to be court-room credible testimony to the actual words and sentiments expressed at these meetings. Rather they are simply notes taken after the fact and entered into the CIA files. They are, indeed, little more than general statements, the barest of Cliff Notes, about what was supposed to have or may have taken place, not quotes and person-by-person testimony.

Secondly, Pelosi is still under a ban to talk in detail about what she was told in those meetings. It would be against the law for her to 'tell all' in testimonial-style detail about what went on there. So, while she can indeed make the claim that she was not briefed on a certain matter, she has little recourse after that to be able to prove it to be true. Just the same, with so many members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, complaining over the decades about lies allegedly being told to them by CIA briefers, perhaps this thing should go FAR beyond an investigation of Pelosi.  That is way too political and partisan an investigation to stand the smell test.

Let us indeed have an investigation into any and all untruths, lies, far-from-factual statements such as the Church Commission discovered way back before time began for today's Republicans, you know, in the 1970's when Congress was supposed to be given a stronger role in checking and balancing what the CIA did and how it reported its dealings.

Does the CIA lie to members of Congress?  Most likely it does.  But only a full-fledged investigation will uncover the possibly nasty, dirty truth behind it and hopefully will reveal that when one slimes a government official such as Pelosi, one had best be squeaky clean lest one find the slime also attached to one's self. So all of you out there dissing Nancy Pelosi, do you also have dirty little CIA secrets that might come back to bite you in the petute?