In her statement today, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did several remarkable things. She accused the CIA of misleading and lying to her about waterboarding. So she has shifted her story once again, from originally insisting she was not told about waterboarding in a September 2002 briefing to now saying she was told it was not being employed. Accusing America’s intelligence agency of knowingly misleading a Member of Congress, and particularly a Member of the House Intelligence Committee, is quite an explosive charge. She better be able to prove it. And if she is lying — as Porter Goss, then ranking Republican on the House Committee who later served as C.I.A. Director, seems to believe — there will be an enormously high price for her to pay.

There is another thing Pelosi said that needs to be stressed as well: she concedes in her remarks today that Michael Sheehy, a top aide, informed her about waterboarding. In other words, Ms. Pelosi did learn about waterboarding no later than February 2003, according to her own account — and she didn’t do anything about it. A letter was sent to the CIA’s general counsel, Pelosi says — but it was not sent or signed by Pelosi (Representative Jane Harman sent it). “No letter could change the policy” according to the Speaker. But of course there were several options available to Ms. Pelosi; she exercised none of them.

Democrats have long thought that the issue of waterboarding would do great political damage; they may well be right. But what they may have not anticipated is that the person who would be most damaged in this whole thing might well be the current — and perhaps at some point soon, the former — Speaker of the House.