Pelosi's Short, Short Memory

Nancy Pelosi was putting hyped-up concerns about privacy above concerns about national security just one month after terrorists carried out their Sept. 11 attacks.

Ironically, we learn this from letters Pelosi asked to have declassified so the NYTimes could continue its misleading campaign against Bush and the NSA. NYT says of the letter:

The congresswoman wrote to Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then head of the N.S.A., to express her concerns after she and other members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees received a classified briefing from General Hayden on Oct. 1, 2001, about the agency's operations.

Ms. Pelosi, then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting."

The letter was sent just three weeks after the Twin Towers fell, following a briefing received by Intelligence Committee members.

I just don't get it. America's spirit was raw and wounded at the time, and it was not yet at all clear whether we would avoid being attacked again at any moment. Pelosi could not have been representing more than one percent of the population at the time -- and yet, she was selected to be the Dem's leader in the House.

So what's the scandal here -- the NSA's behavior or the Dems'?

[Image: Jared Wilson/Joe Brower]