The briefings represent a time-honored tactic of criminals everywhere: implicate others in your crimes so that they cannot go public — let alone hold you accountable — without sinking themselves.

Pelosi's office declined to comment on the revelations; Harman says she filed a letter of protest about the torture program "but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything." The Gang of Four consists of the House and Senate intelligence committee chairs and the senior minority members of the committees, a position Harman held in the House at the time. Pelosi refused to award Harman the House intelligence committee chair when Democrats regained the majority.

Harman's contention that the secrecy oath trumps any other responsibilities, such as the oath every member of Congress swears to uphold and defend the Constitution, is a common dodge. The hapless Rockefeller has relied on it repeatedly to defend his own inaction upon learning of the administration's illegal surveillance programs years before news of that became public.

One can understand the heady brew of fear excitement and privilege that arises from becoming one of a handful of people among a nation of 300 million who hold a particularly potent secret. It makes one feel special and distinct (although if Rockeller is any guide, impotent and small at times as well).

But the CIA is not, officially at any rate, a fourth and preeminent branch of government to which legislators owe fealty. It is not the place of our elected officials to earn self-gratification by holding that or any other agency's guilty secrets. It is time for Pelosi and Rockefeller and anyone else involved in this coverup to step down from their respective posts (Harman, who doesn't have a post, should simply go away).

Bush and Cheney will be in office another 400 days. That's a long time. We need leadership from Democrats, and genuine oversight, and we're not going to get it from anyone who reluctantly or otherwise, has furthered the criminal and anti-Constitutional conspiracy run from the Oval Office.

Resign, Madam Speaker. Now.

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