Rick Moran poses the idea the recent CIA leak nabbing could have been a sting operation. His logic is sound: the day of the news breaking on the CIA Officer being fired, news comes out that the EU cannot find any evidence of the prisons described in the Washington Post story by Dana Priest.

It is very, very tempting to connect those two dots. They are begging to be connected. One dot is going so far as to do a belly dance to entice the other. Alas, we have absolutely no evidence at this point so it is pure speculation to say that the entire “secret CIA prison” story was a plant and part of an internal agency leak investigation.

Ed Morrisey chimes in on the idea as well:

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.

…

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 good Captain has good points, as well as Rick. But my gut tells me the story fell apart because (a) it was a planted story by a partisan, (b) the story was exaggerated to make something normal sound sinister to hook a reporter, and (c) the gullible Dana Priest was too lazy to (and wanted the story to true a la Rathergate) to do any investigating.

My analysis on the NSA-FISA story shows the NY Times got it all backwards. Instead of NSA bypassing FISA, FISA judges were uncomfortable dealing with evidence of terrorists coming from the NSA. The FISA judges who resisted the changes after 9-11 are all on the record saying the NSA tainted FISA – which can only happen when the NSA data is being used to get FISA warrants. The whole sad story is contained in the massive numbers of posts I did on this subject, but the result is the same. The story was a long list of errors – except on details useful to the terrorists trying to get by our defenses and attack us.

My guess we will see more of this because of the Plame precedent/ Reporters bought the Plame garbage hook line and sinker. Once the partisan left realized they could make up scandals out of whole cloth and a rabid, liberal press would eat them up without question. Now both groups will be looking pretty bad if more of these revelations come out. And of course the will blame Bush and Reps for making them do what they did.

Addendum:Time has a story out already on the CIA leaker being caught. Now that is fast. I should point out why I think this may not have been a sting operation, and I can take a segment from the Time story as a launching point:

A Government official told Time that the fired officer admitted to conversations with the press after irregularities were spotted in a lie detector test. Soon after Goss moved quickly to fire the individual.

Porter Goss mentioned weeks ago polygraphs were going to be used to assess key individuals across the agency. It was basically a fishing expedition, but it can work. And it will be in numerous rounds as suspects are identified, evidence gathered, suspects re-interviewed with more polygraph failures, and then confronted. I failed to include this in the main post above.

Time enjoys finding and stating the obvious (which is why I stopped reading it a while ago):

A legal expert said that the fact that the ex-CIA employee allegedly admitted some form of unauthorized disclosure could accelerate the normally lengthy process of determining whether this specific case will be formally investigated or prosecuted. It could also be folded into the existing overall investigation into who may have leaked the story about the CIA’s secret detention network. “There is an open investigation into that case,” one U.S. official confirmed.

Yes, if you confess it tends to speed things up.  And we see more indications this story is the tip of the ongoing investigations into leaks:

Several other investigations into leaks to reporters are currently underway in Washington, including one to discover who told New York Times reporters about the Presidentially ordered National Security Agency secret program to tap domestic calls to suspected terrorists without obtaining warrants beforehand.

Watch this space.