{"id":7212,"date":"2006-04-22T10:44:16","date_gmt":"2006-04-22T14:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7212"},"modified":"2006-04-22T10:44:16","modified_gmt":"2006-04-22T14:44:16","slug":"a-bad-leak-is-a-fireable-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-bad-leak-is-a-fireable-offense\/","title":{"rendered":"A ‘bad’ leak is a fireable offense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last fall, a [tag]CIA[\/tag] official leaked word<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

The story touched off a furious internal investigation as the CIA sought out the leaker. Yesterday, they found their “culprit.”<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I can’t help but think of the irony here. The LA Times reported<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}