The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.

A small team working for General Hayden is looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.

Forget the NY Times spin. The fact is Mary McCarthy admitted to leaking information about the CIA detention and interrogation program. And McCarthty worked in the Inspector General’s Office, which is why her crime was so terrible. The office meant to enforce, laws ethics and general policies was found to be violating those very things. And we know this is going to be leading to a much wider cabal of ‘former and current’ CIA rogues because these same people are conveniently – again – the source for the NY Times spin.

Current and former intelligence officials said the inquiry had involved formal interviews with at least some of the inspector general’s staff and was perceived by some agency employees as an “investigation,” a label Mr. Gimigliano rejected.

Several current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the inquiry.

Does this include the Wilsons? How about Rand Beers who admitted Jow Wilson was on Kerry’s campaign when he started the lies about the Niger Forgeries (in his wife’s office safe in the CIA at some point)? The same Rand Beers who came to the defense of Mary McCarthy after she outted herself?

The fact is something is brewing and it is clear it is big. Why else do a story on an investigation inside the CIA that has not uncovered anything? Yet. Looks like a classic attempt to get ahead of the news to try and cover for a scandal. But honestly I don’t know what is going on except the NY Times is worried enough to write about it And is it any big surprise the NY Times was running McCarthy’s PR defense when the story broke? I strongly recommend reading through my posts around the initial event. They include links to others with a lot of good speculation and informaiton as well.

Update: Interestingly enough the LA Times story is not available right now. But here is a version of it in the Baltimore Sun. Wonder what caused that?

Fellow Clinton NSC traveller Steve Simon was used a source for the story vouching for Mary’s character. Being a character witness means one should assess the motives of such a person to come forward and support illegal exposure of classified information. Seems Simon, and his partner Daniel Benjamin, are Clinton NSC members who worked for Dick Clarke and who are writing books about how Bush failed to detect 9-11 (and of course they did not!). First there is this interview with Benjamin on their joint book at Campus Progress:

I spent three years as a foreign policy speechwriter for President Clinton, and I can tell you that it was linguistically inevitable that we were going to have a war on terror after 9/11 – war is what American leaders declare when they want to show they are as serious as could be. That said, this struggle is one in which intelligence and law enforcement are the top tools for dealing with this enemy. There will be times when we need to use the military, but most of the time it is the wrong tool. Iraq, for example, shows how much damage using the military in the wrong circumstances can cause.

This is the same idiotic logic that brought us 9-11. It was lack of a good legal basis which caused Clinton to turn down apprehending Bin Laden. It was a legal and foreign policy fear that stayed our hand in taking him out with in Afghanistan. It was a legal barrier which caused the communications of Al Qaeda in the US to go unheeded and to be destroyed, as if the problem would go away if we just ignored the information we had.

Simon and Benjamin are from the “Surrender Iraq Before We Win” crowd. They have predicted for years, wrongly, we would lose Iraq and Al Qaeda would be strengthened:

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon argue that the U.S. is losing the war on terror because the Bush administration treats terrorists as if they are state actors instead of the non-state actors. This, they say, leads to misguided military responses that lead to more terrorism.

Any surprise the NSC travellers are in cahoots with the well known CIA rogues like Pillar? Is it also any surprise Steve Simon has State Department ties?

Before joining the RAND Corporation in March 2003, Mr. Simon was Assistant Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies ((IISS) and Carol Dean Senior Fellow in U.S. Security Studies. He came to the IISS in November 1999, from the National Security Council staff at the White House, where he served for over 5 years as Senior Director for Transnational Threats. During this period he had coordination responsibilities for Near Eastern and South Asian security policy, peacekeeping operations, counter-terrorism, and budgeting for international programs. Mr. Simon came to the NSC from the State Department, where he had held an array of posts, including Director for Political-Military Plans and Policy and acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional Security Affairs.

Enquiring minds (as opposed to the mind of a journalist) would wonder about what kind of group this IISS is. Here is there mission statement:

Provide, from an international perspective, to IISS members and the wider public, through publications and other activities, the best possible objective information on military and political developments relevant to the prospects, course, and consequences of conflict having an important military dimension.

Provide, to the same audience, and by similar means, the best possible analysis of the policies to be pursued by various governments and other actors to further and maintain international peace and security.

Convene government ministers, officials, international civil servants, independent analysts, business people and journalists in different formats, public and private, to advance understanding of political, military, technological, business, economic, environmental, social, religious and other trends that could have an impact on the prospects, course and consequences of conflict having an important military dimension.

Maintain, nurture and continually enlarge an international network of influential and knowledgeable individuals, corporate entities, governments and other bodies to ensure the effective dissemination of information, analysis and understanding of the subjects and activities addressed by the Institute’s work.

Aim, through these activities, to influence and promote the adoption of sound policies to maintain and further international peace and security and civilised international relations by all actors able to realise this aim.

Is anyone surprised Steve Simon authored a book with Richard Clarke (the man who was focused like a laser beam on electronic terrorism over the internet prior to 9-11 and the book would be prominent on the leftward fringe websites? So the WaPo tried to pawn off someone who is clearly as rabidly anti-Bush as the very people the Post reports McCarthy became embroiled with. And they don’t even report that to their readers? This is what most people call propaganda

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1807/feed 9 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1803 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1803#comments Sun, 14 May 2006 03:54:55 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1803 *** Update: interesting look at one of the NSC sources in the WaPo article and his ties to the leftward fringes ***

Looks like Mary McCarthy and the rogue CIA agents, along with the news media (and an out of control prosecutor?) have decided the time is right to admit she was just trying to be a hero. The Washington Post is getting more leaks about McCarthy from her ‘friends’ (Rand Beers, Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke):

McCarthy became convinced that “CIA people had lied” in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading.

I do not recall McCarthy also being judge and jury and electorate? We have a conflict of opinion about how to treat terrorist who have sworn to die killing as many of us as possible. When did this become sufficient conditions to break the law?

Whether McCarthy’s conviction that the CIA was hiding unpleasant truths provoked her to leak sensitive information is known only to her and the journalists she is alleged to have spoken with last year. But the picture of her that emerges from interviews with more than a dozen former colleagues is of an independent-minded analyst who became convinced that on multiple occasions the agency had not given accurate or complete information to its congressional overseers.

What is fascinating about this is McCarthy, as deputy Inspector General for the CIA, knew what the process was to go to Congress as a whistleblower and call these people on their lies. In fact, if she had the goods on someone at the CIA lying to Congress she would have been the darling of Reps and Dems – especially those like John McCain. Congress gets very angry if they feel they have beenb lied to under oath. She had the clout as Deputy IG to be taken seriously.

But we know from Democrat and Republican staffers McCarthy never once availed herself of the whistleblower status. There is no record of her once challenging the reports to Congress. She had all the opportunity, but she went to Dana Priest? If she was such a maverick, independent thinker, why not turn these people into Congress? She was retiring! There could be no retribution aimed at her for disclosing lies!

You know what – this sounds like a truly pathetic attempt to cover up her illegal acts. She is claiming she knew of lies to Congress, and not once told the one institution that would be angered by her news, be on her side, and protect her name. Want to know what this was about?

McCarthy was not an ideologue, her friends say, but at some point fell into a camp of CIA officers who felt that the Bush administration’s venture into Iraq had dangerously diverted U.S. counterterrorism policy.

She is admitting she fell in with the rogues who felt they needed to toss out the Constitution and take the country into their own hands. As Margaret Carlson said, the CIA wanted a new President and decided to take act. It is said Nixon used his power to distort the powers of government to his political benefit. The partisan liberals in key government positions have done the same thing – abused their positions and used our government for their personal desires.

Stunningly McCarthy is still leaking, through her friends, classified details. And all these details dovetail nicely with Dana Priest’s stories. So McCarthy was so upset at the lies being told Congress she did not use the avenue open to her to take these charges to Congress (who cannot stand being lied to), but took it to the Washington Post. Yeah, right.

One thing that escapes all these people is the CIA employees take an oath to protect the constitution and follow the orders of the President. So when you see these kinds of comments it is clear they have thrown those oaths out the window:

They allege that her firing was another chapter in a long-standing feud between the CIA and the Bush White House, stoked by friction over the merits of the war in Iraq, over whether links existed between Saddam Hussein’s government and al-Qaeda, and over the CIA-instigated criminal inquiry of White House officials suspected of leaking the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Folks, it is illegal for the CIA to fued with the President. It is illegal for the CIA to leak information to the media to influence elections. The CIA spokeswoman soft pedals this a bit in my opinion

She said it was provoked solely by the officer’s admission to CIA investigators to having provided classified information to the media. “You can’t ignore an officer ignoring their secrecy agreement,” Dyck said.

You can’t have them ignore their oaths to uphold the constitution either. And Clintonesque denials are not going to help much longer to help the media keep access to their sources:

But McCarthy, in e-mails to friends, has denied leaking anything classified. She has not denied speaking to Priest but has said she was unaware that the CIA had secret prisons in Eastern Europe, the most attention-getting detail in Priest’s articles last year.

McCarthy has been trying to spin ‘confirming leaks’ as not the same as ‘leaking’ since it is not the initial exposure of the information. Controlliing classified information doesn’t work that way. You cannot expose it, nor confirm or deny details. But now we know she did talk to Priest. And my suspicion is she tipped off investigators to the true ‘leakers’ to get out of trouble:

Reporters at The Washington Post and other publications do not discuss sources for articles beyond what is published. Priest’s disclosures about the secret prisons were attributed to multiple current and former intelligence officials on three continents.

If I were these sources I would be worried right now. If they are being recalled to America, I would be really, really worried. In fact those in the know with McCarthy are few and should be shaking in their boots right now:

Little else is known publicly. The CIA inspector general’s reports have narrow circulation. When IG inquiries involve covert actions such as foreign interrogations, for example, the agency briefs only the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, instead of the full panels. So only a handful of people in Washington knew what McCarthy knew.

Rockefeller must be sweating bullets right now. McCarthy clearly had access to the top congressional leaders on intelligence matters, yet when she saw what she considered lying to Congress, after staring down all sorts of power players in the CIA and the NSC, she decided to go to the media instead of Congress? What a nice, naive, liberal fantasy the WaPo has provided us.

Update: Rick Moran sees the same hypocrisy between McCarthy the maverick and McCarthy the partisan snitch.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1803/feed 7 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1737 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1737#comments Mon, 01 May 2006 15:48:46 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1737 *** Major Correction:  Through out this piece I confused Melvin Goodman with Dana Priest’s husband William Goodfellow (I’m human!)  However, Goodman is a member of Goodfellow’s CIP organization.  So while the author is not married to Priest, he is a close associate and kindred spirit of Priest’s husband ***

*** Updates near the end, below the fold ***

Warning, this is another of my looong posts! I have struggled with the title to this post because on the one hand we are seeing the exposure of coordinated efforts by some extremely leftwing people, suffering from Nirvana delusions, working to use the media and courts to change the political direction of this country. The fact they need to lie and hide their intentions means they are smart enough to know the American people would have nothing to do with them if they came out and said what they truly think. But the policies they promote from their think tank policy groups are juvenile and naive at best. So one has to wonder whether the policies are eye candy for the masses to hide the truth, or are they the actual delusional visions of an ultra liberal cabal from the Clinton and Carter administrations. Neither option is good, but masking a deeper, probably darker, agenda under the delusions of Nirvana probably worries me more.

The one link I will use for now is to Mind In The Qatar which has a variety of diagrams illustrating the nexus of players (here and here). I have attempted to credit the various people breaking ground on this subject at the end of this post. What intrigues me most are all the connections to the Centerof International Policy (CIP), run by Dana Priest’s husband. Obviously Dana is has bought into the CIP-brew given her responses concerning her role in leaking national security details. But we must note Mary McCarthy embraced this organization when she left the government after her stint on the National Security Council under Clinton, Beers, Berger, Wilson and Clarke (I see a new DC law office in the making here).

So what is CIP all about? Well we have the words of its leader, Mel Goodman, to guide us. A man whose vision McCarthy definitely believed in when she jumped ship to join CIP, and which I think is the view of a lot of the Democrat party because these views overlap so well with the rantings of Kerry and Gore. If Rand Beers is close enough to Mary McCarthy to come out and help her PR effort, then my guess is he is close in sharing her vision and that of Mel Goodman. So let’s look into the mind of Goodman, keeping one phrase in mind: Nirvana-delusions (the concept that if we disarm, the world will disarm and love us back).

In February 2001, Mel Goodman penned this article on the need to reform the CIA. This is after Bush’s inaugeration and only a brief time before Mary McCarthy will join CIP. It is also 7 months before 9-11. It contains four main sections:

The Need to End Covert Action

The Need for Glasnost

The Need to Demilitarize Intelligence

The Need for an Intelligence Network

The end of covert action means the end of targetting Al Qaeda in the battlefield. We have successfully taken out many key Al Qaeda using covert action via UAVs. Covert action also includes snatching people and bringing them in for interrogation. This is tantamount to disarming ourselves and being left with the impotent law enforcement approach when detecting our enemies overseas, or the overkill military approach (i.e., being forced into military actions: an act of war) to grab someone we know is heading our way with intent to kill.

The need for Glasnost is a quaint way of saying send more Pulitzers to my wife as we expose our entire national security capabilities to our enemies so they can exploit our weaknesses. Too many people think secrets are all about illegal acts. The fact is that many secrets are typically about where we have established boundaries between what is technically feasible and what is legal. These boundaries expose areas we will not tread due to legal issues – an area the terrorists want to find in order to exploit it. This is what Risen and Priest exposed. Not what is feasible (we all know it is possible to vacuum up everbit of data passing around and to nab someone and hold them in a secret location for a good beating), but where we draw the line. That is what was leaked.

The need to demilitarize intelligence is another way of saying put the DIA and NSA out of business. We have seen attempts to do just that in the Able Danger fiasco and the NSA leaks by Risen and the NYTimes, respectively. This would provide a way for the CIA folks to control all intelligence! Talk about an obvious plan to seize control. Note: I have not read this section yet, but I am expecting to see parallels to what has transpired in the last 5 years since this piece was created!

Finally, the need for an intelligence network sounds like a nice, vacuous alternative of sweetness and light (no pun intended to the good blog by the same name) which will be the supposed replacement for the current corrupt systems, but somehow will never get implemented. The classic false-promise bait necessary in any bait-and-switch scheme.

Interestingly, this piece ties into the event which brought Valerie Plame into contact with one Joe Wilson – the Aldrich Ames incident. Note how Goodman feels for all those poor souls fired for allowing Ames to destroy our intelligence capability:

Reprimands in the Ames case prompted a mass exodus of bitter senior managers, who had refused to accept the need for punishing those who ignored the fact that a Soviet spy had contaminated the agency at the highest levels. These managers were the generation that had run the CIA during the cold war and had served as the agency’s institutional memory for clandestine operations. Perhaps as a result, espionage operations have gotten increasingly clumsy, causing major strains with such key nations as France, Germany, India, Italy, and Japan. Operational failures in recent years include the unbelievable bombings of both the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Intelligence failures include the agency’s surprise over the nuclear tests in India in 1998 and the skewing of judgments on the implications of a national missile defense in 1999.

Now I see what attracted Mary McCarthy to these Nirvana-delusionists. She too was against Clinton’s attack on the Sudan factory – as I guess were many in the NSC. Maybe what bothered these people so much was that their own President Clinton was ‘no better’ than a rabid neo-cons. Maybe that is when the cabal began to coalesce. This is basically confirmed in the next paragraph:

As director of central intelligence (DCI) under Clinton, Tenet promoted an “antileak statute,” designed to make potential felons of those who express themselves on any issue about which they ever had access to classified information.

It may be wrong to assume these delusionists are targetting just Bush. It may be they have had plans in place to change the face of America for a long time, and people like Kerry were just useful, desperate idiots that provided the best opportunity at the time. These people seem much more at home with the Deaniacs and those from Moveon.org.

The proposal was to divert intelligence away from defense to something else – to save money of course!

The end of the cold war over a decade ago provided the United States with an opportunity to end intelligence abuses, restructure the CIA (saving money in the process), and use the agency’s extensive intelligence capabilities to address the new crises and challenges of the post-cold war environment. The United States can no longer afford a bloated intelligence community that defines too much information as intelligence and spends $30 billion a year in the process.

Recall that Clinton was decimating intelligence capabilities with the combination of the Gorelick Wall and the Durbin idiocies restricting covert activities with criminals. Calling these policies insufficient towards ‘fixing’ the CIA is one reason I cannot decide if these people are truly naive delusionists or something much, much more sinister hiding behind the facade of delusion in order to attract the hordes of useful idiots. Goodman goes on to confirm my suspicions that his plan is to hamstring the US to only law enforcement or military actions:

It is not enough to suggest (as defenders of covert action have) that the world remains a dangerous place and the president needs an option short of military action when diplomacy alone cannot do the job.

Covert action could be radically reduced, if not eliminated, with no compromise of U.S. national security. CIA propaganda has had little effect on foreign audiences and should end immediately.

CIA propaganda? Like what Larry Johnson would say in the coming months about the fact we have nothing to fear from terrorism? Yeah, right. In fact, this line epitomizes the mindset that terrorists and enemies of the US are at zero fault for posing risks to us:

CIA penetration of Iraqi communications, contrived to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, made a liar out of the White House and a truth-teller of Saddam Hussein. It also doomed further inspection efforts in Iraq and undercut the credibility of multilateral inspection teams around the world.

What is scary is that Mary McCarthy bought this hook, line and sinker. This is the vision she was attracted to when she left the CIA. It is the same warped vision of the VIPerS, and of Kerry, Sores, Clooney and Michael Moore. But what stands out to me is the details on CIA operations, which must have been coming from people on the inside. And in this case it could easily be Ms Mary McCarthy:

Another operative on the CIA payroll was Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who was responsible for two decades of human rights abuses in Peru. The CIA helped Montesinos flee the country in September 2000 to avoid standing trial for crimes that included the massacre of innocent civilians in the early 1990s.

This is one of many ‘examples’ Goodman cherry picks to make his case we should pull the CIA out of operations across the world. An interesting, if not suicidally naive, concept. Another wide-eyed naive concept is that transparency will not hurt us. 9-11 illustrated that is definitely not the case. We were so open about everything we gave the terrorist a road map to bypass our checks and security. What I have discovered from the NSA leak story is the pre 9-11 barriers around the NSA blocked any warnings we may have had from phone calls by terrorists in the US, finalizing their plans, and their handlers overseas.

It was not transparency we needed, is was common sense when faced with valid intel on real serious threats. These CIP folks are ‘sipping’ from a completely different cup:

CIA Director George Tenet has reversed the modest steps toward greater openness that were instituted by several of his predecessors. At his confirmation hearings in 1997, Tenet promised to continue the policy of openness, but he also emphasized that it was time for the agency to stop looking over its shoulder at its critics and to increase its clandestine role in support of national security.

Suffice it to say Goodman and McCarthy, and apparently Beers, Wilson and Priest, are against a ‘clandestine role in support of national security’. I do not have to hypothesize about Berger though:

Tenet initially withheld thousands of sensitive documents detailing covert operations in Chile that took place more than 25 years ago, despite demands for openness by President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Though he finally responded to additional pleas from National Security Adviser Sandy Berger to release the Chilean documents…

Is it safe to assume these Nirvana-delusionists also share this Goodman-Goodie?

Sadly, the U.S. Senate aggravated the situation in September 2000, when it passed a bill that would have criminalized the disclosure of all “properly classified” information, thus creating an official secrets act. It is already a crime to disclose classified information about nuclear weapons, codes, intelligence communications, and the names of covert agents. The CIA successfully convinced the Senate to criminalize all leaks of classified information, and President Clinton’s Justice Department was persuaded to reverse its position and support the measure.

Do we see a pattern here? The VIPerS called on their friends in the intelligence community to leak classified information. CIP promotes the idea that secrecry is irrelevant. All these strange people gravitate to the idea we should disarm ourselves in order to ‘fight’ terrorism. It boggles the mind. Sadly, this legislation, which would have made the NSA leak and CIA safehouse leaks a crime WAS VETOED by Clinton at the end of his term when he was doing everything to salvage his reputation with his base:

Fortunately, President Clinton vetoed the bill in November 2000, dealing another political setback to DCI George Tenet, one of the main proponents of the bill. Clinton chose to protect his legacy and the public’s right to know rather than endorse the zeal of his CIA director.

Goodman is clearly a ultra-liberal delusionist. His fantasies include making facts up out of whole clothe. He lashes out at coordination between intelligence and defense (what is it about ‘national security’ this day dreamer cannot grasp?). In a whopper of a mistake he makes this claim:

Previous directors of central intelligence, particularly Robert Gates and John Deutch, did great harm to the CIA and the intelligence community by deemphasizing strategic intelligence for use in civilian policymaking and catering instead to the tactical demands of operational officers in the Pentagon. Gates brought an end to CIA analysis on key order-of-battle issues in order to avoid tendentious analytical struggles with the Pentagon, and Deutch’s creation of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) at the Department of Defense (DOD) enabled the Pentagon to be the sole judge of its procurement needs.

Actually, NIMA was the follow-on organization to what was The Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) when DMA functions were being consolidated and better integrated with other DoD functions. Yes, other elements were integrated into the new organization, but the way Goodman spins this is silly.

It was not new in any respect, and the DoD always has been and will be the sole judge of its procurement needs. What this illustrates is a serious ignorance by Goodman. Simple facts escape his grasp. Does that make him more or less dangerous an ideologue? Who knows. But Goodman is clear he is calling for a power grab into the CIA, the very organization he pillories throughout this article.

The director of central intelligence operates in an organizational maze, since the secretary of defense controls nearly 90% of the intelligence budget and personnel. Although executive orders give the DCI the statutory authority to establish requirements and priorities for the entire intelligence community, the Pentagon dominates the structure that can and does block such purview. In fact, the DCI needs the authority in peacetime to direct intelligence funding and operational assignments for data collection agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency, and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. This authority would revert to the secretary of defense in wartime.

That is why I doubt his sincerity and see this as an extravagent facade to take control from elected officials and put it into the hands of a few, well placed political appointees. Notice that the only time power would transfer is during ‘wartime’. What if the intel showed we should never be at war???

Goodman finally gets around to describing his Nirvana Delusion to us when he describes his idea of the new world order. In this New World intelligence is not about detecting possible dangers to Americans, and stopping them before harm is done. No, it is about the ideal liberalism:

Other nontraditional security problems, which will define U.S. policy choices in the 21st century, have thus been given short shrift. Such problems include the scarcity of water in the Middle East, the social migration caused by coastal flooding in South Asia, infectious diseases in Africa and Russia, and contamination caused by nuclear and chemical weapons stored and tested in the former Soviet Union.

…

The CIA is in a position to provide information on a variety of environmental issues, using baseline data from satellite photography documenting global warming, ozone depletion, and environmental contamination. Spy satellites already provide key environmental data on the earth’s diminishing grasslands, forests, and food resources. Yet the CIA has not been forthcoming with its data.

…

War crimes tribunals also require funds and expertise for collecting data on political and military officials, which would be a less difficult task if the political and biographic assets of the CIA could be used.

Sadly, it took 9-11 to abolish this kind of La-La-Land thinking out in the open. My fear is it is stronger than ever in the minds of the McCarthys, Wilsons, Begers, Lakes, Beers, etc. And as the Global War On Terror snuffed out their visions of Nirvana, the cult of Nirvana-delusionists decided they need to take covert action to get the nation back on track to the promised land.

How far does this Nirvana-delusion spread? That is something Bloggers will have to ascertain. Goodman sees one person ripe for the Kool Aid:

When Al Gore was in the Senate, he chaired the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee where he was active in pushing for release of this data to the scientific community.

Scarily, I can see Al Gore exposing national security details to Green Peace But why do this when there are plenty of national and commercial sources for satellite data on the environment? Systems designed to eek out every ounce of information related to the bio-sphere. Which is just not the priority of NRO’s satellites. This idea cannot be about getting Eco-information. It must be about defanging and diverting our national security resources.

Back then, this was the vision that enthralled the left. What concerns me is the folks who flocked to this vision are now implicated in actions that could easily be construed as efforts to bring this strange vision to life through a series of coordinated leaks meant to boost the political opportunities of like minded candidates. We shall see. But the vision Mel Goodman painted in February 2001, a vision McCarthy flocked to a few months later, is dangerously naive or a dangerously cunning facade.

Addendum: Clarice Feldman points us to a liberal propaganda movie showcased by Moveon.org in supporters homes in December 2003, with the following cast of characters:

Featuring: David Albright, Robert Baer, Milt Bearden, Rand Beers, Bill Christison, Kathleen McGrath Christison, David Corn, Philip Coyle, John Dean, Patrick Eddington, Chas Freeman, Graham Fuller, Mel Goodman, John Brady Kiesling, Karen Kwiatkowski, Patrick Lang, Dr. David C. MacMichael, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, The Rt Honorable Clare Short, Stansfield Turner, The Honorable Henry Waxman, Thomas E. White, Joe Wilson, Colonel Mary Ann Wright, Peter Zimmerman.

And the media response will be ‘what conspiracy?’. Note the VIPerS and the media spouse and the Plame Game names. All coincidene of course.

Acknowledgements: So many people have posted on the connections between Dana Priest, her husband Melvin Goodman of CIP, Mary McCarthy and her connections to Clinton NSC staffers I cannot hope to do a fair review of all the players. I plan to only refer to the linkage diagrams at Mind In The Qatar, but I recognize the efforts of people like Fedore at Free Republic, Curt at Flopping Aces, Stephan at the Politburro Diktat, Ace of Spades, Seixon and too many others I cannot recall. Not to mention the folks commenting here. Please feel free to track back or add links to your sites in the comments section. Trackbacks show up automatically with the link hidden in the name of the commentor.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1737/feed 10 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1711 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1711#comments Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:23:07 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1711 After Mary McCarthy’s lawyer attempted a pathetic push back in the media using Clinton-speak to deny very focused ‘phrases’, it seems McCarthy has pulled the plug on her leftward lawyer’s tactics and is now doing the smart thing – laying low. Mac Ranger sees the same thing I have been seeing, nothing new from McCarthy.

For someone innocent of the allegations and a whistleblower on serious crimes by our government, McCarthy’s silence speaks loudly. A true, innocent whistleblower would be out there day in and day out pleading her case. Mac has this to say:

Make no mistake, Porter isn’t playing around and the mandate he has is at any cost – “Bring them in, bring them down”. McCarthy is the beginning. Regardless of what you hear, charges will be brought against her. Which is why soon after her lawyer appeared trying to reverse history, she has begun to lay low.

Expect to see these criminals redouble their efforts to the extreme from here on out. Rehashing old stories – most debunked – and talking crazy like McGovern who is three fries short of a Happy Meal. It’s going to be very entertaining to see them squirming and allegating and bloviating and frothing, just like an animal in it’s death throws.

Let’s hope so. McCarthy finally realized she needs to be cooperating if she wants to get out of this in reasonable shape.

Addendum: Kenneth Timmerman explores how truly serious this investigation is:

Furious at the leaks that exposed sensitive intelligence programs – including the existence of “secret prisons” the Agency has used periodically to hold high priority suspected terrorists – CIA Director Porter Goss kicked off the internal investigation by personally submitting to a polygraph.

He then called on other top Agency officials to do the same. Those who went “on the box” included McCarthy’s boss, CIA Inspector Geeral John. L. Helgerson. All the while, Porter Goss led the probe himself.

Internal probes led personally by a CIA director are virtually unheard of. As far as I’ve been able to ascertain from Agency veterans, there hasn’t been a single one in the past fifteen years.

I would agree with Mac, the days of playing games and using the media to divert attention are probably over. Anyone still trying it will be in for a world of hurt. It’s not like the warning signs are not all on and blinking red. Some humor on the side: has anyone noticed how Robert Redford always plays the hero against the evil government employees (think Three Days of The Condor which Scott Johnson of Powerline discussed on the CIA covert war on Bush, All The President’s Men on Watergate of course, and now Spy Game):

But late last year, top intelligence executives began to seriously review a 2001 Robert Redford/Brad Pitt thriller, Spy Game, in which a wily covert operator (Redford) is grilled by the CIA Director and top Agency lawyers about an operation gone sour, on the very day he is scheduled to retire.

The interrogation goes on and off the record, as lawyers dig up new information, and Robert Redford conducts his own covert operation right under their noses. In the Hollywood version, the CIA director is the villain (naturally) and the rogue agent is the hero.

McGovern and Johnson make me think of Sneakers, personally. Anyway, back to Timmerman.  One thing readers of this site point out is that Mary McCarthy is accused of leaking operations intel, not the analyst’s ‘opinions’ of what this means.  Operational leaks are serious and dangerous.  And Timmerman notes this is what he is hearing from his sources:

Former clandestine officers say that the leaks surrounding the extraordinary renditions have caused “tremendous damage” to the Agency and have “physically endangered” officers currently serving overseas.

This is why these leaks are much more serious than the media knowing who Joe Wilson’s wife was and where she worked.  The NSA leaks tipped off terrorists on how to evade detection.  Evidentally other leaks have endangered very brave people out doing dangerous work in the world so we can live in relative peace and safety.  This elevates the crime from one of leaking to one of reckless endangerment.  A coup d’etat does seem to be the best example of what is happening here:

For the ideological divide currently paralyzing our intelligence community runs deep and is not limited to CIA or State Department analysts. It involves top officials, who believe they have a moral “duty” to prevent the President of the United States from executing policies with which they disagree.

This must end. And any Democrat dumb enough to support undermining the duly elected leadership of this country deserves the political backlash they will receive.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1711/feed 4 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1707 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1707#comments Thu, 27 Apr 2006 04:41:45 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1707 Major Update: I never noticed this March 2003 article before which claims that it was the VIPS who leaked the Niger forgeries to the IAEA (from the VIPS link below).

The leak to IAEA came from a 25-member group of former CIA analysts and agents who call themselves the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). One could probably think of a better name for their group, but maybe after working for the CIA the name is a description of the effect of working for the CIA. After 27 years of service, former CIA agent Ray McGovern comments on the documents, “It’s been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy.” He went on to say, “It goes against the whole ethic of secrecy and going through channels, and going to the (inspector general).

McGovern apparently did not deny the claim his grouped leaked the CIA information. This should be evidence of a serious crime if true. The Niger Forgeries were in the posession of Valerie Plame’s section of the CIA for many months, hidden away in a safe. Then at some point they were brought out of ‘hiding’ and given to State. I believe it was after the IAEA had them (not sure). But what is clear is this was US intelligence leaked to a foreign organization. How can ex-CIA agents be admitting they leaked intelligence to a foreign agency and get away with it?

Another name in the article: Senator Jay Rockefeller.

Addendum: Now I am thinking this could be shady reporting. The quotes in the article above from McGovern are in this AP article from the same period. Still, I would wonder about the claim the VIPS gave the intel to the IAEA – given this article also calls on the CIA to leak. And check out Mark Coffey’s analysis on the legality of ex-CIA discussions with the press. Fascinating.

Update: Ray McGovern (leader of the ex-CIA member group VIPS) is in the news again today, claiming the US is guilty of war crimes, all wrapped up in the cloth of a deeply religous believer in Jesus Christ. – end update

*** Welcome Powerline readers (and yes, Powerline has been on this story for a long, long time). Coincidentally, Michael Ledeen has an article up hinting that Nixon Waterloo (Watergate) was a CIA action against a President they did not like (with tongue apparently planted in cheek) ***

If I was the paranoid kind, I would think ex-CIA agents and NSC members are trying to instigate a bloodless coup d’etat. I am not there yet. But with McCarthy’s firing as the first publicized peron caught (or should we say confessing) to discussing classified matters with reporters without authorization (is that accurately worded so McCarthy lawyer Cobb can’t pull a clinton-esque spin job?) it is interesting to see who is coming out and about in the media.

We saw ex-CIA member Ray McGovern of the rabid leftwing group VIPS on PBS, we read ex-NSC member Rand Beers (number 5 on the Clinton NSC council connected to NSC members Wilson and McCarthy and Bergler – The Scandalers) vouching for McCarthy’s, we saw John Kerry (who had Wilson, Beers and Begler on his presidential campaign) equivocating about good leaks, and of course we had ex-CIA agent crazy Larry Johnson everwhere.

So am I surprised more ex-CIA folks are hitting the media circuit in their final attempt to take out George Bush (somehow missing the point he is a lame duck for the next three years, never to face election again)? Not really. But they seem to be everwhere. I was reading Seixon’s post on the CBS 60 Minutes story about the Niger Forgeries (it’s like Dan Rather never left!) when I noticed the story is a replay of the story Joe Wilson tried to pawn off on the country back in 2003:

We turn to CBS’ 60 Minutes report from Sunday where former CIA official Tyler Drumheller, who was head of covert operations in Europe, tells it just like CBS wants to hear it – the case of the White House cherry-picking intelligence to support the war against Iraq.

Seems we always need to do 6 degrees to the VIPS, the Clinton NSC and John Kerry’s campaign when we see these stories. Drumheller (check out this frightening picture) of a man hiding the fact that Niger was not the country of concern in the intelligence on uranium, but Niger did meet with an Iraqi trade delegation in 1999 (the same year Wilson took his first trip to the African nation for the CIA at the request of his wife Valerie).

But I do not have the energy to repeat facts missed by the fact challenged antique media. I want to play 6-degrees. So, when was the name Drumheller mentioned in regards to Niger before?
It seems when conspiracy theorists on the left were trying to connect the Niger Forgeries in Joe Wilson’s leaks to the media to people in the US (not knowing Wilson could never have known about the forgeries when going to Niger in February 2002 because they would not show up until Sept of that year and get lost in a safe in Valeries area).

This is an edited transcript of an interview conducted by Ian Masters with Vincent Cannistaro [sic], the former CIA head of counterterrorism operations and intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, which aired on the Los Angeles public radio KPFK on April 3, 2005.

Well, in this case, the Germans had told the CIA’s head of the European desk on the operations side, Tyler Drumheller, who I spoke to, but he wasn’t comfortable going on the radio.

Interesting that Drumheller’s name is mentioned in a Cannistraro interview. Of course Cannistraro is also ex-CIA. But not really, this was part of the plan to use the Wilson article to discuss the Niger Forgeries. Here is Cannistraro making his claim about who forged the documents (on paper with names interestingly from the time Wilson was in Niger in 1999 – names that were only national leaders in Niger for 9 MONTHS after a coup d’etat and before democratic elections):

Cannistraro: In many cases, the information was fabricated. Information, for example, about an alleged attempt by Saddam Hussein to acquire nuclear material, uranium, from Niger. This, we know now, was all based on fabricated documents. But it’s not clear yet — either from this report, or from any other report — who fabricated the documents.

The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and you had to do it soon to avoid the catastrophe that would be produced by Saddam Hussein’s use of alleged weapons of mass destruction.

So Cannistraro claims war mongerers in the US forged the documents (which is a really silly claim on the face of it). And Ian Masters has drunk the Kool Aid big time:

Masters: Well, Ambassador Wilson publicly refuted the claims — particularly the 16 words in the President’s State of the Union address that the Iraqis were trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Niger. That document, I understand, was fabricated.

Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows Wilson did no such thing, but that was the story that was supposed to hit the media and propel Kerry into the Oval Office. The Wilsons blew the whole thing by messing up the timing of events. Is it any surprise Drumheller is mentioned heavily in James Risen book exposing the NSA program, the CIA torture claims, etc? Risen seems to have direct material from Drumheller:

When it came to Iraq, Tenet, CIA insiders tell Risen, appeared to make his position clear — he would go along with what hard-liners wanted.

…

Another time, Tenet ignored the warnings of Tyler Drumheller, who headed the CIA’s European spy operations and had learned from German intelligence that a key CIA source on Iraqi WMD, an Iraqi exile who went by the code name Curveball, was mentally unstable, unreliable and not to be trusted. In the days before former Secretary of State Colin Powell made his famous presentation on Iraqi weapons to the United Nations, Drumheller tried frantically to excise all of Curveball’s information from Powell’s speech. As late as the night before Powell’s presentation, he spoke to Tenet on the phone and warned of problems with Curveball. But Tenet ignored Drumheller, and the Curveball data made it into Powell’s speech.

So Drumheller apparently has talked to Risen about his dealings with Tenet on this same irrelevant Niger story. Well following ex-CIA agent Drumheller to ex-CIA agent Cannistaro, we come to ex-CIA agent Philip Geraldi, who works for Cannistraro Associates and who fingers Micheal Ledeen as the source of the Niger Forgeries! Seems Vince Cannistraro knew at one time how to contact Osam Bin Laden:

He [Cannistraro] currently works as a consultant on intelligence and terrorism for ABC World News with Peter Jennings, and arranged the 1998 ABC interview with Usama bin Laden through his contacts in Saudi Arabia.

What is really interesting is Cannistraro is marketing an ‘intelligence brief‘ with some really detailed intel, sufficient to tip of terrorists:

US and British law enforcement are now closely monitoring a London-based group that is known to be in touch with al Qaeda and may have information about future al Qaeda operations. The group in London is allegedly linked to some Americans who are being surveilled by the FBI. At present, no solid threat information has been developed but the London-based element has discussed the possibility of a “dirty bomb” operation in the US, infiltrated through Canada.

Well, now we all know about the group and the fact they are being monitored. I have heard about making a buck selling national secrets, but this takes the cake! So what about Philip? He is also running a PR campaign under the guise of The American Conservative, and more potential state secrets:

In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option.

Philip also get’s a leak from Mary McCarthy’s CIA Office of Inspector General to ‘leak’:

A CIA internal review of the agency’s performance prior to 9/11 is harshly critical of former CIA Director George Tenet, former Director of Operations James Pavitt, and the former chief of the Counterterrorist Center, Cofer Black, for not doing everything possible to confront terrorism. Pavitt, who was reluctant to take on risky missions against bin Laden encouraged by the National Security Council during the second term of President Bill Clinton, is particularly criticized. The report, completed by CIA Inspector General John Helgerson, is especially acerbic regarding the failure of the agency to stop two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, as they entered the United States.

Does the CIA keep ANY secrets anymore? So we have Drumheller, Carrastraro, Geraldi and back to McCarthy’s area in the CIA. Not to mention ties to Wilson, et al. Ties to James Risen. What is interesting is all these folks could look like independent sources to the lazy, casual eye of someone like Mary Mapes and Dan Rather.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1707/feed 15 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1704 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1704#comments Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:06:12 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1704 *** Too funny: I see Nathan Tabor at The Conservative Voice used the same nysery rhyme title I did. Honest Nathan, I did not mean to copy you! ***

Lots of good stuff in blogosphere on Mary McCarthy. Kitty Litter has a great round up overall. Mind In The Qatar has a great diagram showing all the ties McCarthy has to key Democrats, scandal figures and the media. So does The Commissar. Hopefully these diagrams will help guide the poor misguided media to report accurately. Just keep following the links as the spread through a very focused and energized blogosphere.

So, where are we? It is clear Mary McCarthy has been provided one top-notch scandal attorney for someone who did not leak anything. This story had every indication of dying from lack of attention until Rand Beers, Kerry and the DNC’s Howard Dean started jumping into the fray. And WaPo is also hurting it’s cause and keeping this alive by NOT leaking like the CIA with regards to Dana Priest’s role in all this. As Tom Maguire so aptly noted yesterday, if there is no leak of classified data and McCarthy is not a Priest source, why are we have som much fun here? Why can’t Priest come out and say we are focused on the wrong person?

The comments from Priest and Cobb have an extreme odor of Clinton-speak to them. As I noted here earlier, no one said Mary McCarthy admitted to the phrase ‘leaked classified information’, as her lawyer carefully repeats.

Mac Ranger’s sources continue to paint a picture of a woman in serious trouble who could get out of trouble easily if she turns evidence. The question is whether she is an American or a Democrat first.

Mac points to The Prowler at American Spectator for some interesting, gossipy tidbits:

Outed CIA analyst Mary McCarthy is denying through her lawyers that she was the source for the Washington Post’s Dana Priest in revealing the secret prisons that housed terrorists overseas. McCarthy’s lawyers, though, aren’t throwing cold water on the notion that McCarthy may have had political inclinations and agendas that came into play with what even they termed unauthorized or undisclosed contacts with journalists.

There’s that Clinton-speak again. “The” source. Not “a” source. Same with the word-smything between a ‘leak’ (original exposure) verses a ‘contact’ or discussion. Ugh! Who do these yahoos think they are kidding? Is this distinction going to convince America to hand over national security issues to a Democrat party this fall? I think not!

Mac goes on to correct the notion in The Prowler that McCarthy is the first of 4 or 5 individuals in trouble. He says it is 6 and these include Durbin, Rockefeller and possibly even Schumer. I have seen hints that former Senator Graham from FL is also on the possible leak list.

Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker correctly highlights why McCarthy’s position in the CIA, after leaving the government three years ealier, was perfect for scandalizing. If there is muck to be found, it flows through the IG’s office:

…McCarthy served in the Clinton White House and then took a curious job in the Bush administration, in the Inspector General’s Office of the CIA.

Such a move is not explicable by careerism. This is an Internal Affairs dead-end sort of job, one that wins enemies not friends. But it is a job in which complaints about irregularities (justified or not) come across the desk with regularity.

Career suicide, but perfect for a would-be leaker intent on undermining a presidency and getting the opposition party candidate elected president. If there was planning to this, who was involved?

This position taken in 2004, an election year in which the Democrats had prepared a plan of scandal mongering. Their only concern was where to get the muck. Mary’s job solved that problem nicely. Makes one wonder how many more McCarthy’s are planted in IG offices around the Federal Government?

Kerry seems to be one of the most animated Dems right now – and he should be. The list of scandals ringing his 2004 campaign makes Nixon look like a Boy Scout (Wilson, Berger,RaTHergate). Add McCarthy-Beers and you have quite a story.

In a bad sign for the left, Human Events seems to be echoing Mac Ranger’s sources an article out today:

Clearly, a culture of contempt for the current occupant of the White House has infected a number of people who work in the agency, some of whom have taken it on themselves to try to undermine the administration by leaking information to the press and unauthorized persons in Democratic circles on Capitol Hill.

Emphasis mine. If Mac is right, and I suspect he is, then we will see more and more reporting confirming the fact, like this. It will creep from the non-mainstream media into outlets like FOX, the Washington Times and NY Post. That will force the antique liberal media to finally report on it. One interesting note on the wording above: ‘democrat circles’ to me implies staffers were in the loop between the CIA and the Senators and Congressman.

This kind of MO would make sense if you want to hide the leak or any connection to the elected official. This DOES NOT make sense if you are a whistleblower. In the Whistleblower scenario you are trying to draw attention to yourself and elected officials so that you are protected from any institutional retribution. Just keep that in the back of your mind when things unfold.

Also important to remember is the reason FISA was brought into existence. When it was learned Nixon was using government agencies like the CIA, NSA,FBI, IRS to apply pressure on political challengers, Congress convened the Church committee and passed FISA to ensure these organizations could not be used for political gain. The Democrats seem to be on the verge of being exposed doing just that, this time from outside the President’s office. Doesn’t matter – we will not tolerate government take over of our political process. Whether Nixon did it from the Oval office or Dems did it from Congress and the CIA, it is still the same crime. Ironically, a leak about FISA may lead to uncovering a modern variation of Nixonian abuses of power. One big question to answer is will the media be accomplice or watchdog?

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1704/feed 7 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1698 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1698#comments Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:45:42 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1698 *** Update: polls are actually lagging indicators to where the nation is heading. A leading indicator is consumer confidence, which is now at a 4 year high! The summer rebound is coming, barring any disasters ***

To folks new to the site, the ‘Fly By’ post is a way for me to attempt to be brief on a variety of topics in one post. Not a trivial (or successful) feat I may add.

Last January, upon the news of historic record breaking profits in the oil industry, I called for investigations into gas prices because the oil companies had claimed the price hikes we saw post Katrina were needed to repair infrastructure. Since investment into repairs would impact profits, it did not take a rocket scientists to figure out there were lies promulgated as fact. Want to raise your prices? Fine, don’t pretend you are doing it because you need to. Well, the recent round of hikes smells just as fishy. And we do have anti-monopoly laws and laws against price fixing (I don’t want collusion in the government or national, critical industries). So I am glad to see Bush calling for an investigation, and not surprised to see the gas prices magically start dropping all of a sudden.

The term ‘cattle car’ for coach airfares is going to become a reality it seems if you check out Drudge’s site. At 6’1″, 225 lbs I can barely squeeze in as it is. Airbus (EU manufacturer) is taking it a step further – no seats at all. Strapped to the wall and left to dangle, that’s the new option. Does an image of humans being transferred in cattle cars jump to mind? I know this is not the same thing, but the imagery is hard to miss.

Bush came out and put to rest the idea of deporting all illegal immigrants. He said it is not realistic, which is the right answer. If you want to see Reps lose the WH, Senate and House, run pictures every night of families being rounded up, resisting and flanked by friends and neighbors, and thrown out of job, school and home. There’s a winning strategy for a crime which is on the level of not having a valid driving license (license to work, license to drive).

Now, with that said, I support a strong border fence, guest worker program, holding employers accountable and having them pay some of the burden of the program, and the idea of one strike your outte here. The people in this week’s round ups in Florida are just the kind of people who should be deported and barred from ever having the opportunity to work here again:

Federal immigration authorities arrested 183 fugitives and other illegal immigrants in Florida alone last week, the state’s largest roundup in a single week, officials said Monday.

The arrests included people convicted of sex offenses, child abuse, cocaine trafficking and weapons violations. They were originally from 26 countries and most eventually will be deported.

RCP has a must read on what is a leak and what is not from Peter Brooks. Obviously the Mary McCarthy debacle will be a focus of many stories and blogger posts. Hopefully we can keep the media honest and fact based on this one. Or, at a minimum, expose those too lazy or jaded to be professional journalists!

Update: Seems Congress is going to be taking action to toughen laws and arrest powers against leakers of classified information:

If the measure is approved by Congress, the nation’s spy chief would be ordered to consider a plan for revoking the pensions of intelligence agency employees who make unauthorized disclosures. It also would permit security forces at the National Security Agency and the CIA to make warrantless arrests outside the gates of their top-secret campuses.

End Update

If you haven’t done so yet, please check out the Raging RINOs and the Watcher Council’s posts for this week. Lots of really good posts from around the blogosphere in both.

Hopefully more later. Have a great day!

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1698/feed 6 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1697 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1697#comments Tue, 25 Apr 2006 03:53:52 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1697 *** Captain Ed Morrissey has some excellent thoughts on this matter here. Interesting to see the good Captain was an FSO, so was I at one (brief) time. ***

Well, this is a surprise. Mary McCarthy, who according to government sources admitted to exposing classified information to reporters, and possibly specifically Dana Priest of the Washington Post, and who is characterized as a serial leaker to many reporters on a variety of topics is claiming innocence through her lawyer:

A lawyer representing fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy said yesterday that his client did not leak any classified information and did not disclose to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest the existence of secret CIA-run prisons in Eastern Europe for suspected terrorists.

The statement by Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the Washington office of Hogan & Hartson who said he was speaking for McCarthy, came on the same day that a senior intelligence official said the agency is not asserting that McCarthy was a key source of Priest’s award-winning articles last year disclosing the agency’s secret prisons.

Emphasis mine. McCarthy has allegedly already made one error in gullibility and being seduced by ‘the plan‘ and promises of a brighter future. She better be careful she doesn’t make another mistake in judgement. I have lawyers in my family (all great) and have dealt with them many others of various types on too many occasions (note: interrupted postings result in ugly sentence fragments). There are two flavors of lawyers. Those who try to do the right thing and those who try to do the right thing for themselves.

McCarthy’s lawyer could be playing a dangerous game. If she is talking to investigators, he better not be out there playing PR games right now. Laying low and cooperating is the best plan if she admitted to exposing classified material. A public push back could paint a target on her she will forever regret.

Cobb said that McCarthy, who worked in the CIA inspector general’s office, “did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking,” regarding classified information about any secret detention centers in Europe.

Cobb is naive. The secret ‘detention centers’ were likely just CIA safe houses for holding prisoners while low profile transportation was made available. I see some pathetic word parsing here, starting with the idea she was the ‘main source’ verses a collaborating source. In the world of classified information there is no distinction. Misrepresenting them in the press is not going to save her from divulging or confirming the existence of CIA facilities in Eastern Europe.

Cobb may be a leftwing plant meant to get McCarthy to hold of agreements with the Feds. My guess is he pressured McCarthy to put up a fight. Win or lose Cobb is safe and paid for. In fact, he is apparently denying is media speculation, which means nothing if she did leak classified information.

Nowhere in the CIA statement last week was McCarthy accused of leaking information on the prisons, although some news accounts suggested the CIA had made that claim.

Conversely, nowhere in the CIA statement was McCarthy exonerated – just the opposite. And the sources to this story seem to be in the CYA mode – which is bad for McCarthy. If she is even once tries to cover for someone else her leniancy deals are off

Though McCarthy acknowledged having contact with reporters, a senior intelligence official confirmed yesterday that she is not believed to have played a central role in The Post’s reporting of the secret prisons. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing personnel matters.

Central role? Not relevant. Personnel matters? Is the source under investigation too? The Washington Post has a lot of guts trying to make the case McCarthy is innocent using someone else who may be guilty as well. Strangely, it seems many in the agency are jumping in front of the crackdown – which only those with something to worry about would do:

“Firing someone who was days away from retirement is the least serious action they could have taken,” said a former intelligence official who is friendly with McCarthy but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of speculation on the administration’s motive. “That’s certainly enough to frighten those who remain in the agency.”

This person (Beers, Johnson, McGovern?) is safe to comment because they are outside the agency, and therefore shouldn’t have half a clue as to what is happening. Brave soul.

The PR effort is a full court press, likely to backfire on poor McCarthy, unless this is part of the sting – get her cohorts to expose themselves through public demonstrations of support. For example:

A counter-terrorism official acknowledged to Newsweek today that in firing McCarthy, the CIA was not necessarily accusing her of being the principal or sole leaker of any particular story.

Did this person just ‘jump into jail’ by associating themselves with McCarthy. These leaps of support make no sense in a town known to run from scandals to protect six figure salaries and notoriety. McCarthy was an unknown set of damaged goods who could easily disapear from the news cycle if she had nothing to link to anyone in power. One wonders why people are rushing to associate their name with hers when no association is the best PR course of action.

The VIPS have come out of the leftward fringes to defend McCarthy on PBS no less!

Mr. Kerr, should Mary McCarthy have been fired for what she did?RICHARD KERR, Former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence: Yes, I believe so.

…

RAY MCGOVERN: We’re not talking about petty crimes or misdemeanors; we’re talking about war crimes. She was cognizant of war crimes. She needed to do something about that, from a moral and a legal perspective. And she chose this way to do it, because the other ways were blocked for her.

Is this the promised PR support for McCarthy if she goes with Cobb’s plan of defiance? If so, this kind of assistance is going to put McCarthy away behind bars. While Cobb claims she had no access, McGovern is saying she did and she had to expose the classified information because she had no other way out.

JIM LEHRER: … the allegation that she gave the Washington Post information about these so-called prison camps in Eastern Europe?

RAY MCGOVERN: Correct.

Ray McGovern is saying she did it – who am I to argue with the intel expert! Even Andrea Mitchell jumped into the fray:

Keith Olbermann, referring to how she was fired after she had already quit: “But does it not support her theory, or what would be behind her claim, that scape-goating might not be an inappropriate term here?”

Andrea Mitchell, from NBC’s Washington bureau: “Well she hasn’t said that, but certainly her friends are saying that.

Her friends? What do her friends know about this?

And frankly, people within the CIA, even critics of administration pre-war intelligence and all the rest, former and current CIA officers, say that leaks are terrible and that no one should leak national security.

Pick a side Andrea.

Addendum: Malkin’s new endeavour Hot Air has a post on the matter, referencing yours truly. More here.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1697/feed 18 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1696 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1696#comments Mon, 24 Apr 2006 21:14:07 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1696 In a stunning reversal, Mary McCarthy is apparently denying she leaked CIA Prison story (even thoug, if she admitted to the act the CIA would have a signed statement to the contrary I would think):

A former CIA officer who was sacked last week after allegedly confessing to leaking secrets has denied she was the source of a controversial Washington Post story about alleged CIA secret detention operations in Eastern Europe, a friend of the operative told NEWSWEEK.

The fired official, Mary O. McCarthy, “categorically denies being the source of the leak,” one of McCarthy’s friends and former colleagues, Rand Beers, said Monday after speaking to McCarthy.

What is going on here? Kerry comes out defending McCarthy while CNN is reporting she is a serial leaker. And now key Kerry campaign member Rand Beers who (a) quit the NSC right before Joe Wilson leaked his guts out and (b) admitted knowing Joe and Valerie’s roles in the Plame Game and that Wilson was on the Kerry campaign at the time of the Wilson was making his wild statements.

Does Newsweek report any of this? Some. The parts about being on Kerry’s campaign. They also note Beers many connections to Mary McCarthy at the NSC under Clinton. The connections to the Wilsons? Nope. It seems Beers is only saying she did not leak the CIA prison information. Well, the reporting on this small part of it has been speculation because of the links to Dana Priest:

The only journalist so far identified by government sources as one of the unauthorized persons with whom McCarthy admitted contact is Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, who last week won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing details of a secret airline and prison network that the CIA operates to detain and interrogate high-level Al Qaeda suspects.

Maybe the media over speculated. But something is up with Beers coming out like this. Maybe they are just good friends – or maybe they have other ties. Newsweek does find some hints from the administration that some may have jumped to conclusions:

A counter-terrorism official acknowledged to NEWSWEEK today that in firing McCarthy, the CIA was not necessarily accusing her of being the principal, original, or sole leaker of any particular story.

Interesting walk back here. But they are still charging she leaked classified information. It seems maybe McCarthy could be singing songs to federal investigators as Mac Ranger said in his post today. Newsweek jumps to the opposite conclusion:

But the fact that McCarthy evidently is denying leaking the CIA prison story to the Post—and that other key information for stories revealing CIA detention and rendition operations originated with unclassified sources—does raise questions about how far the Bush administration will be able to press its crackdown on suspected leakers.

Well, the typical answer is the media is wrong. Could be McCarthy is part of other high profile leaks, and some we don’t know about. There are some excuses being floated someone with more knowledge will need to knock down:

The sources told NEWSWEEK that because McCarthy’s alleged acknowledgements that she leaked classified information were made as a result of an inquiry based on polygraph examinations, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for prosecutors to use any admissions she made in trying to put together any criminal prosecution. One of the sources, a law enforcement official close to the investigation, noted that polygraph evidence is normally inadmissible in criminal court cases because of judicial doubts about the reliability and credibility of lie-detector machines. Also, the official said, witnesses submitting to a polygraph examination usually give up their rights not to make self-incriminating statements. The use of any admissions McCarthy gave under these circumstances for a criminal investigation would therefore be problematic, the official indicated.

My understanding is the confession is still valid. This sounds like disinformation to me. The polygraph was one of probably many indicators of her action. It was probably used to get her to finally confess. The article then goes on to quote Larry Johnson. Nuff said there.

You want my opinion? Sounds like a piece sent out to start to discredit polygraphs. All the stories today sound like arguments for the defense eminating from Dems and the media.

One name I keep finding at the bottom of all these interesting articles in the post is Lucy Shackelford. Her names pops up with Pincus and Priest and Milbank all the time. For example:

Staff writers Dana Milbank, Susan Schmidt and Dana Priest, political researcher Brian Faler and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

Do some googles with her name and scandals and you will see lots of hits. Something to ponder in a future post I fear.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1696/feed 9 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1695 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1695#comments Mon, 24 Apr 2006 18:27:13 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1695 Update: Mac Ranger has insights from his inside sources as to the implications of this:

To answer some emails, yes according to sources Mary will be prosecuted. I doubt that she will actually see trial as she will most likely squeal and squeal loudly.

Now for the fallout.

Her capture is key because of her connections to other key democrats. As Washington insiders know, no one ‘politics’ in a vaccuum, just as it was impossible that no one in Washington circles didn’t know of Valerie Plame’s job, so too Mary Loose Lips didn’t have to look too far for pass information to.

Mac then goes on to note, as I did, Mary is the 5th Clinton NSC staffer caught up in ‘the plan’ to scandalize the Bush administration.

Mary is only the beginning – the four from the NSC – only a small group of a total cabal of others still in operation. Mary’s discovery is a real setback and could spell doom not only for the careers of many still working in the NSC, FBI, CIA, but also in the Senate, House.

Read the whole thing. MAc also points to Andrew McCarthy, who too sees this as the tip of the iceberg.

“McCarthy’s situation cannot be considered in a vacuum. Even with McCarthy considered alone, we are not talking about a single leak – the reporting indicates that she may be a serial leaker, the black-sites story being only the most prominent instance. But the broader context here is an intelligence community that was, quite brazenly, leaking in a manner designed to topple a sitting president. A big question here — maybe not for purposes of guilt under the espionage act, but for the more important policy issue of a politicized CIA — is whether she was part of a campaign that was grossly inappropriate for the intelligence community to engage in.

An iceberg of Democrat dirty tricks on a level that will make Nixon look like a saint.

End Update

Looks like Mary McCarthy has been in a bit of a crime spree when it comes to leaking classified material. As I pointed out in one of my earlier posts, the standard for a whistleblower is to be correct on the facts and trying to stop something wrong from happening. The partisan hack buying some possible future position has a completely different MO. One that would include shot gun leaks on various subjects to various news outlets – shopping stories around.

CNN is reporting Mary McCarthy looks to be the partisan hack type leaker, and this investigation is not done making news:

A U.S. official told CNN on Monday that the CIA officer fired for leaking classified information was accused of a “pattern of behavior,” including multiple contacts with more than one reporter.

…

“It’s not just about one story, it’s a pattern of activity,” the official said.

Officials said the investigation into leaking to Dana Priest of The Washington Post, and other journalists, is ongoing. “It is not over yet,” said one.

The Democrats made a huge tactical error jumping out to defend these crimes and align themselves with a serial criminal. Now Kerry and Harmon will have to defend Mary not just on one leak, but many leaks. Want to bet the leaks all benefit Democrats? Well, time will tell. What we don’t need to see anymore (Mr. Pincus) is the word ‘alleged’ in the reporting:

McCarthy admitted to multiple unauthorized contacts with journalists after failing a polygraph test

How many times does the new media need to report this before the news media accepts it? What are we to conclude from a media that doesn’t seem to believe its own reporting?

And the whistleblower facade can end too. As someone commenting on Tom Maguire’s Just One Minute site noted, Mary McCarthy worked in the one area of the CIA steeped in the details of how to do a proper whistleblow. She has no excuse. And evidently she never tried to use the process:

Two congressional aides — one Democratic, one Republican — both told CNN they knew of no attempt by McCarthy to speak to intelligence committee members about any concerns about CIA activities.

At her level, McCarthy would get a hearing by Congress. Contrary to popular media-spin she was not a low level, helpless employee. This last line has to make you laugh:

Former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, a CNN contributor, has said any CIA employee who wants to raise complaints should address the agency inspector general or the appropriate intelligence committees, not the media.

That would be, of course, where McCarthy worked!

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1695/feed 5 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1690 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1690#comments Mon, 24 Apr 2006 13:40:59 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1690 Update: Tom Maguire catches the irony of Pincus commenting on leaks regarding Plame (who else would know better!).

End Update

Why are Democrats defending the leaks? Their plan was to create scandals against Bush to undercut public support – and that plan is sort of working. But the plan can backfire if the public believes they were set up by planted stories leaked by partisans (which we conservatives see has happening). When I look at the Washington Post this morning and read the statements from the Democrats, they makes no strategic political sense (Walter Pincus no less):

Key Democratic legislators yesterday joined Republicans in saying they do not condone the alleged leaking of classified information that led to last week’s firing of a veteran CIA officer. But they questioned whether a double standard exists that lets the White House give reporters secretly declassified information for political purposes.

The voters are NOT (amazing what happens when you leave out a few letters) that stupid. I know Democrats have an extremely poor image of the average voter and insult their intelligence just by every day. I know there are polls out there supposedly projecting an equivalence because of the biased news stories. But this is a really dangerous game to play.

When people find out the President is authorized to present intlelligence to the public, especially when explaining the reasons to go to war (what was JFK doing with the pictures of Cuban missile sites, what was Colin Powell doing at the UN?), the realization that they were mistaken is pretty abrupt. And then they want to understand why they were mistaken. And if they were mislead they get angry and never, ever consider that source credible again. So why play this game?

Pincus recounts the Rep Jane Harman gaffe from yesterday, which illustrates a stupendous ignorance of how our government works. I discussed this yesterday in a previous post. Kerry chimed in as well:

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) echoed Harman, saying, “A CIA agent has an obligation to uphold the law, and clearly leaking is against the law. And nobody should leak.” But he added: “If you’re leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you . . . put on that person.”

Then, in perfect Kerry fashion, he flips sides and is glad someone leaked national secrets (hidden inside unfounded claims):

Kerry, on ABC’s “This Week,” said, “Classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people.” He added, “I’m glad she told the truth,” but if McCarthy did it, she will have to face the consequences of breaking the law.

So it is wrong, the people leaking should be punished, but there are some mitigating factors to consider in sentencing. Ah! It is clear now. The Democrats are trying to make the case for LENIENCY! The comparison to Bush is to somehow create sympathy for the poor criminal. Pincus, in running the defense team for today, cannot even admit McCarthy is an admitted criminal:

McCarthy, while working for CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson, is alleged to have “knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information” to journalists including The Washington Post’s Dana Priest.

She is equally ‘alleged’ to have admitted to her crimes. But Pincus doesn’t have space for that detail here, near the front of his defense motion.

What is stunning is we all know the Washington Post was an enabling partner in crime in this act of exposing national security secrets. Who does the post think they are kidding? They are trying to minimize their culpability and gain some sympathy as well, even thought, when presented with the classified information they did not turn the person in. They had opportunities to do the right thing, but the Pulitzer (i.e., pure greed) was out there clouding their judgement. The bribe that would make risking the crime worthwhile.

Back to the Democrats though. So, why stick your neck out for McCarthy and come to her defense? It is all downside to align yourself with a lying gossip. Kerry gives when he begins to link this to the Plame Game – which is another unforced error. The Plame Game is currently tied around the Bush administration’s neck. But it also seems to be crumbling apart.

Why ‘jump into jail’, as someone I once knew and admired used to admonition people who talked to much once things were going their way. It seems obvious. The Democrats feel they need to defend this action, because they are associated with it. I see no need to run out and defend Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham’s bribes and greed. None. So why run out and defend McCarthy’s crimes?

We know Rockefeller and the Democrat leadership have a plan to undercut Bush and the Reps, and that planned relied on creating scandals out of thin air. The one thing Plame, the NSA leaks and the Prison leaks all have in common is they exposed classified information – only to give the scandal some reality! The made up part is always the Bush scandal, the reality is always intelligence methods, sources and information useful to our enemies.

The Democrats are linking the CIA leak story to Plame all on their own. They are making the connection for us. They linked the NSA story in there as well. The Senate Dems rush to the media to defend McCarthy is very telling. They appear to be trying to argue for compassion and leniency, as if to say it’s not her fault, something else drove her to do it.

Maybe that ‘something else’ was pressure from Senate Democrats? Maybe the pawns in the Democrat’s propaganda war are tired of being the career-equivolant to the Jihadi’s suicide bomber. Unlike suicide bombers, these sacrificial lambs who destroy their careers for ‘the cause’ have an opportunity to reflect and rethink their decisions. While Rockefeller stays in the Senate, these foot soldiers lose everything they built up in their lives, career-wise.
The Democrats sound nervous to me. McCarthy is not yet under arrest, but my guess is the one thing staying the DoJ hand is some sort of agreement to reduce the punishment. And they have good reason to be. If the media ever awakens from their groupie-love of the Democrats they will see signs of ‘the plan’ everywhere. James Lewis points out one such indicator at The American Thinker today:

Mary McCarthy is the fourth Clinton NSC member to assault the Bush White House. … Mary McCarthy was one. So was Joe Wilson – and his wife Val Plame, who presumably cooked up the phony Niger uranium documents scam, which now has Scooter Libby facing jailtime….Then we had Richard Clarke, who ran interference for the Clintonistas during the 9/11 Commission hearings…Then we have Sandy Burglar himself.

James forgets Rand Beers, who ran the foreign policy portion of Kerry’s campaign and for whom Mary McCarthy worked. This is not just councidence folks. Beers, Wilson and Berger all worked on Kerry’s campaign. So again I ask, why is Kerry out there on the news shows tarring himself with this scandal? Maybe the media will start connecting some dots, more charges are coming.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1690/feed 4 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1686 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1686#comments Sun, 23 Apr 2006 16:07:18 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1686 McCarthy’s positions gave her plenty of influence to fix what she felt needed fixing. From those who would know:

Unlike the names associated with real or perceived IC fiascos (Tice, Edmonds, Shaffer, etc.) if Ms. McCarthy had a serious, legitimate gripe with what was going on at the CIA, she could have walked down the hall to the IG, she could have had lunch with someone at the FBI or Justice, or she could have made a phone call and been talking to members of Congress. In short she would have suffered almost none of the pain that most whistleblowers normally face.

This mirrors what another ex-intel blogger, Spook86, has reported:

You’ll note that many media accounts describe the leaker as an “analyst,” suggesting that she was, at best, a mid-level staffer. That was hardly the case; few analysts make the jump from a regional desk at Langley to the White House. A “National Intelligence Officer” is the equivalent of a four-star general in the military, or a cardinal in the Catholic Church. There are only a handful of NIOs in the intelligence community; they are in charge of intelligence community efforts in a particular area.

Any news media article you read that protrays little old Mary as an analyst or a ‘historian’ realize your are probably reading garbage. Either the reporters have no clue what they are reporting on, or they do and want to sell you propaganda.

Addendum:  And while we need to keep setting the record straight, McCarthy’s impressive political donations to the Democrats is one of those items the media also ignores or underplays – as Tom Maguire points out.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1686/feed 3 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1685 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1685#comments Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:47:06 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1685 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?

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1685/feed 5 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1680 http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1680#comments Sun, 23 Apr 2006 12:59:30 +0000 AJStrata http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1680 Update: Mac Ranger has an interesting take on all this, always subtexted with ‘there is more coming’. Michelle has her usual link round up here.

End Update

Don’t take the title pf this post too seriously folks, as usual my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek. The Washington Post and NY Times, two news media outlets deeply involved in leaking national security secrets within error ridden stories, address the Mary McCarthy story with some interesting aspects. First up, the Washington Post, which still gives too much voice to EEO-misfits like Larry Johnson (basically someone who does not have the temperment for the job, but because of EEO rules cannot be turned away). The lead in says it all:

The rare firing last week of a CIA officer accused of leaking information to the news media stems both from the sensitivity of the subjects she allegedly discussed and the Bush administration’s forceful efforts to block national security disclosures that have proved embarrassing or caused operational problems, according to current and former intelligence officials.

Nothing about the law, the promise she made when she took the job, the risk to the nation and to our efforts to deal with truly insane people willing to die to take a few hundred of us with them. It was stress.

This is the excuse you will see from the ‘misfits’ throughout this story. Those folks who cannot work within our legal and political system. The folks who cannot tolerate a world not conforming to their views so they feel empowered to change reality as they see fit. It is the new tack for the waning liberal movement. It is their last desperation gasp on the way out. They say so themselves! The policies and guidance of this duly elected administration were too much to bear.

I say: too bad you have no self control, now go to jail. I say the same to people who speed, who rob, who murder. They all have some lame excuse as to why they decided on a life of crime.

But the WaPo does add some nuggets that put the misfits in their proper place and which provide perspective on the Intellience Community in general.

Several former senior intelligence officials said yesterday they could not recall a similar sanction being levied against a serving CIA officer in the past several decades, although they said they would have supported such an action if the agency had been able to trace a leak of a similar nature back to its source.

A majority of CIA officers would probably “find the action taken [against McCarthy] correct,” said a former senior intelligence official who said he had discussed the matter with former colleagues in the past day. “A small number might support her, but the ethic of the business is not to” leak, and instead to express one’s dissenting views through internal grievance channels.

…sources described mixed initial reactions inside the agency to the disclosure of McCarthy’s firing: a widespread condemnation that an intelligence officer was allegedly involved in leaking classified information, in clear violation of CIA rules, coupled with frustration at the set of events that may have provoked it.

This must be a stunning revelation for the news media. I would gather we are talking ratios of 9 to 1 here. The media better understand quickly that the minority they deal with are truly the misfits, hot heads, ax grinders, etc. Will they? I am not sure the news media appreciates what these paragraphs mean to them and to the country. And it will be hard for the press to minimalize the leaks when they get quotes like this:

CIA officials, without confirming the information in the article, have said the disclosure harmed the agency’s relations with unspecified foreign intelligence services. “The consequences of this leak were more serious than other leaks,” said a former intelligence official in touch with senior agency officials.

On the bell curve we see the top ten percent and the bottom ten percent. Typically the top ten get what they want through their own efforts and working with the majority of us normal types to agree and provide support. The ones who fail at convincing the team to go their way go crying to mommy-media. Mommy-media is, of course, only interested in Pulitzers. The whining losers are not whistleblowers, and even the post can only point to their perspnal frustrations for some lame rationale:

To some analysts, the firing is also a sign of unprecedented pressures on officials not to have contacts with the media outside of authorized channels where they convey approved messages.

They extend this ‘it was all too much’ excuse to poor Mary McCarthy:

The inspector general’s combination of independence and access may have been combustible in McCarthy’s case, if allegations about her involvement in leaks prove true.

..

Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism expert who worked briefly for McCarthy at the CIA in 1988, said yesterday that if McCarthy were really involved in leaks, she may have concluded that the investigation was “a whitewash, and why not tell the press?

Well, because that was not her call or her job, and none of us elected her President Larry. In fact, the WaPo illustrates the professional, mature path Larry (for future reference):

A former intelligence official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said he knew of CIA officials who had refused to attend meetings related to the rendition — or capture and transfer — of suspected terrorists, because of opposition or anxiety about the legality of the practice.

This is a perfectly legitimate response to such situations. I have used this before myself when asked to do something I was not sure was on the up and up. It sends a signal – to everyone. It is tough to do, but the higher up you are the louder and clearer the signal is. Mary was very high up.

Now on to the NY Times, which takes an even stronger tone against Mary McCarthy’s actions (surprised?). Well, this article is hard to find on the NY Times site. I detected it through Google. The headline article is a pro-McCarthy propoganda piece I dealt with yesterday. This one starts with a bang:

The firing of a veteran Central Intelligence Agency officer who has been accused of leaking classified information is a rare and dramatic move, yet C.I.A. officials say it is only the beginning of a campaign to stanch the unauthorized flow of information from the spy agency.

Emphasis mine again. Well, that is some good news to hear from the NY Times. More McCarthy’s to come.

Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, has for three months carried out one of the most intensive leak investigations in the agency’s history, using polygraph tests to determine who at the agency may be behind what Mr. Goss says is an explosion of damaging leaks to the news media.

Get the feeling the CIA is serious this time around? Maybe the NY Times feels it is important to warn all their moles to lay low for a while. The NY Times had the most aggregious leak of them all on the NSA story. The only accurate information in that one was what the terrorists needed to know to avoid detection on their way to kill Americans. The rest was a serious of mistatements and inability to grasp what goes on in the government. Like a blind man feeling the tail of an elephant.

Again, in this story, the word hitting the news media is the leaking is NOT considered a time honored tradition in the Intelligence Community:

A former intelligence official who remains in contact with many current C.I.A. officers said Mr. Goss was still viewed as an outsider. “There’s a great sense among C.I.A. folks that the administration regards them as the enemy,” the former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he said his current employer did not want him to comment publicly on controversial issues. But he said most intelligence officers were “horrified” at leaks and would support the dismissal of leakers.

What I see this morning, in the two newspapers at the center of this storm, is some serious hesitation. There are the normal stories about how all this ‘information’ leaking (which always seems to forget to add the word ‘classified) is a patriotic duty. But we also see these stories, which tell me their sources are telling them this is going to end, and this is not right. We shall see which side wins out. But the impression this leaves on the media must be unsettling. The Intel Community is not with them on this one.

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