CIA Fires Officer For Leaking Classified Information to Media

"But what she did was harm the Country ... IN A TIME OF WAR"

I understand that. Once she gives up all the information about what she leaked, and to whom, she should be shot for treason.

Thank you. :-)

Not to sound argumentative... lol

I'm trying to figure out how to do those wonderful searches that you all do. I'm a google neophyte.

But I'll try before I head up to bed. I feel like a real slacker with this group tonight. ;-)

Pinz

That's too funny for words.

These people need to go back and retake kindergarten.

Holy moly! You're right. That IS gold! Suspect at the very least.

It'll be unearthed and I will ping you if I'm still here!

You mean something like the Clintons getting in an the Oil for Food $$$ bonanza???

Pinz

LOVing this from your link:

"Dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI's Washington field office.

Others have been prohibited, in writing, from discussing even unclassified issues related to the domestic surveillance program. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering tougher penalties for leaking.

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. ((((?????JERKS)))

"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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SIC 'EM, Pat!

WTG!
===placemark === your post.
My eyes are getting tired.

"This comes in connection with recent news reports that detailed the CIA's operation of secret prisons in Europe and its far-flung flights of suspected terrorists to foreign prisons."

Thanks to ABC for bringing that up. Too bad none of those reports have been demonstrated to be correct.

Has anyone thought about the possibility that The leaker gave Sandy Burglar a heads up so that he went into the archives and stole notes that might have incriminated The Clinton Administration and him in particular for the failure to capture Bin Laden and prevent the 9-11 attack? These people all seemed to have been an unholy bunch that have spent time covering up their inept intelligence that led to 9-11 and now that they still remain in high positions they are conniving,sneaking,stealing,leaking to try to get back into Power. There has to be a huge connection. I also have a feeling that this firing is just what The Bush Administration has been looking for because it comes out the same week that The White House announces changes beginning in key White House People. Plus it comes out as the Pulitzer Prizes were announced. I do not believe it is a coincidence. Tony Snow should stay where he is, it is going to get very hot and heavy and a very bumpy ride, and it is healthier for him to be Commentator, not in the line of fire. My head is already spinning and this is only a few hours old.

Something like that.

Timeout hit the mother lode!

Here's Mary McCarthy's testimony before the 9-ll Commission:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ame/911/911tr/101403.htm

MS. MARY O. McCARTHY: Okay, thank you. I don't have this on. Is it on now? No. Well, Mr. Chairman and commissioners, it's my honor to be here today. As you know, I have been a CIA officer for almost 20 years and have held positions in the intelligence community as a national intelligence officer for warning, amongst other things, and in the policy world on the National Security Council staff in two administrations. I'm here today to share with you some of what I learned about intelligence warning in the course of that experience, and from my own research and teaching. Thus, the views I express here will be my own and as a current CIA employee, I'll have to say they are not necessarily those of the Central Intelligence Agency.

First, I'd like to say briefly what I mean when I talk about warning. I am talking about more than just sound an alarm to say that a bad thing is nigh. I am, rather, talking about warning analysis as a process by which analysts identify threats, develop or imagine possible outcomes than explore the relevant data and demand relevant data that are not at hand, and they keep the decision makers informed. The idea is to be able to provide these decision makers with a series of assessments or warnings of increasing precision regarding the likelihood and proximity of the unwelcome event.

Such a system of warning analysis must also entail an ensured flow of information across agencies, and more and more today to different levels of government. And it also must have a reliable access to the information by means of integrated information technology. There is no question that analysis of and collection on the so-called transnational threats, such as terrorism and proliferation, have made the warning job more complicated. The mobility and the small footprint of the terrorist groups, for example, present greater challenges to intelligence analysts and collectors than does the job of following large armies, or even traditional insurgencies, whose range of activities is more clearly understood. But it is still possible, indeed necessary, to apply the same system of meticulous conceptualizing, sorting of data and vigorous dialogue with collectors that form the basis of sound analysis.

Secondly, it is crucially important that this strategic warning analysis be conducted as a separate activity from that which produces the daily analytic reports and threat lists, and where the pace of work simply does not permit reflection, research or exploration of alternative hypotheses. But that near-term analysis or tactical effort is strengthened by the strategic analysis, which provides context for fast breaking events and because the process identifies the most dangerous intelligence gaps and stimulates collection, the likelihood that the relevant helpful intelligence for interdiction in disruption efforts, for example, will have been collected.

Also, it is important to recognize that we are mere human beings who are doing this work. What we need to do is develop systems that will help us do the work better, while minimizing the known human propensities for error. In my written testimony for the record I recount in some detail the history of intelligence warning failures since World War II. Previous reviews of those events by Congress and by the intelligence community itself have recommended that a national intelligence officer for warning be created or strengthened or empowered to provide advice to the Director of Central Intelligence and to be the substantive leader on the discipline of warning intelligence.

The one thing that I would like to underscore in my testimony today is that having such an individual is not sufficient. Rather, it is a system that is needed with expert analysts in each analytic area dedicated to the task of big picture analysis and the exploration of alternative hypotheses. And finally the Congress, with its budget and oversight authorities, has a role here as well. There is much that Congress can do to encourage the necessary reforms and establishing ongoing review mechanisms to ensure that these reforms endure.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. "

...............

"

MR. CLELAND: As one who was an author of the Homeland Security bill, I understand that. We can get a lot of intelligence, shall we say, from the first responders, the policemen on the beat and so forth. I understand that. What I'm talking about is the national strategic responsibility for warning this country. This book says that -- we're talking about Germany here -- it says from the early 1990s, Osama bin Laden was running an active al Qaeda terrorist cell in New York City. The FBI had sufficient intelligence to capture the bomb maker before he even attacked the World Trade Center the first time in 1993.

The point being here, some have said that we don't need radical surgery, we don't need major surgery here, but we've had a major attack on our country, we've had a major intelligence failure and what I'm trying to ask you all is, what is your best way that you would recommend to us that we think about structuring warning? Ms. McCarthy? And who's accountable for that?

MS. McCARTHY: I would go back to my initial remark, and that is I think that having a single individual below the Director of Central Intelligence level, who is the substantive expert on warning, is one solution but not the entire solution. The entire solution would encompass integrating the warning function into every single analytic unit in the intelligence committee and making sure that that's their mission.

MR. CLELAND: Can we follow up on that from some of the readings, some of the testimony here. I understand that the people who were involved in Warning were somehow separate or different than the people involved in normal analytical efforts. I thought all analytical efforts, all data, all information was out there to estimate what the threat to the United States was.

MS. McCARTHY: Not everyone would agree with me on this, but I think that the conscious effort to do warning analysis on much of the community actually had gotten diverted to the exercise of producing the daily intelligence that needed to be produced for senior policymakers, and on the issue that you cited earlier about the early identification of an al Qaeda cell in New York, for example. That to me is an indication that the kind of warning analysis on the counterterrorism front was not taking place. In other words, we tended to look at individual cells and individual activities and actors rather than at the broad strategic cultural picture to identify the kinds of activities, the kinds of goals and missions that these groups would intend to have, and my fix for that would be -- and I don't have a notion that this is the only fix, but my fix for that would be to have -- on the counterterrorism issue, which I think is sui generis in terms of its complexity --would be to have a central component.

I don't favor a new agency, because if you develop a new agency, you end up having to develop a new culture, and trying to fix the cultures we have already is difficult enough. But I would have a separate component that would deal with all of the information across the government including domestic intelligence, all the information including information from state and local levels and from the private sector, when available, to do the warning job on counterterrorism. I would not have that particular -- it's a difficult choice, because I think it's very dangerous to have that component involved in any kind of collection or operation.

Then you end up with -- as a citizen rather than as an intelligence expert, that would concern me. That you have a group of operatives, essentially, who are used to very proactive -- in a different kind of legal framework -- activity, undertaking domestic operations. So I think it has to be solely an analytic component. But it would also have to have some way of stimulating collection, which I think makes it very difficult to try to kind of visualize or legislate such a component, because it's kind of a fine line sometimes between collecting -- particularly in domestic groups -- and interfering in their lives and First Amendment issues and so on. But that would be what I would favor.

MR. CLELAND: Thank you, Ms. McCarthy. "

.......

"

MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Nice to have all three of you here. We very much appreciate your testimony and I hope -- I know on our part it was certainly worth the wait, we apologize for the long delay and I hope, although I'm not claiming it will be, reciprocated on your part. Dr. McCarthy, I want to ask you a couple of questions, I've read some of your extensive writing on the National Intelligence Officer for Warning, and I want to be clear. You were Officer for Warning?

MS. McCARTHY: Yes, I was.

MR. ROEMER: And you were serving in that position when?

MS. McCARTHY: I served as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer from 1991 to 1994 and then '94 to mid '96 as the National Intelligence Officer for Warning.

MR. ROEMER: So, mid '96, so about five years you had experience in this position --

MS. McCARTHY: That's right.

MR. ROEMER: -- and then you've written extensively on this as well, too. I believe in your writing you have said that in 2001 when the 9/11 terrorist attack took place, that the National Intelligence Officer for Warning did not have responsibility for terrorism, is that correct?

MS. McCARTHY: Well, I don't -- that's my understanding, that's correct. That some time after I left the position in '96 I think sometime around that time, it was decided that, and I suppose although I can't say this authoritatively, that the counterterrorism center would in fact have that responsibility. In any case, the National Intelligence Officer for Warning did not have terrorism as part of his portfolio.

MR. ROEMER: Explain to me and explain to the American people who may be watching this, how is it that the National Intelligence Officer for Warning at the Central Intelligence Agency tasked with telling the country when there's an imminent threat, and certainly through the Joint Inquiry hearings we heard of the alarm and the record chatter in the summer of 2001, that that person did not even have it in their portfolio? To warn the CIA nor the country about a threat from terrorism or al Qaeda?

MS. McCARTHY: Mr. Roemer, I really can't speak with first hand knowledge of how that decision was made, I was as you know, down at the White House by that time.

MR. ROEMER: But the decision was made and to the best of your understanding they did not have that in their portfolio, is that correct?

MS. McCARTHY: That's to the best of my understanding, that's right.

MR. ROEMER: And if that was the case in September of 2001, has that been fixed?

MS. McCARTHY: I don't know. I don't know, I believe that is still not the case, so if the follow up question then is who does have responsibility, I can't answer that but maybe Mr. Kerr can.

MR. ROEMER: Well, as I move on to somebody else, and I don't mean to hone too much in on you, it's because you have such good knowledge in this area. My next question would be, why hasn't it been fixed, and then who has responsibility for warning our country about terrorism? Mr. Kerr, before I ask you the question, you were the one that said in your very eloquent and helpful statement, that you would predict that there's going to be another terrorist attack, it's going to be successful, why haven't we fixed the system at this point? "

..........

"

MS. McCARTHY: Well, it is a huge problem and it is one that I think cannot resolve just by organizational changes or by pronouncements that from now on, we want to see more alternative hypothesis, discovery by alternative hypothesis investigation. It's not going to work. We've tried that in the past. My own view is it has to be legislated and people have to be made legislatively accountable and there has to be continual oversight and I would suggest a continual review and I suggested that we may want to have something like the GAO take the responsibility under legislation for doing an absolute review of the strategic warning function within the intelligence community, not just CIA but the intelligence community at large or perhaps another staff that the Congress may wish to establish. But I think it has to be legislated.

We've been through this dance several times now with warning failures followed by investigation followed by recommendations to have more attention to warning. And we have more attention to warning for a short period of time and then the sort of culture, the dominant culture in the bureaucracy take over. So we have to say most of the time, it works. Most of the time, they are very bright people, they do very good work. And most of the time, they get away with it. But it's when they don't that the sort of warts of the system, if I may use the word, are revealed. So I think it's going to take more than just a recommendation to fix it. "

........

You said it. I worry about Tony also. As much as I would love to see him take the job, his health is more important. He's finally looking like his old self.

ever get the feeling we are being watched?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1619294/posts?page=13#13

Has anyone mentioned how long this took to break? I think this info was common MSM knowledge yesterday.

placemarker

LOL -- I think I hear helicopters --- let me go check to see if they're black...lol.

Great news....thanks for the ping.

I hope that this is just the first; with many more of the traitors to follow.

Porter Goss made a statement yesterday, but Mary's name only came to light today.