BAIER: Recapping our top story, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today accused the CIA and the Bush administration of misleading Congress and the country regarding enhanced interrogation techniques used on terror suspects.

Pelosi was grilled by reporters about inconsistencies in her own accounts of what she was told during a briefing in 2002. Here's a look at today's answers and a speech from back then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY PELOSI, (D-CA) HOUSE SPEAKER: So, yes, I am saying that they are misleading, that the CIA was misleading the Congress.

They misrepresented every step of the way.

The brave and dedicated men and women of the intelligence community perform an invaluable service to our country, and I want them to know how impressed we have all been by the work they do on frequently dangerous and demanding conditions.

They deserve our appreciation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Well, that last clip was a House floor speech on a funding bill for the intelligence community back in 2002.

Pelosi went on to praise then House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss for the bipartisan way he ran the committee and the oversight of the intelligence community, allowing, she said, Democrats to air their differences.

That was two months after Goss and Pelosi were first briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques Pelosi now calls torture.

Goss said of Pelosi's reaction to that early briefing, "We asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission, and questioned whether we were doing enough."

Let's bring in our panel, Fred Barnes, executive editor of the "Weekly Standard," Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Charles, your thoughts on all this?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, her news conference today was an utter disaster. She was nervous. She was shifty. Her syntax was incomprehensible. And there were times when she had had to refer to her original statement because she couldn't remember what the current truth - her current truth was.

It reminds me of a line in a Graham Greene novel in which a spy says "I prefer to tell the truth. It's easier to memorize." Well, she didn't have it memorized. You had a sense that if you'd attached a lie detector to her in that news, it would have short circuited.

Look, her problem was this. She was internally contradictory with one point. Within 30 seconds she contradicted her own statement on what she had heard from her staff in February '03. She was contradicted by the evidence of others like Porter Goss.

Her charge of the CIA lying to her is utterly implausible. Why would it lie to her and tell all the others the truth? It makes no sense at all.

And it was refuted by the black and white Obama CIA memo, not a memo out of the prince of darkness Bush and Cheney, but Obama CIA, which showed that in the briefing in which she says that they were told none of this simulated drowning occurred, they specifically had told her about the enhancing interrogation techniques that had been used on a prisoner, obviously a month earlier.

You take all of that together, and what she said is utterly implausible. And the charge that the CIA lied to her is an extremely serious one. She is now at war with the CIA, and it has the means, by leaking selectively, of destroying her, and I suspect it will do that.

BAIER: Mara?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Yes. It is one thing to attack the Bush administration. It is another thing to attack the community of professional intelligence people.

I think that the best kind of advice on this whole matter was given by President Obama, who said we should look forward and not backwards. And the problem is if you're going to look backwards and you want a truth commission and want to find out everything and kind of call people to task, you have to open up the entire box.

And that means looking at what members of Congress were told and when and what they did or didn't do about it.

And I think it's very possible that back then, when things - when there were imminent threats and people thought we should do everything possible, even more. And then, you know, as years go by, it looks like some of these things are too harsh.

But I think that the Democrats have potentially a big, big distraction on their hands. They want to pass healthcare. They want to pass energy. There is a lot of things they want to do. I don't think they want to be spending all their time on this.

BAIER: Fred?

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": I tell you, this has more legs than I ever thought it would, and it's because Nancy Pelosi is in a hole, and she keeps digging deeper and deeper and deeper. Today, boy, she was really digging herself in there a lot more.

And, along with what Mara said, you know, this is an entirely unforced error.

She should have just told the truth in the first place, which is obviously that she heard about the waterboarding, and this months after 9/11, and she thought that was appropriate under the circumstances with this great fear that there would be another attack by Al Qaeda. And now in 2009 she looks back and thinks that is a bad idea.

But she could easily have said, "OK, I was wrong back then. But I thought it was OK at the time, and I was wrong," end of story.

Instead, she's picked a fight with the CIA and everybody else. I mean, it's a huge mistake on her part.

Here, I wonder what President Obama thinks. Now, here he went just recently over to the CIA, and if they were a little upset over there about his administration, he certainly put it down with that speech. You know, he got the standing ovation and everything over there.

Now comes Nancy Pelosi upsetting the whole thing. She's trouble. She is trouble and she is in trouble.

BAIER: Let's stipulate that what she says about that September 2002 briefing actually happened, and that they just told her about the enhanced interrogation techniques, not that they had been used.

Well, that speech from the floor in November 2002, she is praising the intelligence community, saying they had ample time to air their differences. She didn't raise any red flags about any techniques that they may have been using. She could have held back funds, correct?

BARNES: At the very least, she said she heard from her aide in 2003 about waterboarding having been used, and never complained. I mean, she didn't raise any objection. She said, well, there was no way to do that.

How about in 2006 when she became House speaker? That's a powerful position, third in line to be president. And she couldn't do anything then? That's not a credible line that she has on it.

BAIER: Charles, where does this head from here? Mara talked about the cat being out of the bag. The Obama administration doesn't want these truth commissions, but it could be heading down that road.

KRAUTHAMMER: It will head in two directions. If Democrats are smart and they know how much in jeopardy she is and other Democrats who knew and did nothing, they will let this peter out.

If they insist on hearings, inquisitions, and all kinds of commissions, then they're going to have to put Pelosi and the others under oath. And under oath her stories are simply implausible. It's hard to imagine how she would stand up under oath with this stuff.

BAIER: One thing - a former senior intelligence official said about these briefings: "It's inconceivable, absolutely inconceivable that the briefers would not be as explicit as possible about what we were doing and what we were going to do. It is fundamental survival in our culture that you fully and completely brief."

KRAUTHAMMER: And the CIA issued a statement today indicating that its internal documents support the report issued last week that in the briefing in September they had described what had been done in detail.

BAIER: Mara, this is not the end of the story?

LIASSON: No, I don't think it is the end of the story. I really don't. I can't imagine the Democrats shutting down their whole inquiry into this. And as long as the inquiry is alive, I think the question about Nancy Pelosi is alive.

BAIER: Does it threaten Nancy Pelosi's position as Speaker of the House?

BARNES: Well, not yet. But wait if there's a commission, wait if there's a hearing under oath, and they bring the briefer in from the CIA to say what the briefing said.

KRAUTHAMMER: The CIA can destroy officials with selective leaks. It has done that in the past, and it could do it again. And it's been provoked.

BAIER: And there's no record that she has filed any complaint with the Department of Justice that the CIA lied to a member of congress.

KONDRACKE: Right, or even in protest of the information she heard that they had approved waterboarding, even if they hadn't told her it had been used. Jane Harman of all people, the kind of rival of the Speaker, did do that.