In case you missed Fox News Sunday, the boss pointed out that Pelosi was well-aware in June 2002 of unsuccessful attempts to get Zubaydah talking--three months before she was briefed on "enhanced interrogation techniques" that had been used on Zubaydah:
KRISTOL: ... there's more evidence yet that people haven't focused on. In June of -- in the Time Magazine of June -- June 3rd, 2002, Nancy Pelosi was interviewed for a story about how the war on terror was going.
And at that point, everyone was on board being tough with terrorists, and she talked about Abu Zubaydah. And she said he was very -- he's very skilled at avoiding interrogation, he's an agent of disinformation.
Nancy Pelosi, who was the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, knew enough to know who this person was. She knew that they had failed to get much information from him by regular techniques. And then she pretends -- then she knew, presumably, at the briefing on September 4th that they'd gotten a lot of information from him. The CIA says they explained how they got that information by enhanced techniques. And there's no reason to believe that they didn't.
So Nancy Pelosi, who knew enough -- who knew who this person was and knew that he wasn't giving up information, then knows later on he has given up information -- and now she pretends she had no idea how that happened.
Also of note, Kristol warned that Republicans could easily be caught flat-footed if the economy shows growth in the second quarter:
KRISTOL: The market's up 35 percent in the last two months, which is pretty amazing, and up for the year. My friend Larry Lindsay has been predicting, contrary to almost everyone else...
WALLACE: And we should point out he was the head of the Council of Economic...
KRISTOL: Bush's top economic adviser in the White House.
WALLACE: OK.
KRISTOL: (inaudible) been a good forecaster for the last 10, 15 years or so in my opinion -- has always predicted that the second quarter, the quarter we're now in, would be positive, actually, in GDP. This amount of liquidity coming into the system would cause a rebound.
He also thinks -- and he's got some analysis to back this up -- that we then sink back down a little or, at any rate, don't keep growing. I mean, so I think actually Republicans -- Obama will have a good couple of months here, in my view.
Republicans who were chortling over that 20 percent drop in the stock market the first month or two of his administration are going to be, you know, fairly enough, hoisted on our own petard by the fact that now Obama's getting this big stock market rally, some pretty good indicators. We may get some -- an up number.
We could on August 1st be sitting here and saying, "Gee, the second quarter GDP was positive." But I think over the longer run we have huge problems. Fannie Mae had a, what, $20 billion loss last quarter. They're not out of the woods. The banks aren't out of the woods. Commercial real estate is about to crash and that hasn't really hit the banks yet.
So I -- no one -- no one should base anything on this forecast. But my view is, short term, I'm actually surprisingly bullish. But I think medium and long term -- very worrisome.
Full transcript after the jump:(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY PELOSI: We were not, I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: That was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a couple of weeks ago denying any knowledge of what was done to Al Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah. But documents released this week indicate she was fully briefed on exactly what the government was doing.
Time now for our Sunday group -- Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, Mara Liasson of National Public Radio, Kimberly Strassel from the Wall Street Journal -- a first-timer -- and Juan Williams, also from National Public Radio.
So, Bill, the list of congressional briefings -- I think it was 40 briefings -- is even more embarrassing for Speaker Pelosi, because it turns out a couple of months after her briefing that one of her top aides want to another briefing where it says that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah was explicitly mentioned. How big a problem for Nancy Pelosi?
KRISTOL: I think it is a big problem. And there's more evidence yet that people haven't focused on. In June of -- in the Time Magazine of June -- June 3rd, 2002, Nancy Pelosi was interviewed for a story about how the war on terror was going.
