Last week CIA employee Mary McCarthy was fired for allegedly giving classified information to Dana Priest of The Washington Post. Priest along with two other reporters, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, both of The New York Times won Pulitzer Prizes. This prompted Bill Bennett to call for the jailing of the three reporters on espionage charges.



http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/3811424.html



http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/ne...t_id=1002384398

Questions for Debate:

1. Should Mary McCarthy face criminal charges for the allegations against her?

2. Do you agree with Bill Bennett that the three journalists should be charged under espionage laws or is this just another political assault on freedom of the press as Craig Crawford outlined in his book, Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media.

My Review of Crawford’s Book

1. Should Mary McCarthy face criminal charges for the allegations against her?

I think she should. The intelligence community really needs to crack down on the culture of leakage that exists. Porter Goss has been trying to plug these leaks for awhile now link.

McCarthy is undeniably the agent the CIA feels leaked the "secret prisons" secret.

CIA Officer Is Fired for Media Leaks



This blog has a good run down of the story so far.

McCarthy worked in the CIA's IG office, which investigates wrongdoing in the agency. If she can't be trusted, who can?

The other angle, mostly overlooked by the conventional media, is the connections that McCarthy and Priest have with the Democrats and how this leak was probably politically motivated.

Let's not leave out the fact that the prisons revealed by McCarthy have not done anything illegal, at least according to the EU Investigation.

In short, this woman needs to be prosecuted.

2. Do you agree with Bill Bennett that the three journalists should be charged under espionage laws or is this just another political assault on freedom of the press as Craig Crawford outlined in his book, Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media.

A trickier question. The second part of your question can be discarded. Certainly the press does not have a license to break the law. If it were broken, then journalists are as culpable as anyone else.

I do think that journalists should have some sort of reasoned judgement about publishing a story. Is the leaker a whistleblower or is it just someone with an axe to grind? In this case, McCarthy seems to be an involved political donor and not an unbiased whistleblower. The journalists certainly need to take that into consideration.

If they published the story believing that there was illegal activity going on, then they should be exempt from prosecution. That can certainly be argued in this case, although their lack of due diligence is shocking.

The answer to question one is No.

The answer to question two is Hell No.

As my fellow Ohio resident, Amlord is relying upon a right-wing blog for supporting information, I'll rely upon a left-wing blog, TPM Cafe for some of my supporting information. But first, I'd like to point out that Mary McCarthy has denied she was the source of the information for the Washington Post articles.

NEWSWEEK ( a bit more credible source than any blog) has a Web-exclusive story about McCarthy available.

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. Beers said he could not elaborate on this denial and McCarthy herself did not respond to a request for comment left by NEWSWEEK on her home answering machine. A national security advisor to Democratic Party candidate John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign, Beers worked as the head of intelligence programs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff and later served as a top deputy on counter-terrorism for President Bush in 2002 and 2003. McCarthy, a career CIA analyst, initially worked as a deputy to Beers on the NSC and later took over Beer’s role as the Clinton NSC’s top intelligence expert.

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. Intelligence officials privately acknowledge that key news stories about secret agency prison and “rendition” operations have been based, at least in part, upon information available from unclassified sources.

The McCarthy case troubles some former U.S. intelligence officials, who note that the CIA, while aggressively pursuing leaks to the news media, has failed to take disciplinary action against any of its officials for the widely acknowledged intelligence failures of recent years. “Nobody got fired for September 11 and nobody gets fired for [mistakes about] WMD, but they fire someone for this?” said one former U.S. senior intelligence official. In the case of the September 11 attacks, a report by the same Inspector General’s office where McCarthy worked recommended the convening of CIA disciplinary boards for a number of current and former officials. But CIA director Porter Goss rejected the recommendation and has refused to allow even an unclassified version of the inspector general’s report to be publicly released (emphasis added)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12466719/site/newsweek/

It is astonishing how quickly conservatives are howling for McCarthy's head on a stick, while avoiding assessing blame in two of the worst intelligence failures in U.S. history; the September 11 terrorist attacks and the faulty WMD premise justifying the Iraq invasion. Then again, these are the same conservatives who see nothing wrong with White House officials leaking the name of a CIA agent to attack a political enemy.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA official puts things in perspective:

There is a fundamental moral and ethical difference between someone who leaks information in order to serve the public good and someone, like George Bush, who authorizes leaks only for the purpose of saving his sorry political ***. It is important to remember that Bush and Cheney went after Joe Wilson because he wrote an op-ed that said that there was no sound basis for George Bush to claim in the State of the Union speech that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium. So, while Bush was plotting on leaking selected bits of intelligence as part of a scheme to discredit Joe Wilson, his White House and his CIA admitted that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union. In other words, Wilson got it right and the White House sought to destroy the reputations of Ambassador Wilson and his CIA wife. Are we following the logic here?

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/29176

Amlord's conservative blogger smells a rat in the fact that McCarthy gave money to the Ohio Democratic Party.

The tip-off here is Mrs. McCarthy’s $5,000 contribution to the Ohio State Democratic party just weeks before the 2004 election. Why is this proof positive of her rabid partisanship?

First of all, the amount is the maximum allowed to a state party under the law. Secondly, the idea for making this donation did not just occur to Mrs. McCarthy out of the clear blue sky; McCarthy could very well have been solicited by virtue of her being on an exclusive big donor’s list.

"Could very well have been solicited?" Well, that's enough proof for me! Get the tar and feathers! No wonder the blog is called, "Right Wing Nut House." Let's hear it for truth in advertising.

Johnson shoots down that particular lame duck.

And what have we learned this week? If you have contributed any money to Democrats you are a traitor if you criticize the President. Rand Beers, a senior national security advisor who served in the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations was labeled a turncoat. Joe and Valerie Wilson? Guilty because they had the temerity to participate in politics and contribute to Al Gore (although they also contributed to George Bush senior). Mary McCarthy? Guilty as well for contributing to John Kerry. Of course, we can conveniently forget that she stood up to the Clinton Administration for its unjustified bombing of a factory in Sudan. Why worry about facts? Bush finds them convenient to ignore.

McCarthy---like anyone else---has the right to donate to whatever political campaign or candidate she pleases as long as she's not breaking the law. It takes a wild leap of logic to conclude a $5,000 check means McCarthy is a Democratic stooge.

Johnson, while admitting to being a friend of Valerie Wilson, doesn't share warm memories of working with McCarthy.

Mary McCarthy, is an old acquaintance. I hasten to add that I do not consider her a friend. She was my immediate boss in 1988-89 and was instrumental in my decision to leave the CIA and take a job at the State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism. Mary, in my experience, was a terrible manager. I left the CIA in 1989 despite having received two exceptional performance awards during my last eight months on the job because I could not stand working under her.

While I'm neither a fan nor friend of Mary's, she may have done a service for her country. She was a lousy manager in my experience, but she is not a traitor and has not betrayed the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. That dirty work was done by the minions of George Bush and Dick Cheney. It is important to keep that fact in the forefront as the judgment on Mary McCarthy's acts is rendered.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/29098

I cannot look into the mind and heart of Mary McCarthy and know whether she is telling the truth or not. Neither can any slob with a viewpoint and a blog to express it on. As events unfold it's far too soon to rush to judgment whether she broke any laws or not. Not that little fact is going to slow down the Right-Wing Attack Machine that selectively picks and choose the facts as best to slime its opponents.

Gee, don't you all think we should wait and see how this develops? Mary McCarthy denies that she was the source of the leaks about the "secret" prisons. (See this Newsweek Article).





I find this rush to judgment, by many of the same individuals who have defended the administration's deliberate exposure of Plame's CIA cover, to be a double standard of the first order! If McCarthy was guilty of prison leak and the government can prove it, she will be subject to legal jeopardy. And that is as it should be, even if her purpose was morally defensible.

She was fired, according to the CIA, for breaking the agreement she signed when she joined the CIA. The agreement (a standard at the CIA) said that she would not shared classifed secrets with unauthorized persons. In other words, she wouldn't leak secrets or break the Espionage Act.

The CIA does not indict people, the Justice Department does. Which is why McCarthy is now being investigated by the DoJ. The CIA says she confessed to leaking the secrets. She now denies that.

Is McCarthy a whistleblower? Did she uncover illegal acts by the CIA? Not that I can discern.

The prisons she revealed were not involved in any illegal activity, according to the EU investigation of the matter.

The fact that the CIA cannot seem to keep secrets harms their relationship with other spy agencies around the world.

As far as accountability for intelligence lapses (pretty much off-topic), I called for George Tenet to be fired a long time before he left. He is the one I blame squarely for the Iraq WMD fiasco. Bush does have the fault of loyalty, no doubt about that. Tenet would have been fired in mid to late 2003 if I were the POTUS.

Amlord don’t dismiss half my question...

and I won’t dismiss your

Right-Wing Blog

It wouldn’t at all surprise me to see an avalanche from the right designed to discredit Dana Priest and the other Pulitzer Prize winning journalists. The pompous Bill Bennett just fired the opening shot.

Freedom of the press may not seem like an important issue to you, but in the long run a free and independent press is a more important that prices-at-the-pump.

BTW: Why don’t you invest a couple of hours reading Craig Crawford’s book before getting out the magic wand of criticism and dismissal? It ain't going away.



This is a good point. That's why I put the word "allegations" in red in my first question.

1.

These are not allegations, these are proven facts to which she has confessed.

She broke the terms of the confidentiality agreement she was bound by law to, if this includes criminal prosecution (as defined in the agreement she signed) then yes - she needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

2.

I'll refrain from answering this till more information on what she leaked is presented.

If the information concerns the CIA prisons (which have been proven legal by the investigations done to date - as Amlord proved) then consequences should follow for the harm done to a legitimate national security interest.

Not necessarily.

Mary McCarthy admits contact with reporters, but not leaking the information to Dana Priest.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12479685/

Video included in link.

BTW: Nothing will be "proved" until it is done so in a court of law. Polygraph tests, such as the one that brought about Mary McCarthy's firing, are not admissible as evidence in court.

McCarthy has denied the charges, as anyone accused (but not charged) would do. Does anyone admit to a crime before charges are filed?

The CIA fired her. This seems fairly unprecedented (at least the public nature of this action seems unprecedented). The reason given was that she leaked classified documents. It doesn't take a leap of logic to assume that charges might follow. Consider the fact that the Washington Post itself said it was McCarthy (according to NBC News, of course). Priest works for the Post. You'd think the editors there could ask her for corroboration or refutation.

Even John Kerry said on ABC's This Week that she should take her lumps for breaking the law even if he "applauds" her for doing it.

NBC News was the first outlet to report that the fired CIA employee was McCarthy. I wonder if they are part of the "war on journalists".

However, I have not seen this turned into something against journalists.

This is probably the only time a conservative will use John Kerry in attempting to make a point. Whatever happened to presumption of innocence?



Then what was Bill Bennett doing? There was something about this on Countdown tonight. I'll post it tomorrow when the transcript is available.

Here's Ray McGovern's take on the incident with Mary McCarthy and the moralilty of leaks. (McGovern Editorial)

Again, I'd like to see McCarthy charged, but for practical purposes she will not be (nor will the journalists involved).

In order to be charged, the DoJ must show evidence in open court. This means exposing even more specific information and confirming the leaks as fact. This could be just as damaging as the original leak.

Remember in World War 2 when the Chicago Tribune published the fact that the US Navy knew the composition of the Japanese fleet (blowing the secret that we had cracked the Japanese code)? No one was charged then, even though most of the country considered that the pinnacle of treason. The military simply did not want to compromise its secrets any more then they had been.

No, I don't remember! I was barely one at the time. I have read in historical accounts that the Yorktown commander let a Chicago Tribune reporter see classified documents and was barred from any further promotions as a result. A secret prison system, however, is hardly analogous to revealing to the Japanese that their naval code had been broken. Aside from the questionable morality of a system of prisons where people are disappeared, just what are terrorists going to do with this information? One suspects that the reasoning is similar to Rumsfeld's when the Abu Gharib pictures were revealed. His reaction was to bar cameras and camera phones. In other words, the real crime to him was the photos, not the mistreatment they revealed. Also, just what kind of damage could be done by legally charging McCarthy now? This is all too convenient, pillory her in the press and the rightwing blogosphere and then not give her her day in court?

I was three years old when several uncles came home from WWII. I don’t remember the incident personally. I was more interested in some wind-up toys one of the uncles brought home for me. And anyone who was born after the war certainly can’t remember it either.

I hope you are right about McCarthy not being prosecuted. Your reasoning seems sound on this point.

I really think my second question about the three Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, especially Dana Priest, is the more important of the two. Again, I think Bill Bennett’s opening shot is the another attempt to discredit the (oh the horror of it ) "liberal" (wash my mouth out with soap) media.



From another Countdown guest:



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12496641/

The EU is still investigating this matter.

(See April 27th Washington Post).

Should Mary McCarthy face criminal charges for the allegations against her?

For the allegations alone? No. If a prosecutor thinks there's enough evidence for a trial, sure. Even the most ethically motivated whistle-blower should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions. If there's proof she broke the law, then it should go to trial. I would also like to think that a judge and/or jury would take the motive into account. If McCarthy was exposing what she felt was illegal activity and did so without endangering national security, then I don't think she should be treated the same as someone who leaks information for profit or to pursue a political agenda that may be contrary to the national interest (as Condoleezza Rice has recently been accused of doing).

Do you agree with Bill Bennett that the three journalists should be charged under espionage laws or is this just another political assault on freedom of the press as Craig Crawford outlined in his book, Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media.

Without more detail, I can't say. If laws were broken and the journalists in question knew they were being broken, then they should also be accountable, however well-intended their reporting may have been.


That's not all Porter Goss has been trying to do for a while now. Since at least November, 2004, he has been trying to purge the CIA of Democrats. According to an article in Newsday (their link is broken, but the article is quoted here), the White House ordered Goss to "purge" the agency of those that might be deemed "disloyal" to the administration: "Goss was given instructions... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda," according to the senior CIA official to whom they spoke.

While I don't accept that a campaign contribution is evidence of a partisan operative leaking classified information merely to smear an administration (even one as criminal as the Bush administration), I have no doubt that the Executive feels no different than the most lunatic right-wing bloggers on the internets: "Oh, my God, she's a Democrat - TRAITOR!!"


The real angle that's been mostly overlooked by the conventional media is that McCarthy may simply be part of the purge demanded by the White House.


Regardless of what an EU commission may eventually find, there was a related story published in the Boston Globe yesterday - based on military commission hearings and other court documents:
One Guantanamo detainee has argued that the case against him is built on a coerced confession. "After four years of torture and rendition, you have the wrong person in the stand," Binyam Ahmad Muhammad, an Ethiopian, told a military tribunal earlier this month. He was arrested in Pakistan, questioned by Americans, then transferred to a prison in Morocco where, he claims, his jailers sliced him with a scalpel on his chest and genitals.

Seventeen-year-old Hassan bin Attash claims that he was hung upside down, beaten on the soles of his feet, and threatened with electric shocks after he was sent to Jordan by US officials. Australian detainee Mamdouh Habib claimed he was tortured with a cattle prod in Egypt. When his allegation became public, he was promptly released.

If McCarthy was responsible for leaking information about the black prisons, maybe - just maybe - she was not simply "an involved political donor" ( ), but an unbiased whistleblower. And, Amlord is right, journalists should take that into consideration.