May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine said he still has faith in U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been in a dispute with the Central Intelligence Agency over briefings about the interrogation of suspected terrorists.

Pelosi’s job is secure, Kaine, who is also the governor of Virginia, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” today. He was responding to a question about the political fight Pelosi is in over what she knew about briefings to Congress on waterboarding and other interrogation tactics used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Responding to the California Democrat’s accusation that the spy agency misled her, CIA Director Leon Panetta challenged Pelosi’s insistence last week that she wasn’t told about the use of simulated drowning, know as waterboarding. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio defended intelligence officials today.

“Our CIA employee briefed truthfully on the interrogation of others,” McConnell told Fox News. “We know what the CIA believes. The speaker apparently disagrees with that. The best way for the dispute to be resolved is through the intelligence committees. At some point we’ll find out what the truth is.”

CIA records show that she was “briefed truthfully” in September, 2002 about the tactics used to question suspected al- Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, Panetta said. A Justice Department legal memo says Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times during the month before Pelosi’s briefing.

Proof or Apology

Boehner said he has “never felt that I was mislead” by intelligence officials.

“If the speaker is accusing the CIA and other intelligence officials of lying or misleading the congress then she should come forward with evidence and turn that over to the Justice Department so they can be prosecuted,” Boehner said on the CNN program “State of the Union.” “And if that’s not the case, I think she ought to apologize to our intelligence officials.”

Democratic Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, a Vietnam veteran, said “I just don’t think it’s that big a deal,” and that the issue “will resolve itself.”

Pelosi responded May 15 to Panetta’s comments with a statement in which she blamed former President George W. Bush’s administration in the dispute about what she knew, not “the dedicated men and women of the intelligence community.”

Bush Administration

“My criticism of the manner in which the Bush administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe,” Pelosi said.

Panetta, in his statement, told his CIA colleagues that while “there is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business,” the “debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level” when Pelosi at a May 14 news conference accused the CIA of misleading Congress.

Panetta, who, before a stint as President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, was a Democratic House member from California, advised CIA employees to “ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission.”

Pelosi has said she was never directly briefed about the use of waterboarding to interrogate terror suspects. Waterboarding was only mentioned in the Sept. 4, 2002, briefing as a tactic the Bush administration had deemed legal, she said.

A chart of CIA congressional briefings disclosed last week showed that CIA officers gave Pelosi “a description of the particular” enhanced interrogation techniques “that had been employed” on Zubaydah.

At her May 14 news conference, Pelosi said for the first time that one of her aides told her in February 2003 that the CIA had briefed other lawmakers about the use of waterboarding.

Pelosi said she didn’t object because the then-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Jane Harman, wrote a letter of protest.

To contact the reporter on this story: Romaine Bostick in Washington rbostick@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 17, 2009 11:08 EDT