Boehner didn't always defend CIA

May 15, 2009 by John Allen · Leave a Comment

House Democrats were none too amused when John Boehner went after Nancy Pelosi for saying the CIA misled her during a 2002 briefing on enhanced interrogations. Boehner defended the agency’s record and said it was “hard” for him to imagine “anyone in our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress.”
No sooner had the words come out of the Republican leader’s mouth than Democratic staffers were passing around Boehner quotes in which Boehner — you guessed it — questioned the effectiveness of U.S. intel agencies.
On Dec. 9, 2007, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Boehner: “Are you suggesting, as I think you are, that you don’t necessarily have confidence in this new NIE [National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq]?”

Boehner: “Either I don’t have confidence in what they told me several months ago or I don’t have confidence in what they’re telling me today.”

Nine months earlier, on NBC’s ”Meet the Press,” Boehner said: “It’s clear to all of us, Democrats and Republicans, that we have flawed intelligence. The CIA had bad intelligence, the Pentagon had bad intelligence and, for that matter, all of our allies around the world had the same bad intelligence.”

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel shot back, saying, “There is a world of difference between asking questions about analysis of complex — and often contradictory — information and flat-out accusing our nation’s intelligence professionals of deliberately deceiving Congress. Don’t equate reasoned debate with accusations of lying.”

One Democratic staffer also sent along an excerpt from Boehner’s 2006 appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball” in which Boehner defended the agency’s intelligence on Saddam Hussein, with the leader asserting that Iraq did, in fact, possess weapons of mass destruction