CIA director Leon Panetta fired back at Nancy Pelosi after the House speaker said that the spy agency "misled" Congress on waterboarding and other torturous interrogation tactics.

Panetta said today that he and his colleagues are not in the business of lying and urged his staff to keep their eye on the prize. In a memo entitled "Turning Down the Volume," Panetta told staffers, via Politico:

Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed.’ Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.

Panetta also insisted that the agency is one of "high integrity, professionalism and dedication," and instructed agents to not get distracted by all the "political hay" caused by Pelosi’s press conference yesterday.

You can read the entire memo over at Politico.