How Porter Goss would testify

If they hold the congressional hearings that they seem set to hold on the CIA's interrogation techniques, expect Porter Goss, as a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and former head of the CIA, to be called to testify about what the top congressional members who were briefed on the techniques were told. And he has a column in today's Washington Post indicating that Nancy Pelosi's "I knew nuffink" pose is a total sham.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

-- We understood what the CIA was doing.

-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. [He's talking about Jane Harman here.] And shifted they have.

The time to express their moral outrage and opposition to such techniques was at the time, before those methods were being used, not seven years later when it now seems to be to their partisan advantage to have selective memories. What a weasel Nancy Pelosi is! And she is so incredibly arrogant that she thought she could mau mau for openness and hearings without her own role coming to light.