A ‘bad’ leak is a fireable offense

April 22, 2006

Last fall, a [tag]CIA[/tag] official leaked word to the Washington Post about the government hiding and interrogating al Qaeda captives in Soviet-era [tag]secret prisons[/tag] in Eastern Europe. In effect, to avoid breaking our laws, U.S. intelligence officials have been holding detainees overseas, and breaking other countries’ laws.

The story touched off a furious internal investigation as the CIA sought out the leaker. Yesterday, they found their “culprit.”

The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing [tag]classified[/tag] information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency’s secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday.

The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was [tag]Mary O. McCarthy[/tag], a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under President Bill Clinton and into the Bush administration.

At the time of her dismissal, Ms. [tag]McCarthy[/tag] was working in the agency’s inspector general’s office, after a stint at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an organization in Washington that examines global security issues.

The investigation to track down McCarthy was apparently quite serious. “This was a very aggressive internal investigation,” said one former C.I.A. officer with more than 20 years’ experience. “Goss was determined to find the source of the secret-jails story.” McCarthy reportedly failed a polygraph test and admitted her role in the story.

I can’t help but think of the irony here. The LA Times reported that McCarthy’s dismissal “marks the latest in a series of high-profile crackdowns on spy agency and Bush administration officials accused of unauthorized disclosures of classified information.”

Well, sort of. It’s also a reminder of the distinction the White House makes between “unauthorized disclosures of classified information” that makes the administration look bad, and Bush-backed leaks that make the administration look good. It was, after all, only a couple of weeks ago when the White House argued that Bush could authorize the leak of classified materials when it suited his political agenda.

And now we’re supposed to consider McCarthy dangerous? Put it this way, if McCarthy’s conduct is a fireable offense, I can’t wait to see which White House leakers turn in their resignations next.

Here’s what you are going to get from the Right to try to demonstrate that the leak was the ‘bad’ kind. Because this leak is POLITICALLY motivated while Bush leaks only ‘set the record straight’. From Tom Maguire (and by now everywhere in conservative blogdom):

“I applaud their instinct to look in this direction at all. However, per public records at Open Secrets, we can easily find the $2,000 donation to Kerry, a $5,000 donation by Mary O. McCarthy to the Ohio DNC, a $2,000 donation by a Michael J McCarthy from the same address (Husband, brother, bro-in-law, dad? I’ll guess hubby), and a $500 donation to Barbara Mikulski, all in 2004. $(,500 in 2004 donations from two folks who have reported almost nothing before that. Might be a story there, if the Times could find it.”

  • Thanks for ruining my morning coffee with this.

    These fucking scumball Mayberry nazis just make me want to take after their fat little ugly faces with a baseball bat and keep at it till their own mother wouldn’t recognize them. These goddamned traitors! Here I am a guy who makes his living with words and there are no words to adquately convery what bastards these fuckers are.

  • And yet Karl Rove and Dick Cheney remain gainfully employed by the U.S. government (and, sadly, unindicted).

    How the anyone is supposed to take this as a sign of the Bush Administration’s firm commitment to guarding national secrets I don’t know.

  • When the Democrats take back the House this November, impeachment shouldn’t be at the top of the agenda. The investigations into the Plame affair, this firing, and every other abuse of power by the Republican should be the priority. Then, after the public has seen all of the dirty laundry, we will have convinced the public that these bastards–Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al–need to be removed from office.

  • Fron the Larry Johnson article mentioned by rege:
    I am struck by the irony that Mary McCarthy may have been fired for blowing the whistle and ensuring that the truth about an abuse was told to the American people. There is something potentially honorable in that action; particularly when you consider that George Bush authorized Scooter Libby to leak misleading information for the purpose of deceiving the American people about the grounds for going to war in Iraq.

    Pretty well sums it up.

  • So…the adminstration denies the existence of these secret prisons. If they don’t exist, then information about them cannot be “classified” information—because it simply isn’t information. It’s “rumor and innuendo.”

    BUT…someone who reports supposedly false information is summarily dismissed from employment as the result of a long, arduous, and expensive investigation

    The question thus remains—do these prisons exist, or not? If the government can fire an employee for reporting false information, then ought not Kid George, Gunner Cheney, Karl Von Rove, and that rumsoaked oaf who’s (pretending to be) Secretary of Defense (probably has to do with a gun fetish—or perhaps he’s just compensating for a small something-or-other)…themselves be fired?

    Time for regime change in Amerika….

  • A “bad leak” is any government official saying something that could then hurt Bush/Cheney. A “good leak” only comes from the WH on orders of Bush/Cheney/Rover.

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