Today in the Washington Post, Porter Goss informs us that he has remained largely silent on the public stage since leaving his post as CIA director almost three years ago, but now feels compelled to speak out because our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. In doing so, Porter Goss insults our intelligence for his purposes are rather transparent.

I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now.

I might inform Mr. Goss the rule of law is the bedrock of our national security. It is because of our commitment to the rule of the law that this felicitous union of the many has so endured and prospered through the ages. Nor is the left trying to secure some partisan political advantage. Should any Democrats, including the Speaker have been complicit in permitting the debasement of The Constitution and the laws that govern our conduct as a nation, then let them too face the wrath of the nation.

What secrets have we given away? We don't torture. That's not a secret unless you broke the law and tortured. In which case, you broke the law. What we can't have is a secret intelligence service that runs covert operations that are contrary to the principles of democratic governance.

It seems clear that Mr. Goss is attempting to cover what ever role he had in this mess by taking a swipe at Speaker Pelosi and Congresswoman Jane Harman, then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence committee.

In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's "High Value Terrorist Program," including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

-- We understood what the CIA was doing.

-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

Political winds have not shifted only the stench of your malfeasance is becoming too overwhelming to bear.

Marcy Wheeler of Firedoglake has the details and nails it when she writes that

This is Iran-Contra territory--the Administration conducting covert ops without proper notification to Congress. Now, given Sy Hersh's report that Dick Cheney convened a "lessons learned" meeting at about the same time Bush issued the MON giving CIA the authority to interrogate on September 17, 2001, I'm sure PapaDick believes he's found some way around the laws requiring Congressional authorization.

But from the record produced so far, it appears the Administration broke the law in an effort to avoid leaving a legal paper trail of their support for torture.

My sense is that as we learn more about the political decision to torture that the nation will be shaken to its very core. So be it, let the cards play themselves in an investigation. The truth is the truth. Of the truths that I hold most dear is that we are a nation of laws.