Posted on 04/24/2006 7:03:57 AM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
I substantially agree with Jonah’s point that the extraordinary amount of money at issue here is relevant but not dispositive when it comes to divining Mary McCarthy’s motives. But I do think it’s highly relevant – not just another fact in a firmament of facts.
That’s because McCarthy’s situation cannot be considered in a vacuum. Even with McCarthy considered alone, we are not talking about a single leak – the reporting indicates that she may be a serial leaker, the black-sites story being only the most prominent instance. But the broader context here is an intelligence community that was, quite brazenly, leaking in a manner designed to topple a sitting president. A big question here -- maybe not for purposes of guilt under the espionage act, but for the more important policy issue of a politicized CIA -- is whether she was part of a campaign that was grossly inappropriate for the intelligence community to engage in.
Remember Michael Scheuer, aka “Anonymous.” It is simply dumbfounding that, as an intelligence officer heading up the bin Laden team (i.e., the unit targeting the number one, active national security problem facing the country) he was permitted by the CIA to write books about what he was doing. He has indicated, though, that it was fine with the agency as long as he was slamming the Bush administration.
Valerie Plame Wilson thought the whole Bush administration notion that Saddam was trying to arm up with nukes was crazy. She maneuvered to have, not an objective analyst, but her husband – with no WMD expertise but an enemy of the president’s policy – sent to Niger, whence he returned and wrote a highly partisan, misleading and damaging op-ed in the NYTimes about the Bush administration’s case for toppling Saddam … which op-ed he was permitted by the self-same CIA to write notwithstanding that his trip was (and should have been) classified.
All the while, there has been a steady drumbeat from the former intelligence officers – who anonymously fill Seymour Hersh books when they are not venting their spleens on the record – attacking every aspect of the administration’s handling of the war on terror.
This has all been steady since 9/11. But it was especially frenetic in the run-up to the 2004 election (and the flavor of it ran throughout the 9/11 Commission hearings and, to a somewhat more muted extent, in the Commission’s final report). The transparent purpose of it was to get Senator Kerry elected.
Now we find that an intelligence officer who was leaking information very damaging to Bush was a Kerry backer to a degree that was extraordinary for a single person on a government salary, and, even more extraordinarily, gave $5K of her own money to Democrats in the key swing state (Ohio) that, in the end, did actually decide the election.
From where I sit, that’s pretty damn relevant.
We need to conduct an agency audit.
No audit, we need a purge.
the obvious question is if she is getting unreported income (cash) from leakage. that is a lot of after-tax money to be spending on politics.
Well this one really is Bush's fault. He didn't get Porter Goss in there soon enough. Instead he kept a clinton cronie as the top guy.
That was probably the biggest blunder of his first term. And now we are reaping what we have sown by not playing hardball out of the gate.
Bush needs to go on the offensive about this and play the victim...like Clinton did.
how about....SEDITION?
n: 'an illegal action inciting resistance to lawful authority and tending to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government'
> the obvious question is if she is getting unreported
> income (cash) from leakage. that is a lot of after-tax
> money to be spending on politics.
Not just leakage.
When people of modest incomes max out the political
contributions, it is usually the case that they are
either highly partisan, or it isn't their money.
Follow the money.
If she had been a paralegal at a law firm doing this,
we could be certain it was the lawyers' money donated
in her name.
So who would have provided the money?
It's unlikely to have been The Firm itself here.
We know that he was pouring millions into Ohio to buy the election, illegally for Kerry..........was McCarthy one of his conduits?
ping
We should abolish the CIA and immediately replace it with a new agency which can tehn be staffed from scratch.
The precedent is the Kennedy Administration abolishing the Bureau of the Budget (filled with Republican bureaucrats) and immediately replacing it (in the same legislation) with the Office of Management and Budget (which they stcoked with Democrat bureaucrats.)
We should abolish the CIA and immediately replace it with a new agency which can tehn be staffed from scratch.
The precedent is the Kennedy Administration abolishing the Bureau of the Budget (filled with Republican bureaucrats) and immediately replacing it (in the same legislation) with the Office of Management and Budget (which they stcoked with Democrat bureaucrats.)
Did she know Kerry personally? Did she ever have occasion to brief the senator? It's a small world, especially at that level of government.
The money is more likely a bid by McCarthy to curry favor (and a high level job) with the Kerry administration.
Suggesting that he might have done something sooner is one thing. Accusing him of being at fault is quite another.
Let's keep this discussion legit, OK?
Great post.
I thought the CIA should polygraph everyone a long time ago. Looks like they finally did. I don't think this is the last of it somehow, perhaps more heads will roll!o)
Grab the popcorn, should be a good show.
So you don't think Bush should be accountable for who he appoints to his cabinet and high gov't positions?
You can try to make that argument and you may believe it, but I believe he should be held accountable for those he appoints. EXACTLY LIKE I HELD CLINTON ACCOUNTABLE for his cabinet of criminals.
If Bush had replaced Tenet in the first year he wouldn't be having these problems today. So who's fault is it that he left a democrat crony at the CIA?
If we are going to keep this discussion legit we need to be honest with ourselves.
To really get an idea if this person had an agenda would be to examine any rewrite of assessments or her personal analysis of data.
FWIW, I don't have a good feeling about this aspect of the situation.
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