HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi could face a congressional hearing into how much she knew about the Bush administration's use of torture, following the release this week of CIA documents showing that she was briefed on "enhanced interrogation techniques" in September 2002.
Ms Pelosi, who was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee until late 2002, has consistently claimed that, although she was told about the interrogation techniques, she was never informed that the harshest - waterboarding - had been used.
Documents submitted by the CIA to the Senate and House intelligence committee this week show, however, that Ms Pelosi was present at a briefing on September 4th, 2002, when intelligence officials described the techniques used on alleged terrorist Abu Zubaydah.
Legal memos published last month revealed that Mr Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding - a form of controlled suffocation by water - at least 83 times during August 2002.
The CIA documents do not explicitly state that waterboarding was discussed at the meeting Ms Pelosi attended and her spokesman Brendan Daly said the speaker stands by her recollection of the meeting.
"As this document shows, the speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002," he said. "The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used."
Peter Hoekstra, the leading Republican on the House intelligence committee, said that congressional Democrats calling for investigations into torture are ignoring the fact that members of Congress knew what the CIA was doing at its secret prisons overseas. "I think that nobody wants to take any accountability for it," Mr Hoekstra said. "Is it fair to go after people in the CIA or at the Justice Department when Congress was briefed on this programme and knew it was going on? That doesn't seem very fair to me."
Mr Hoekstra said the CIA documents show that Ms Pelosi knew that detainees were being subjected to waterboarding but she is denying it because of political pressure. "Clearly her left wing is outraged that waterboarding was used," he said. "The bottom line is she and her key staff, they all knew about it."
The Republican congressman is calling for the release of more CIA documents that will go into detail about how much Congress knew about the interrogation techniques. He said yesterday that he is considering making a request for congressional hearings into what the intelligence committee knew.
The CIA documents list 40 congressional briefings at which the interrogation programme was discussed, describing who was briefed, on what date and on what subjects. The documents suggest that waterboarding was discussed during at least 13 briefings, starting with a February 2003 meeting attended by Ms Pelosi's successor on the House intelligence committee, California Democrat Jane Harman.
Ms Harman wrote to the CIA expressing concern about the techniques, the only known objection formally raised by a member of Congress at that time.
The controversy over Ms Pelosi comes as Democrats in Congress signalled that they will oppose Barack Obama's efforts to cut federal funding of some projects. The president this week unveiled a proposal to cut $17 billion from 121 government programmes - savings that represent just half of 1 per cent of his $3.4 trillion spending plan.
More than half of the savings would come from the Pentagon, with seven defence programmes facing elimination and a further seven facing cuts.
Mr Obama wants to cancel a new presidential helicopter, which he says he does not need but New York congressman Maurice Hinchey, in whose district the helicopter is to be built, has vowed to save the project.
California senator Dianne Feinstein said she was committed to saving a $400 million programme that reimburses states for jailing illegal immigrants, which the president also wants to cut.
Meanwhile, some Democrats are joining Republicans in expressing concern about Mr Obama's plan to close the detention centre at Guantánamo Bay by next January. Hawaii congressman Neal Abercrombie said the White House should have decided where to house the detainees before announcing Guantánamo's closure.
"They say, 'We're going to close Guantánamo.' Okay, fine. How are you going to do that? That's the question. They should have had that worked out from the get-go," he said. "There's this vague game plan that now we're going to leave Guantánamo. It's allowed it to become a political football."