This Chicago Tribune article (free account required) on the McCarthy case illustrates how serious a problem denial can be for some people. Note the headline:

Some Doubt CIA Analyst Talked

Some think the world is flat and the sun orbits the earth. So what? The ‘what’ is that small minority of misfits I posted about earlier. And it is the lead misfit Larry Johnson, of course:

But despite McCarthy’s independent streak, some colleagues who worked with her at the White House and other offices during her intelligence career say they cannot imagine McCarthy as a leaker of classified information.

“It looks to me like Mary is being used as a sacrificial lamb,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who worked for McCarthy in the agency’s Latin America section.

Larry, did you miss the part where McCarthy admitted her deed?  Why are the rantings of this man even considered newsworthy? Besides, the title of this article should be ‘One Doubts CIA Analyst Talked’

Addendum: But Democrat Representative Jane Harmon wins the dumb pol statement of the week with this one:

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee complained on Sunday that the fired CIA employee who leaked classified information to the Washington Post about top secret interrogations of al Qaeda suspects was being held to a higher standard than President Bush.

Asked if she saw similarities between Bush’s decision to share declassified intelligence on Iraq with the media – and CIA leaker Mary McCarthy, Rep. Jane Harman told “Fox News Sunday: “You bet I do.”

“While leaks are wrong, I think it is totally wrong for our president, in secret, to selectively declassify certain information and to empower people in his White House to leak it to favored reporters so they can discredit political enemies,” she griped.

Hmm. Methinks Jane has been in DC too long – she has lost her memory. President Bush is one of the few who can declassify information, and he did so by giving it to the press so it would be presented to the public for debate. So much for being ‘in secret’. Jane must have also forgotten the historic event when John F Kennedy also declassified highly secret information (and exposed our imaging capabilities to our enemies) when he publicized pictures of missile sites in Cuba.

So Rep Jane cannot discern between someone authorized to declassify and someone not authorized to declassify? Why is she in Congress if this is too close to call in her mind?