Post #10- "Priest probably never thought there would be any serious scrutiny of her “sources”—or her husband, for that matter.
But how could she know that a top CIA officer with a partisan political background would be fired for having unauthorized contacts with Priest and other journalists?
Then the story took another interesting twist. Fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy subsequently denied leaking classified information about the “secret prisons.”
Priest still won’t comment on whether McCarthy was one of her sources.
It is probably the case that McCarthy talked to Priest but never used the term “secret prisons.” It is possible that McCarthy wants to distance herself from an allegation that she knows to be dubious, in order to avoid prosecution for revealing classified information to a reporter who exaggerated the story for political reasons.
Priest could take McCarthy off the hook by simply declaring her not to be a source on the story. But she refuses to do that.
None of this is meant to suggest that the Priest story wasn’t true in some minor respects. It now seems clear that the CIA had some kind of classified program to transfer terrorists across Europe. But this doesn’t constitute a network of “secret prisons,” as Priest alleged.
It looks like Priest took some elements of a classified program and transformed them, tabloid-style, into a story that was essentially not true.
She made a controversial program into something that was, as former CIA officer Michael Scheuer put it, “titillating to the world’s media and incentive to America’s European enemies…”
Scheuer, in a December 12, 2005, Washington Times column, wrote about how the Post recklessly pursued this story, and how it helped “destroy the cover of a covert-action capability that took years to perfect.” But Scheuer also referred to how “the CIA’s clandestine counterterrorism cooperation with several allies has been exposed or reported incorrectly…” (emphasis added).
That is how the Priest story became communist-style disinformation.
It not only damaged our anti-terrorism efforts but put the Europeans on a wild goose chase to track down the “secret prisons” that will continue indefinitely. Most of this stems from the initial November 2, 2005, Priest story."
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Mr Dana Priest-Goodfellow's Political Connections
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Excerpt from online WaPo chat with Dana Priest:
* Indianapolis, Ind.: Bill Bennett told Wolf Blitzer the other day that you should be arrested for your story about secret prisons. Wolf asked Howard Kurtz to respond. Howie looked a little stunned at first and then came strongly to your defense.
How do you respond to people that are saying you should be arrested?
Dana Priest: Well, first, Bennett either doesn't understand the law or is purposefully distorting it. He keeps saying that it is illegal to publish secrets. It is not.
There is a category of secrets that is illegal to publish--names of covert operatives, certain signal intelligence and nuclear secrets--but even with these, prosecution is possible only under certain circumstances. Beyond that though, he seems to be of the camp that the government and only the government should decide what the public should know in the area of national security.
In this sense, his views run contrary to the framers of the Constitution who believed a free press was essential to maintaining not just a democracy, but a strong, vibrant democracy in which major policy is questions are debated in the open.
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The MSM .. they're just entitled to know everything, dammit, and they'll flaunt the law and our safety for their own selfish pursuits, twisting, perverting and distorting our govt.'s mission and motives for protecting US.
God forbid .. and I mean that .. God forbid there's another attack, with lives lost, US infrastructure destroyed .. I want to see these presstraitors criminally charged for being accessories to terror and for giving aid, comfort and VITAL CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to our sworn enemies in time of war.
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(WOW .. there she is ... D. Priest and Bill Bennett .. I'm actually in synch ..and YAY to Bill Bennett!! He's the lone sane voice on the panel .. and Andrea looks stupid, announcing the "next clip" 5 times. I'm SO surprised at Safire's take)
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"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Just a moment ...to remember and thank God for our brave and honorable Founders, and how much they gave for these United States of America:
George Read, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean, George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, John Morton, Benjamin Rush, George Ross, James Smith, James Wilson, George Taylor, John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry, Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton, Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery, Lewis Morris, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, William Floyd, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe, Thomas Nelson, Jr., William Hooper, John Penn, Joseph Hewes, Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, Thomas Lynch, Jr., Thomas Heyward, Jr., Abraham Clark, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Samuel Huntington, Roger Sherman, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott, Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Thomas Stone, William Paca