Over at the Washington Post's Post Partisan blog, the boss writes:
Commentators have been struck -- though not perhaps as much as they should have been -- by the extraordinary character of CIA Director Leon Panetta's blunt and stark rebuke of Nancy Pelosi. Responding to political debates that "reached a new decibel level [Thursday] when the CIA was accused [by Pelosi] of misleading Congress," Panetta wrote Friday that "our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah."
But did Panetta simply decide on his own to send this letter? It's almost inconceivable. Panetta is a former member of Congress and a former White House chief of staff. President Obama made him CIA director only four months ago. Even if his motivation for the letter was in part driven by an institutional imperative to defend his agency, Panetta would have understood the political implications of humiliating a House speaker of his own party. He surely at least ran the letter by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to get clearance. It's also possible that Panetta was encouraged to send the letter by Emanuel.
Read the rest here.
