Obama throws Nancy Pelosi under the Bus !

Nobody deserves tread marks more than Nancy does ...

Leon Panetta (Obama's choice to head the CIA) does the slapdown.

Panetta Urges CIA Staff to Focus on Mission, Tune Out 'New Decibel Level' in D.C. on Interrogations

President Obama's CIA director on Friday urged agency employees to concentrate on their mission and not get sidetracked by the high-volume argument in Washington spurred a day earlier when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to Congress.

"There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I'm gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress," CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a letter publicly released.

"My advice -- indeed, my direction -- to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country," he wrote. "We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is-even if that's not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it."

Panetta's letter was released as the debate grew over what Pelosi knew, when she knew it and whether she complained about it if she was so bothered by it.

Pelosi told reporters on Thursday that those briefing her in September 2002 gave her inaccurate and incomplete information. Pelosi's office issued a statement Thursday saying Pelosi had been told in September 2002 that waterboarding, or simulated drowning, had not been used, but was going to be used in the future.

The timeline is the basis for the speaker's claim that the CIA lied to Congress -- because the CIA has confirmed later that it used waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah in August 2002.

Panetta repeated in his letter to CIA staff that the agency's response to congressional inquiries show that "our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.' Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened."

The White House refused to be drawn into the debate Friday, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declining to weigh in on whether the CIA lied to Pelosi.