It’s no secret that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi don’t see eye to eye on a number of things. He’s been pushing for a bipartisan approach to entitlement reform; she is against it. But now Hoyer seems ready to toss Pelosi over the side of the leaky Democratic ship on the subject of enhanced interrogation techniques. This report explains:

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Tuesday that investigations into the Bush administration’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects should look into what congressional leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, knew about the methods that have been criticized as torture.
[. . .]

“Frankly, information about what was said, when it was said, who said it, that ought to be on the record so the American public knows,” Hoyer said.

Whoa. Well he did soften the blow a bit by suggesting that those mean Republicans are just trying to distract everyone:

Hoyer dismissed recent Republican focus on Democrats who were briefed about interrogation techniques. “The Republicans are simply trying to distract the American public with ‘who knew what when.’ My response to that is that the issue is not what was said or what was known, the focus ought to be on what was done,” he said. He said that if congressional hearings are held or if a commission calls witnesses, Pelosi and other members of Congress who were briefed wouldn’t be able to shed much light. “She was bound by requirements of secrecy as a condition of that briefing,” he said of Pelosi. “It’s a little bit of a conundrum.”

A conundrum indeed. But his point was crystal clear: let the chips fall where they may. (And as far as the “requirements of secrecy,” I think we’re in the process of waiving just about all of those.) It seems that Hoyer isn’t about to expend political energy defending his Speaker. And if he doesn’t, will other Democrats?