Posted on 04/24/2006 6:41:03 AM PDT by Quilla
Fired CIA intelligence analyst Mary McCarthy has reportedly confessed to leaking facts about the CIA's top-secret terrorist jails in Europe and Southwest Asia to Dana Priest of the Washington Post. As Priest basks in the glory of the Pulitzer Prize she won for those stories, McCarthy is alternately being investigated for criminal prosecution and hailed as a brave crusader for truth, justice and The American Way.
McCarthy is not, as one pundit said, a courageous American citizen exercising her First Amendment rights against an outrageous government policy. If there are no restrictions enforced by law, then there are no secrets. McCarthy is a traitor, someone who leaked top secret information and damaged our national security, risked the lives of Americans fighting a war, and disrupted our relations with nations that had been working with us against a new kind of enemy. McCarthy was an employee, not a policy maker. She has never been elected by the American people or appointed by the President to a position that would have entitled her to disclose that information. (And neither have the senators and congressmen who have leaked facts just as sensitive as those McCarthy passed on to Dana Priest.) Comparing McCarthy's crime to the President's decision to reveal details of a National Intelligence Estimate is a political argument based on a falsehood. The PPresident is the ultimate classification authority. When he decides to reveal information he is exercising one of the powers of the office to which he was elected.
McCarthy took advantage of the position she had been entrusted and violated her legal obligations. Serving in the CIA's inspector general's office, she had a special responsibility. The IG's office is legally authorized to be privy to compartmented information, the highest level of classification. Other CIA employees only see bits and pieces of such information because the compartmentalization system is designed to prevent all but a few top people to see all the pieces and know what they mean in the larger context. She violated her highest duty because her political beliefs were opposed to the policy that the President had established. Her disclosure was politically motivated. She wanted to thwart the policy of the President, and she achieved her goal by committing a felony. McCarthy should be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent the law allows. As should her fellow CIA leakers and manipulators of policy.
McCarthy was not alone among the CIA's analysts and decision makers. As I have written many times, the CIA has been in open revolt against the President since 9-11. Failing to foresee the fall of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attacks before, including and after 9-11, and just about everything else that mattered, the CIA has been an utter failure in the mission it was created to perform. Instead, it has been operating covertly against the government by mounting operations such as the Joe Wilson Niger trip, which was planned and performed only to discredit the President's position that Iraq was seeking uranium for a revived nuclear weapons program. CIA bureaucrats have been spending a lot of time and effort to discredit the President while fighting against the change that will transform it from the failure it has been to an agency that can meet the needs of a nation at war. And in doing so it has fueled the opposition press with these leaks.
America's free press is supposed to be one of the guardians of our freedom. But while the press is free it must also be responsible, and in this it fails comprehensively. The New York Times published the stories of the NSA terrorist surveillance program even after the President made a personal appeal to maintain the secrecy of one of our most highly valued secret programs (probably leaked by McCarthy's CIA pals or their cohorts in NSA and other agencies).
We are at war. Every American, regardless of his job, has a duty to protect the interests of this nation and to place his loyalty to our nation above his own career or political agenda. We aren't talking about Washington gossip, little secrets leaked by little people to raise their status from a "B-list" guest to the "A-list" for the right cocktail parties. We are talking about the essentials for fighting this war that, if revealed as the NSA program and the CIA secret prisons were, can mean the difference between winning the war and enabling our enemies to hit us again as they did on 9-11.
The liberal media is so consumed with its hatred for George Bush that it has lost any sense of loyalty to our nation. This year it gave its highest professional award -- the Pulitzer Prize -- to Dana Priest for her CIA prisons stories and to James Risen, the New York Times reporter who wrote the stories that revealed the NSA terrorist surveillance program. There is not even a debate among the press about whether these reporters should be chastised instead of rewarded. To the contrary, these Pulitzer Prizes make every reporter more eager to discover and publish America's secrets regardless of the consequences to our soldiers and our nation.
How many times have we seen the president subjected to lectures about introspection and demands for apologies by the White House press corps? If reporters, editors and publishers were publicly subjected to that same critical examination they might regain their sense of responsibility to the nation. And they might, in a moment of private introspection, regain the perspective that freedom of the press is not the only essential right enshrined in the Constitution. If a free press is not responsible, it cannot be a defender of freedom. It can become the enemy of all who fight in defense of our way of life. What will they publish next?
Treason. Send the ATF to the new dork times office and demand their immediate surrender. If they refuse burn the bloody building down. Janet Reno set the precedent for that, time for the liberals to live with the legacy of their golden boy klinton.
She needs to be made an example of. Hopefully this is only the first of the traitorous souls that are brought to account for their treasonous actions.
They need to TOAST her now. This is TREASON. If she is not made an example of...others will follow.
If not, she will end up on the MSM - DEMS talking head circuit, a book deal and head of the DNC by next year.
Juan Williams on Fox yesterday was saying she did the right thing if this is what she believed and did not deserve punishment. I would still be peeking through bars at Leavenworth if I would have told what I knew when holding a Top Secret clearance.
I just turned on the tube and what I've seen so far, from yesterday and this morn, this HOT potato is being swept under the rug by her buddies the mediaWHORES! This thing ain't going nowhere and no one will be do time in jail! The Sandy Burglar crime was hushed up by the CLYMERS in the media and so will this one!
Juan was disgusting yesterday. Brit Hume nailed him as usual, and even Chris Wallace's eyes grew to the size of saucers in response to Juan's comments.
She needs a room in the Jonathan Pollard suite and soon.
Sadly, we'll have another 9/11 before people take this seriously again.
I envision a 100 years' war in which the U.S. is occassionally awakened from slumber by terrorists.
The only time we'll really take this war seriously for the long run will be when we're nuked. The Dems cannot talk down a nuke after 5 years.
Hitler believed that Jews were sub-human and should be exterminated. Well, hey, if that's what he believes ...
Leftists. They are dangerous, crazy people.
It looked as if all of them were disgusted with what he said.
Well written!
Bump
"Treason"
That one word says it all.
Ping
The leftist pacifists don't recognize a state of war. The concept of war was forever destroyed in the 70's. The view is that war is the most reprehensible condition for a nation. Any action or deed that is counter to the notiuon of war is good.
That is why some drastic, fearful, chilling punishment must be widely administered.
The liberal media have allied themselves with the enemy and jeopardize First Amendment rights by intentionally revealing national secrets to the world.
“Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country”
Calvin Coolidge
Hey I've got a new tagline.
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