House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.) deepened the mystery of the AIG bonus clause this morning. In a press conference (video here), she appeared to be claiming that no one from the House had been present at the House-Senate conference committee where AIG the provision was inserted:

“This is Senate-White House language…If you want to talk about what happened in the Senate, go to the Senate and talk to them…It was never brought to conference…This never came to the House side. You can talk to any of our conferees.”

(The Hill offers a more detailed write-up here.) Pelosi’s statement is at least inaccurate in that the bill came to the House side with the AIG provision, and passed on a roll call vote. But if the House Democrat conferees (Charlie Rangel, Henry Waxman, and David Obey) were not present for the House-Senate conference committee, where were they? Were they, like the Republican conferees, locked out of negotiations?