The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives – Nancy Pelosi – is lying. She is lying about the consequential issue of what she knew and when she knew about the interrogation techniques used on high-value terrorist detainees approved at multiple levels and by multiple divisions of government.

Her colleagues in Congress know she is lying; most people paying attention know she is lying; the media know she is lying. The CIA knows she is lying and, more pertinent, seems out to prove it, given the retroactive attacks on that agency for attempting to do its job at a time of extreme peril to this country.

Pelosi has been front and center in an exceptionally vicious, poisonous and dangerous liberal political game of persecution and possible prosecution of Bush administration and intelligence agency officials for the conduct of terrorist interrogations, and she has now been ensnared by her own prior knowledge.

Between 2002 (when Pelosi was Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee) and 2003, she or an aide were briefed on the interrogation practices, along with other members of Congress. As of this writing, she has now told at least three progressively different stories about those briefings. None are plausible, and all are contradicted by others. She was told; she did not object, secretly, in the proper forums, in keeping with her special responsibilities and powers.

When the critical first briefing occurred in 2002, Porter Goss, then in Congress and then Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was in the room along with Pelosi and their Senate Intelligence Committee counterparts, the so-called “Gang of Four,” who have clearance commensurate with their congressional oversight function to receive highly classified intelligence briefings. (Goss would later, in 2004, become Director of the CIA, which he had also served in the 1960s.)

In a carefully worded but highly unusual Washington Post op-ed, Goss several weeks ago wrote the following regarding that briefing: “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....”

There are some, of course, quite willing to dismiss Goss as a partisan Republican and defender of his former agency.

But Goss’ memory is supplemented by a CIA report that current CIA Director Leon Panetta, lifelong Democrat, former Congressman, and former White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, sent to Congress on May 5. Here’s the outlined content of the 2002 briefing: “Briefing on EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”

With too many stories like this, it is extremely easy to get deep in the weeds of parsed words, conflicting memories and the inevitable politics of fog, which seeks blatantly to manipulate perceptions. Democrats are this week complaining that the CIA is out to get them.

So? Who threw the first public stones...against people who, by conditions of their employment, are prohibited from public bloviation? Could it be that, after briefing Congress some 40 times prior to the current witchhunts, some CIA officials might go on the defensive against charges of high crimes and misdemeanors?

Regardless, while the truth is often difficult to discern, the truth has no moving parts. Nancy Pelosi’s various explanations are full of moving parts. For now, she is merely lying, but if she repeats those lies under oath, against the recollections, documents and notes of all other participants in the briefings, then that is the action point for charges of perjury.

Politicians lie all the time, some even about what they had for breakfast and who paid for it. But Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and neither that body nor the people it is sworn to represent should tolerate what she has, of her own volition and with malice aforethought, gotten herself into.

Addendum: On May 14, Nancy Pelosi insisted at an awkward and by some reports incoherent press conference that she was not specifically briefed in 2002 that enhanced interrogation methods had actually been used (although that distinction is without much difference, given her position of responsibility and authority). Further, asked if she is now accusing the CIA of lying, she answered in the affirmative.

In digging her hole even deeper than it was, Pelosi has now escalated the conflict to an exceptionally dangerous level, virtually guaranteeing that what began as a divisive political maneuver has now become yet another public disgrace to this country.