She Said, He Said, CIA Said

The House Speaker Nancy Pelosi-Former Sen. Bob Graham-Central Intelligence Agency catfight over who knew what, and who briefed who, about what interrogation tactics, when, is going to get extremely ugly very quickly. Forget that. It's ugly already, although some of the issues its dredging up, like whether Bob Graham's obsessively meticulous diaries mean he's always right, are entertaining. But to my mind, there are a couple of ways this could go, and all of them are bad:

1. Nancy Pelosi is lying about the CIA, and using a federal agency for political cover. This would be bad because if it works, it would continue to legitimize beating the bureaucracy to cover any manner of sins, and further a rift between the intelligence agencies and Democrats in Congress. No matter your political beliefs, it's good for agencies to have strong relationships with both parties, so they can, and will, provide accurate information and useful opinions.

2. The CIA is lying. This would be bad because it would undermine the agency's reputation as an honest broker of information to Congress. The agencies need to do their jobs when it comes to getting good information to lawmakers. Whatever your politics, I think we can agree we need a credible spy agency and intelligence community at large.

3. Everyone's lying because they're not incredibly clear on what happened. This could drag on forever, and be a horrible embarrassing, death-spiral kind of fight that could tie up folks who could be more productively doing other things. It would be a huge mess. But then it is already.