On May 14, 2009, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in a press conference accused the CIA of lying to her in 2002 and routinely misleading the US Congress (a felony under US law), she went ‘all in’ in a high-stakes poker game rarely seen in Washington, DC. She opened herself to accusations that she was either incompetent or dishonest, and she cast her position as Speaker of the House of Representatives into the pot.

Pelosi was referring to the briefing she, then ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and committee chairman Porter Goss received on September 4, 2002, from the CIA about “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs). She was responding to current CIA Director Leon Panetta’s May 5, 2009, report to Congress that described the 2002 meeting as a "Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on [legal] authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed."

Panetta’s report contradicted Pelosi’s previous statements that, "We were not--I repeat--were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. . .  [The CIA] did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true."

Ms. Pelosi, of course, is a leading critic of the George W. Bush administration and an ardent advocate of investigations into the practices it used to prosecute the ‘war on terror.’ Any suggestion that she knew about the use of EITs, including waterboarding, and did nothing about it seriously undercuts those efforts. Even if Pelosi’s claims about the 2002 briefing are true, her staffer, Michael Sheehy, was briefed on EITs that had been used in February 2003, and she still took no action.

By insisting that the CIA lied to her, in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, so she could remain above the fray and on the attack, Pelosi has placed herself in an untenable position. Where this will lead and how it will end are difficult to predict. High-profile politicians like Pelosi have squirmed out of worse situations, and most pundits are predicting that she’ll survive this one. But like all high-stakes poker games, there will be winners and losers. Right now Speaker Pelosi is losing, and she’s not helping her allies in the Democratic Party that want to portray the Bush administration as a criminal enterprise.

In my April 27, 2009, column I wrote that when President Barack Obama released the Bush administration's top-secret legal memos that authorized EITs, he opened Pandora’s Box. He allowed evils to escape from it that fanned the flames of bitter partisan politics, undermined the effectiveness of the CIA, and threatened the Obama presidency.

Speaker Pelosi’s dilemma and the fallout from it are a direct result of the release of those memos and the renewed attacks on the Bush administration and defense of it they invited. Her accusations that the CIA routinely lied to her indeed enflames partisan politics and undermines the effectiveness of the CIA. Republicans immediately called for an investigation of Pelosi’s claims. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich called Pelosi a liar and described her as “despicable” “dishonest” “vicious” and “trivial.” Morale at the CIA could only be lower if the Justice Department began prosecuting the interrogators who used EITs.

Shortly after releasing the top-secret 'torture' memos, President Obama appeared to encourage criminal prosecutions of the memo’s authors and a commission to review Bush administration policies. Pelosi relished the opportunity to do so. But then the president wisely backtracked and opposed them. That, his stunning reversal of his decision to not to oppose the court-ordered release of detainee abuse photos, and his reinstatement of military tribunals demonstrate that he understands the dangers vilifying Bush administration policies pose to the national security of the country, his domestic political agenda, and to his presidency.

Moreover, slowly but surely, President Obama’s policies in the war on terror, save EITs on high-value detainees, are beginning to look a lot like President Bush's. Given that Obama campaigned for the presidency vigorously opposing those policies, it doesn’t serve his interests to put them under the public microscope or for the Speaker of the House to go to war with the CIA. I'm sure he would prefer that Ms. Pelosi and Democrats in Congress use all their energies to pass legislation on his proposals for health care, energy, and education.

Just as Obama reversed himself, congressional Democrats intent on investigating the Bush administration can do the same. Taking their cue from the president and seeing the trouble Nancy Pelosi’s gotten herself into, many of them will. Before her news conference last Thursday, Pelosi could have also. Now, she’s burned her bridge behind her.

Paraphrasing the immortal words of Senator Howard Baker in the Watergate hearings, Americans want to know what did Ms. Pelosi know and when did she know it? The documents that support CIA Director Panetta's report to Congress and contemporaneous notes of the 2002 briefing taken by the CIA's director of congressional affairs will come out. When they do I expect Ms. Pelosi will have a great deal of explaining to do. I've briefed numerous committees of Congress over 23 years, including the Senate and House Intelligence committees, and I can assure you that career intelligence professionals do not lie to Congress.

Nancy Pelosi not only is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, she is third in the line of succession to the presidency of the United States. In today's world it is not difficult to imagine circumstances that would place her in the Oval Office. If, when all the cards are face up on the table, it is clear that she lied to the American people on an important national security issue, will those who called for George W. Bush's impeachment because they believed he lied to the American people call for Pelosi's resignation?