The CIA secret program that never launched

Opinion Journal:

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Mr. Panetta must feel burned. After the Pelosi blow-up, he has tried to repair relations with his own party's Congressional leaders, and last month he reached out to the Intelligence Committee. On June 24, in a classified hearing, Mr. Panetta produced so-called new information about CIA counterterrorism efforts in the months after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. We're told that he informed the Members that the agency had considered, then abandoned, a major covert antiterror program. (Our sources wouldn't say what it was.) Bush-era CIA officials didn't tell Congress because it never got off the ground. But this is the "at least one case" Mr. Reyes claims his committee was "lied to" about in the Bush years.

There's apparently no limit to how far Speaker Pelosi's friends on the Hill are willing to go to salvage her reputation. The intentions are transparent enough. The Reyes letter was addressed to Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on Intelligence. Mr. Hoekstra yesterday said the media received the missive before he did. And two days after the Panetta testimony last month, six Democratic Members of the committee called on the CIA Director to "correct" his statement in May that the CIA doesn't lie to Congress. He didn't. The six are allies of Speaker Pelosi. Her public standing -- and poll numbers -- have been battered since her run-in with Mr. Panetta and the facts this spring.

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This is looking more like the politics of fraud. The attempt to cover Pelosi's allegations made to cover her knowledge of harsh interrogation methods is plumbing new depths of deceit, not by the CIA but by Democrats on the intelligence committee. There attempt to cover up for Pelosi with leftist Democrats is a cynical ploy that compromises the integrity of the Democrats on the committee who have gone along with the ruse.