It’s highly ironic that somebody is actually getting in serious trouble for leaking to the press in a city full of leakers. Mary McCarthy, a CIA employee in the Inspector General’s office in Washington, has of course been fired for leaking the secret prison story to Pulitzer Priest, er, Dana Priest of the Washington Post.
Twisting that irony a little further, when the story first broke it was through leakers we learned her name. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of being caught and fired, of course. But let’s keep this in proper perspective–there’s a difference between a political leak and releasing classified information that could be damaging, especially if you sign an employment contract stating you won’t do so, and especially if you hold a top level security clearance.
The story has started a level three brush fire in the blogosphere, mainly on the starboard side. No doubt the ignition source was likely her record of donations to the democrats, especially John Kerry, and perhaps her former position on the National Intelligence Council along with Joe Wilson. Imagine the possibilities.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media has been slow to engage or to spin, but the New York Times seems to be telling us where they stand in a piece called “Colleagues Say C.I.A. Analyst Played by Rules”:
WASHINGTON, April 22 — In 1998, when President Bill Clinton ordered military strikes against a suspected chemical weapons factory in Sudan, Mary O. McCarthy, a senior intelligence officer assigned to the White House, warned the president that the plan relied on inconclusive intelligence, two former government officials said.
Ms. McCarthy’s reservations did not stop the attack on the factory, which was carried out in retaliation for Al Qaeda’s bombing of two American embassies in East Africa. But they illustrated her willingness to challenge intelligence data and methods endorsed by her bosses at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Standing up to the boss is one thing, but allegedly breaking terms of employment and violating a security clearance is quite another. Wonder why she didn’t leak her concerns about Clinton’s erroneous bombing of the aspirin factory at the time? The Times goes on to inform us:
We’re talking about a person with great integrity who played by the book and, as far as I know, never deviated from the rules,” said Steven Simon, a security council aide in the Clinton administration who worked closely with Ms. McCarthy.
Others said it was possible that Ms. McCarthy — who made a contribution to Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004 — had grown increasingly disenchanted with the methods adopted by the Bush administration for handling Qaeda prisoners.
Ms. McCarthy, who began attending law school at night several years ago and was preparing to retire from the C.I.A., may have felt she had no alternative but to go to the press.
Because after all, Bush is Hitler, right? The story continues to delve into the low-level war that’s been going on for years in the ‘bowels’ of CIA and State by quoting Larry Johnson, a friend of Valerie Plame and member of the VIPS group, an organization of ex-spooks who don’t like Bush.
Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who worked for Ms. McCarthy in the agency’s Latin America section, said, “It looks to me like Mary is being used as a sacrificial lamb.”
First of all he appears to be a biased source and second, he’s been retired from the bureau for quite awhile so it’s hard to figure this being anything more than a guess.
The newspaper that printed the Pulitzer Prize winning article and employs Ms. Priest has been relatively non-committal so far, with only a general information story about the firing. Keep in mind these papers are already walking on pins and needles due to the spectre of reporters being hauled in to testify on the Plame leak as well as the Wen Ho Lee fiasco several years back. Their cloak of immunity has lately been eroded by the Supreme Court decision on the Plame testimony (that landed Judy Miller in jail) and additional unfavorable rulings in the Lee case. Can you imagine the level of animosity up there right now?
There are several things to watch for this week. One, whether the mainstreamers try to keep the story alive and fight back or simply try to bury it. One early clue might be the Sunday show agendas, but if they choose burial it might be harder since the CIA is promising there is more to come. Another aspect is whether the general public will take any notice. Perhaps they might if a connection can be made to the Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame affair.
