Posted on 04/22/2006 3:56:47 AM PDT by edpc
The CIA fired a long-serving intelligence officer for sharing classified information with The Washington Post and other news organizations, officials said yesterday, as the agency continued an aggressive internal search for anyone who may have discussed intelligence with the news media.
CIA officials said the career intelligence officer failed more than one polygraph test and acknowledged unauthorized contacts with reporters. The "officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information" with journalists, the agency said in a statement yesterday.
The CIA did not reveal the identity of the employee, who was dismissed Thursday, but NBC News reported last night she is Mary McCarthy. An intelligence source confirmed that the report was accurate.
McCarthy began her career in government as an analyst at the CIA in 1984, public documents show. She served as special assistant to the president and senior director for intelligence programs at the White House during the Clinton administration and the first few months of the Bush administration. She later returned to the CIA. Attempts to reach her last night were unsuccessful.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The talk on the Sunday shows will be how the Bush administration is hunting down, intimidating, and ruining "patriots" in the intelligence services. The MSM would have us believe the mention of the name Valerie Plame is a capital offense, while disclosure of current operational information is legit and newsworthy.
This is even richer:
From Captain ED at CQ:
A Sting Operation?
Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse wonders if the story on CIA detention centers might not have been a sting operation to unmask leakers at Langley. The possibility comes up because on the same day that the CIA terminated Mary McCarthy for her communications to the press, the New York Times reports that European investigators cannot find any evidence that the detention centers ever existed:
The European Union's antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe.
"We've heard all kinds of allegations," the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. "It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt." ...
Mr. de Vries said the European Parliament investigation had not uncovered rights abuses despite more than 50 hours of testimony by rights advocates and people who say they were abducted by C.I.A. agents. A similar investigation by the Council of Europe, the European human rights agency, came to the same conclusion in January — though the leader of that inquiry, Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said then that there were enough "indications" to justify continuing the investigation.
A number of legislators on Thursday challenged Mr. de Vries for not taking seriously earlier testimony before the committee of a German and a Canadian who gave accounts of being kidnapped and kept imprisoned by foreign agents.
The committee also heard Thursday from a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said: "I can attest to the willingness of the U.S. and the U.K. to obtain intelligence that was got under torture in Uzbekistan. If they were not willing, then rendition prisons could not have existed." But Mr. Murray, who was recalled from his job in 2004 after condemning the Uzbek authorities and criticizing the British and American governments, told the committee that he had no proof that detention centers existed within Europe.
He said he had witnessed such rendition programs in Uzbekistan, but he seemed to back up Mr. de Vries's assertion when he said he was not aware of anyone being taken to Uzbekistan from Europe. "As far as I know, that never happened," he said.
How do intel agencies find leakers and spies? They pass around carefully designed misinformation to selected individuals considered likely suspects, and see what winds up exposed as a result. It's possible that after Porter Goss took over as DCI when George Tenet left, he began mole hunting in a big way. It's certain that the administration would have demanded some action on leaks, and Goss would have been of a similar mind. It appears that the story she gave Dana Priest has a lot less substance than first thought. Two separate investigations by Europe turned up nothing. They have reported on both occasions that no evidence exists to substantiate the story, either of the detention centers or of European cooperation.
McCarthy would have been a classic candidate for this kind of mole hunt. A favorite of the previous administration, having reached the National Security Council, her loss of influence in the new administration could have prompted bitterness and antagonism. The New York Times in a new report says she contributed to John Kerry's campaign, perhaps on the basis of her past work with Kerry advisors Richard Clark and Sandy Berger:
Ms. McCarthy has been a well-known figure in intelligence circles. She began her career at the agency as an analyst and then was a manager in the intelligence directorate, working at the African and Latin America desks, according to a biography by the strategic studies center. With an advanced degree from the University of Minnesota, she has taught, written a book on the Gold Coast and was director of the social science data archive at Yale University.
Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 [the maximum -- CE] in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.
We may never know if the entire story about detention centers turned out to be a smoke screen intended to reveal a leak. We certainly have no evidence beyond the McCarthy leak and Priest's story. If it does turn out to be nothing more than misinformation for a leak probe, the Washington Post and the Pulitzer Committee will look very foolish indeed.
Addendum: AJ Strata is all over this story as well.
I like how they had to get an "intelligence source" to confirm it, when someone a few cubicles down already knew. You have to wonder if the NBC source was at the WaPo. Incestuous business.
Sandy Berger must be so proud.
The thought of Rockefeller caught in the net is almost too delicious to contemplate.
She was over at Berger's house comparing her bountiyful bloomers to his puffy pants.
That would be funny. I never read the book, or saw the movie, but The Falcon and The Snowman has a similar story line, from what I've heard. Apparently, Christopher Boyce had sold some damaging information to the Soviets and was ultimately caught when he passed info on a bogus project. It would seem that some in the intelligence services never learn.
Why does the media keep dropping words? It is like the illegal in front of immigrant...it just keeps falling away! It isn't like they are searching for people who talked about how smart their children are (intelligence) or their IQ.
This is the kind of McCarthyism that I can be against!
No, I think the real reason is much more.... substantial.
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound [ed. think Gulag folks] in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA’s unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA’s covert actions.
Of course this one prison was expanded to multiple prisons after the WaPo’s sister newspaper the New York Times felt cheated by such a breakthrough. Now that we know one of the CIA leakers, which is to say only one leaker of classified information to Priest, this calls into question Priest’s line of “according to U.S. and foreign officials.” Is that just one U.S. official and who knows how many unspecified “foreign officials?” This certainly puts the entire story into question. One known CIA agent leaked information from what she believed was a series of secret CIA detention facilities. What was that agent’s reason for leaking classified information? Was it because she believed it was illegal or because she wanted to challenge authority? So, again. What secret prisons? From Scarborough and Gertz:
Instead, what is going on, we are told, is that al Qaeda terrorists are sent temporarily to allied countries throughout the continent for questioning. The covert flights of intelligence aircraft carrying the prisoners triggered the false speculation about the prisons, the officials said.
“We’ve let allied services take a crack at these guys,” said one official familiar with the program. The European services often seek answers to more specific questions related to Islamic extremist groups and operations in their nation or region.
Are these secret prisons that Priest reported on, and she won a Pulitzer mind you, nothing more than interrogation centers? Scarborough and Gertz go on and state that interrogation rooms were masked to look like Middle Eastern rooms to fool whomever was unfortunate enough to be picked up. This sounds much more accurate. After all, how many secret prisons can there be without anyone actually knowing about them or even there being proof they ever existed in the first place? Slim and None really, and Slim just stepped out and None wants no part of this.
Did Dana Priest win a Pulitzer based on faulty intelligence? Furthermore, where were the factcheckers at the Washington Post before this story was submitted?
Freeper timeout found the connection between traitor Mary and Joe Wilson.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1619050/posts?page=998#998
Not to mention treason. I can't wait to see reporters walking out of court rooms in handcuffs!
“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 think I can come up with a dozen off the top of my head Dafna... but hey... I'm not a DNC/hack reporter like you.
review
I do thank you for that link. I have spent the past few hours reading through that thread and I must have clicked past that page cause I missed it. Good to have it here for reference on this thread.
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