Speaker of the House: Nancy Pelosi

On Tuesday morning, we were invited to attend a special gathering on the rooftop of the Denver Athletic Club.  It was informally called a Breakfast Conversation, and involved Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

While Pelosi spoke about economic, war, energy, and education policies from the Democrat perspective, I have to say that I was interested in one piece of information…something I didn’t know.  When Mrs. Pelosi was speaking about the war in Iraq, she commented that her views come from reading the intelligence reports.  At that moment, she stopped and pointed out that the two most “senior” individuals for the Democrats and Republicans, in both the House and Senate, get the opportunity to read the “intelligence.”  Basically, I understood her to say that the most classified, confidential documents are read by these four individuals.  In cases where significant decisions are made, in this case the decision to go to war in Iraq, significant “intelligence” is used to make these choices.  For the longest time, I assumed that this type of of information might only be known to the President and Vice-President.