Dick Cheney and his Torture Team are desperately trying to blame Nancy Pelosi for approving torture, even though - or is it because? - they kept her in the dark at the one briefing they gave her on 9/4/02.

But their vicious smear campaign might backfire "Big Time," as Cheney likes to say. That's because of growing evidence it was Republicans - not Democrats - who were told about Torture and approved it, either explicitly or implicitly. As Marcy Wheeler notes:

The first Appropriations briefing took place during the debate on the Detainee Treatment Act, at a time when there were a significant number of Republican-only briefings: two for Fristie [Bill Frist], one for [John] McCain, one for Duncan Hunter, one for Crazy Pete Hoekstra, and the briefing for "Appropriations." 

But they on[ly] briefed the Republicans in charge of Defense Appropriations--not the Democrats.

Those Republican Appropriators included Sen. Ted Stevens, Sen. Thad Cochran, and Rep. Bill Young.

So when will reporters ask all these Republicans the tough questions they asked Pelosi on April 23:  when did they learn about Torture and what did they do to stop it?

Update 1: Greg Sargent drills down on the "known unknowns" of Pelosi's 9/4/02 briefing:

either one of these things is true:

1) The CIA told Pelosi about the waterboarding of Zubayda. But the agency didn’t specify it in the newly-released docs describing the briefing, even though they’d waterboarded him over 80 times during the previous month, something that surely would have stood out to those recollecting what was said. And the agency didn’t specify the description of such extensive waterboarding, despite specifying the use of waterboarding in descriptions of the briefings elsewhere in the documents.

2) The CIA didn’t tell Pelosi about the use of waterboarding, or didn’t convey the scope of it, and hence didn’t include it in their description of the briefing.

Which seems more likely?

Definitely #2.

Update 2: Rep. Pete Hoekstra's spokesman Jamal Ware waged his own smear campaign against Pelosi today when he told Greg Sargent

“[Hoekstra] has seen documents that would clarify exactly what the Speaker was briefed on,” Ware tells me, “including whether she was briefed on all enhanced interrogation techniques that had been used.”

Asked if those techniques included waterboarding, Ware replied: “Yes.”

Sargent then checked with CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano and paraphrased his response:

None of the notes and memos that the CIA is aware of about the briefing Nancy Pelosi got on torture specified that she’d been briefed on the use of waterboarding...

the notes and memos on the Pelosi meeting that form the basis for the docs didn’t allow them to go that far, meaning that they didn’t specify that she’d been briefed on waterboarding in particular.

So which "documents" was Hoekstra referring to? If Hoekstra knows, he could specifically request their declassification by date, just as Cheney did. But if Hoekstra lied, he should resign immediately.

Update 3: Speaker Pelosi repeated her previous denial that she was told about the prior month's waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah:

I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.