Pelosi backs anti-terror truth commission CONGRESS

FILE - In this April 2, 2009 file photo, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., accompanied by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Md., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. So far this year, Congress has done what it does best _ spend a lot of money and make a lot of promises. Now, as lawmakers return from a two-week spring break, comes the hard part, the actual crafting of legislation that will change how banks are regulated, health care is delivered and the nation consumes energy. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, FILE) less FILE - In this April 2, 2009 file photo, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., accompanied by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Md., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. So far this ... more Photo: Susan Walsh, AP Photo: Susan Walsh, AP Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Pelosi backs anti-terror truth commission 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday endorsed the establishment of a formal truth commission to investigate Bush administration anti-terrorism policies, including an examination of former top Justice Department lawyers who crafted the legal justifications for what critics say was torture.

Such a probe could target UC Berkeley law Professor John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Bush Justice Department who was instrumental in crafting the interrogation memoranda, and his former boss, Jay Bybee, now a judge on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Pelosi's endorsement follows President Obama's signal Tuesday that he was open to the idea. Obama's shift, in tandem with last week's release by the administration of past memos describing brutal interrogation techniques on terror suspects, has touched a match to the seething controversy over whether there should be a public or legal accounting for Bush administration policies on torture and detention.

The Obama administration had initially downplayed any suggestion of prosecutions, provoking an outcry from the left. Now the outcry is coming from the right, with even moderate Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania warning that such investigations, without evidence of criminal acts, smack of a banana republic.

In a sit-down with reporters in her Capitol Hill conference room, Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, said the advantage of such a commission would be that "it removes all doubt that how we protect the American people is in a values-based way." She also said she knew several years ago that Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County), was overheard on a wiretap, a controversy that erupted early this week.

Liberal Democrats have been pressing the issue for months with little traction, given the Obama administration's reluctance and fierce Republican resistance, but now are re-energized. Republicans moved to dash what they called a retrospective tribunal that would unfairly target officials who followed legal guidance at the time and intimidate officials going forward.

A furor has also erupted over Obama National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair's statements last week that "high-value information" came from the interrogations, indicating divisions within the administration.

State's senators divided

California's two Democratic senators are divided over an independent commission. Sen. Barbara Boxer said she supports one, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she already has under way a "thorough, bipartisan review" of detention and interrogation standards used over the past five years.

"I believe that the Intelligence Committee is the appropriate source for this kind of a review, and that the actual facts, actions, orders and behavior can be examined by intelligence professionals in a classified setting," Feinstein said Wednesday. "The committee will then review these findings and make a decision regarding what the committee would like to release, in terms of recommendations and findings. This is the appropriate venue for this kind of serious look-back and review."

Pelosi said the Obama administration's policy on an investigation "has not been definitively stated."

She said Attorney General Eric Holder told her that "those who received orders and acted upon these legal opinions would not be prosecuted - if that's the word - held accountable, whatever, further action taken against them. Our question among our members is, does that just go down, or does that go up?" referring to whether top officials in charge of the policy would be investigated, as opposed to those carrying out orders.

Pelosi suggested that she would be interested in "the lawyers who gave these opinions" as well as testimony at a Senate judicial confirmation hearing, a veiled reference to Bybee. "What is interesting to us is, were there counter opinions in the (Bush) administration?" Pelosi said. "I think it gives further impetus among members to have some kind of truth commission as to what happened and why legal opinions were so one-sided."

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been shopping the commission idea since February as a way to avoid the partisanship likely to erupt in a regular congressional committee investigation. Leahy held a hearing on how a commission would work, but lacking GOP support, has not introduced a bill.

Specter, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the Justice Department already has all the facts.

'Banana republics'

"Once the administration has a key to the front door, which they've had for several months, all they have to do is find the right filing cabinets and open them, which they're already doing," Specter said. "I think the president is correct in saying that we ought to be looking forward and that you shouldn't prosecute people who operated in good faith relying on competent legal counsel. If there is evidence of criminality, then the attorney general has the full authority and should prosecute it. But going after the prior administration sounds like something they do in Latin America in banana republics."

Pelosi also said she was briefed by federal officials several years ago that Harman was heard on a federal wiretap aimed at suspected Israeli spies. Harman is under fire for allegedly agreeing to intervene in an Israeli spy case in exchange for help in lobbying Pelosi to secure the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, an appointment she did not get.

Harman has adamantly denied intervening in the case and called for public release of the full transcripts from the wiretaps.

Pelosi said she was never at liberty to share information from any classified briefing and never talked to Harman about it.

"When you are briefed on something, it isn't your information to share with anybody else, whether they're briefing you on legal opinions or ... actions," Pelosi said. "You have no ability to share that information with someone else."

As ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee in 2002, Pelosi was also given a classified briefing by the Bush administration on interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

Her office reissued her statement from Dec. 9, 2007, in which Pelosi said she was told that the administration was considering using such techniques in the future. She also stated at the time that lawyers for the CIA and the Justice Department "had concluded that the techniques were legal. I had no further briefings on the techniques. Several months later, my successor as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, was briefed more extensively and advised the techniques had in fact been employed. It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred."

Confidence in Harman

Pelosi expressed "great confidence" in Harman, calling her a "patriotic American. She would never do anything to hurt her country."

Pelosi acknowledged that she had a long friendship with wealthy Democratic donor Haim Saban, who has been alleged in various press accounts to have threatened to withdraw his donations to Pelosi if she failed to support Harman's bid to chair the committee. Pelosi insisted that her refusal to award Harman the chair had nothing to do with her opposition to Harman's support for the Iraq invasion or anything other than the fact that Harman had served out her two allotted terms on the committee and would not be allowed another.

"Many, many of Jane's friends talked to me about her being named chair, but never in a threatening way," Pelosi said.