The New McCarthyism : Leak and Purge

"Leaking" have become a very strange thing in the last few weeks. A term with amazing elasticity and pliability.

We've had the two-year long Plame-Leak Investigation - which continues to drag on and on, sending one worthless shill reporter to jail and apparently even linking to the VP and President themselves, as it was revealed that they "Declassified" and leaked NIE information - using the special double super-secret handshake procedure - in order to "clarify the record".

We've had revelations that Senator Pat Roberts, one of the most ardent critics of classified leaks, himself leaked classified information just prior to the start of the Iraq war.

And then we've had the case of Mary McCarthy, who in a matter of a few days has gone from "Traitor", to "Whistle-blower", and now possibly "Scape-goat".

What a web we weave, eh?

Almost as soon as it was announced and discovered that the former CIA Assistant Inspector General Mary McCarthy had been fired for leaking information about our Secret Prisons in Eastern Europe most of the mainstream media presumed that she must of been guilty, and had most likely confessed.

WASHINGTON - In a rare occurrence, the CIA fired an officer who acknowledged giving classified information to a reporter, NBC News learned Friday.

The officer flunked a polygraph exam before being fired on Thursday and is now under investigation by the Justice Department, NBC has learned.

Intelligence sources tell NBC News the accused officer, Mary McCarthy, worked in the CIA's inspector general's office and had worked for the National Security Council under the Clinton and and George W. Bush administrations.

Meanwhile Faux-Liberal Juan Williams stepped up to call what McCarthy (allegedly) did an "act of honor".

BRIT HUME: That is not an exercise simply of First Amendment rights. This was a violation of her oath and her responsibility.
CHRIS WALLACE: All right. I'm going to...
JUAN WILLIAMS: Let me -- no, let me...
CHRIS WALLACE: No, no, no. No.
WILLIAMS: Let me just quickly respond.
Brit, she took a risk. She was very aware of what she had signed. She is now bearing the cost of having broken that pledge.
WALLACE: So this is an act of conscience?
WILLIAMS: And so in that sense, yes, I do believe it's an act of honor.

So while Williams is painting McCarthy as a martyr of conscience, on the extreme wing-bat side of the world, they were practically giddy with glee - FreeRepublic and Michael Malkin (links offered for the brave and/or foolhardy only) have even tried to link McCarthy to Joe Wilson questioning whether she may have approved his Niger trip based on a so-called "Portolio Overlap".

Mary McCarthy: ... began her government service as an analyst, then manager, in CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, holding positions in both African and Latin American analysis. [I think this was 1984 to 1991]. 1991 to 2001: National Security Council

Joe Wilson: U.S. Ambassador to the [African ]Gabonese Republic 1992 to 1995...
Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998

Oooh, big coincidence. Yeah, like I guess they were both with the NSC for about a year then they must have also been secretly dating while Valerie was away doing Spy stuff!. (Haven't they run out of people to blame for Wilson's trip yet?) Ok, Let's just nip this nonesense in the bud by pointing out Joe didn't go to Niger until 2002, and that neither the NSC nor the CIA's Inspector General's Office had anything to do with it. First it was "Valerie sent him", now it's Mary? Which is it, because you can't have it both ways? Sheshhh.

Backing away slowly from the nutballs on the right -- we find that even the Washingtonpost had pretty much tried and convicted McCarthy in absentia.

A majority of CIA officers would probably "find the action taken [against McCarthy] correct," said a former senior intelligence official who said he had discussed the matter with former colleagues in the past day. "A small number might support her, but the ethic of the business is not to" leak, and instead to express one's dissenting views through internal grievance channels.

Sen. Pat (I can leak if I want to) Roberts was practically glowing is reaction to the report of McCarthy's firing.

Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate intelligence panel, welcomed the CIA's actions. In a statement, he said leaks had "hindered our efforts in the war against al Qaeda," although he did not say how.

"I am pleased that the Central Intelligence Agency has identified the source of certain unauthorized disclosures, and I hope that the agency, and the [intelligence] community as a whole, will continue to vigorously investigate other outstanding leak cases," Roberts said.

Then some actual facts started to come it as McCarthy , through her attorney, denied the charges that she leaked classified information or that she "flunked" the polygraph. Now former CIA analyst Larry Johnson - who was an aquaintance of McCarthy's - has pointed out that she never had access to the information in question.

In fact, there are some things about the case that puzzle me. For starters, Mary never worked on the Operations side of the house. In other words, she never worked a job where she would have had first hand operational knowledge about secret prisons. She worked the analytical side of the CIA and served with the National Intelligence Council. According to press reports, she subsequently worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from 2001 thru 2005. That is a type of academic/policy wonk position and, again, would not put her in a position to know anything first hand about secret prisons.

To paraphrase Oliver Stone - it seems that the CIA's chief suspect couldn't have done the shoot!

If Larry Johnson knows this, it seems to me that most of the CIA brass know this. Mary just couldn't be the leaker - particularly since the Pulitzer Prize Winning Dana Priest Story in question used dozens of sources, so just what the hell is going on around here?

The current speculation is that McCarthy was purged for being a - gasp - a DEMOCRAT!

Stop waving that tin-foil hat at me - and check this from Newsday via From Crooks and Liars -

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources. "The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda." (emphasis added)

Miller415 also has a diary which makes this point - but I have to point out that this isn't a new phenomenon among the CIA, I blogged about the big flush going on at CIA back when Porter Goss was originally appointed.

At a time when the threat of terrorism has placed a premium on accurate intelligence, the White House is creating chaos at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The White House has ordered Bush's new CIA director, Porter Goss, "to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush." According to a senior CIA official, the agency is planning to get rid of "liberals" and others who are perceived as "obstructing the president's agenda." Among career CIA officials, Goss's partisan agenda has created "an atmosphere of ill will and apprehension [that] could distract the agency from its work in the fight against terrorism."

GOSS INSTALLS POLITICAL CRONIES IN TOP CIA POSITIONS: Goss has installed inexperienced political operatives from Capitol Hill in powerful positions and "given [them] wide latitude in running the agency." A staffer from the House Intelligence Committee, Patrick Murray, is Goss's chief of staff, and two other House Republican aides have been installed "as senior advisors with broad but unspecified authority." Rep. Jane Harman attributed low morale at the CIA to the "inexperienced" House Intelligence Committee staff members Goss has placed in top positions. Harmon described the group as "highly partisan," saying, "many of us worked with that staff in the House...on both sides of the aisle in committee, we were happy to see them go." Goss initially named another aide, Michael J. Kostiw, as the CIA's No. 3 official. But Kostiw "quickly withdrew from considerations after former intelligence officials mentioned that he had resigned from the C.I.A. in the early 1980's after an administrative leave in connection with a shoplifting case."

Since polygraph testmony isn't admissible in court - how likely is there to be a prosecution unless the CIA has a lot more substantial evidence (which at this point I doubt they have)? And if McCarthy was indeed wrongly fired, isn't it convenient that she was just a week away from retirement - because if she sued for back pay and won, they'd only owe her for that last week wouldn't they? Talk about targetting the low hanging fruit.

From Larry Johnson's appearance on Countdown.

OLBERMANN: The subject of authorized versus unauthorized, this has become the black and white of the 21st century. Whoever the source of the “Washington Post” report was, is the worst transgression, in your eyes, leaking the existence of repurposed Soviet-era gulags into CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, or blowing the cover of a covert op like Valerie Plame Wilson?

JOHNSON: No intelligence capabilities were destroyed by the leak of the secret prisons. In fact, that came from multiple sources within the intelligence community who were alarmed that the United States was starting to engage in the very practices we used to condemn the Soviets for.

Whereas in the case of Valerie Wilson, not only was her cover destroyed, but an undercover company was destroyed. Intelligence assets that were involved with trying to determine, detect, and protect America against weapons of mass destruction, they were destroyed in that leak.

That was a case where the Bush White House participated in smearing and attacking innocent Americans. That‘s a far different thing, and I think far more heinous, than someone who tries to blow the whistle, or a group of somebodies, who blow the whistle on administration practices which take us down the road toward something that looks a lot like what we had when the Soviets were running gulags.

Is McCarthy's career and future employability being slow roasted on a spit for something she couldn't possibly have done while the Prez and Pat Roberts can apparently leak at will? Probably.

Was McCarthy fired for being a Democrat? Possibly not. Since the revelations have been coming fast and furious over this issue - the only thing we do know at this time, is that we really don't know what's going on. Yet. But it should be interesting finding out.

Vyan