Nancy Pelosi on Thursday accused the Central Intelligence Agency of misleading her about the use of “waterboarding” as she strove to fend off mounting Republican criticism that she had endorsed the harsh interrogation technique that she later criticised George W. Bush for approving.

At a chaotic press conference, the Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives denied that the CIA told her about the use of waterboarding during a 2002 briefing on “enhanced interrogation techniques”. She said she only learned about the use of the technique indirectly the following year.