CIA 'Briefed Truthfully' in '02: Panetta

CIA director Leon Panetta today denied Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the agency misled lawmakers in a 2002 briefing, the Hill reports. In a memo to employees, Panetta said “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed.’” Moreover, “we are an agency of high integrity,” he said. “Our task is to tell it like it is.”

“My advice—indeed, my direction—to you is straightforward,” Panetta wrote in the memo, titled “Turning Down the Volume.”  “Ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country.” (More Leon Panetta stories.)