Posted on 04/24/2006 6:41:03 AM PDT by Quilla
Fired CIA intelligence analyst Mary McCarthy has reportedly confessed to leaking facts about the CIA's top-secret terrorist jails in Europe and Southwest Asia to Dana Priest of the Washington Post. As Priest basks in the glory of the Pulitzer Prize she won for those stories, McCarthy is alternately being investigated for criminal prosecution and hailed as a brave crusader for truth, justice and The American Way.
McCarthy is not, as one pundit said, a courageous American citizen exercising her First Amendment rights against an outrageous government policy. If there are no restrictions enforced by law, then there are no secrets. McCarthy is a traitor, someone who leaked top secret information and damaged our national security, risked the lives of Americans fighting a war, and disrupted our relations with nations that had been working with us against a new kind of enemy. McCarthy was an employee, not a policy maker. She has never been elected by the American people or appointed by the President to a position that would have entitled her to disclose that information. (And neither have the senators and congressmen who have leaked facts just as sensitive as those McCarthy passed on to Dana Priest.) Comparing McCarthy's crime to the President's decision to reveal details of a National Intelligence Estimate is a political argument based on a falsehood. The PPresident is the ultimate classification authority. When he decides to reveal information he is exercising one of the powers of the office to which he was elected.
McCarthy took advantage of the position she had been entrusted and violated her legal obligations. Serving in the CIA's inspector general's office, she had a special responsibility. The IG's office is legally authorized to be privy to compartmented information, the highest level of classification. Other CIA employees only see bits and pieces of such information because the compartmentalization system is designed to prevent all but a few top people to see all the pieces and know what they mean in the larger context. She violated her highest duty because her political beliefs were opposed to the policy that the President had established. Her disclosure was politically motivated. She wanted to thwart the policy of the President, and she achieved her goal by committing a felony. McCarthy should be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent the law allows. As should her fellow CIA leakers and manipulators of policy.
McCarthy was not alone among the CIA's analysts and decision makers. As I have written many times, the CIA has been in open revolt against the President since 9-11. Failing to foresee the fall of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attacks before, including and after 9-11, and just about everything else that mattered, the CIA has been an utter failure in the mission it was created to perform. Instead, it has been operating covertly against the government by mounting operations such as the Joe Wilson Niger trip, which was planned and performed only to discredit the President's position that Iraq was seeking uranium for a revived nuclear weapons program. CIA bureaucrats have been spending a lot of time and effort to discredit the President while fighting against the change that will transform it from the failure it has been to an agency that can meet the needs of a nation at war. And in doing so it has fueled the opposition press with these leaks.
America's free press is supposed to be one of the guardians of our freedom. But while the press is free it must also be responsible, and in this it fails comprehensively. The New York Times published the stories of the NSA terrorist surveillance program even after the President made a personal appeal to maintain the secrecy of one of our most highly valued secret programs (probably leaked by McCarthy's CIA pals or their cohorts in NSA and other agencies).
We are at war. Every American, regardless of his job, has a duty to protect the interests of this nation and to place his loyalty to our nation above his own career or political agenda. We aren't talking about Washington gossip, little secrets leaked by little people to raise their status from a "B-list" guest to the "A-list" for the right cocktail parties. We are talking about the essentials for fighting this war that, if revealed as the NSA program and the CIA secret prisons were, can mean the difference between winning the war and enabling our enemies to hit us again as they did on 9-11.
The liberal media is so consumed with its hatred for George Bush that it has lost any sense of loyalty to our nation. This year it gave its highest professional award -- the Pulitzer Prize -- to Dana Priest for her CIA prisons stories and to James Risen, the New York Times reporter who wrote the stories that revealed the NSA terrorist surveillance program. There is not even a debate among the press about whether these reporters should be chastised instead of rewarded. To the contrary, these Pulitzer Prizes make every reporter more eager to discover and publish America's secrets regardless of the consequences to our soldiers and our nation.
How many times have we seen the president subjected to lectures about introspection and demands for apologies by the White House press corps? If reporters, editors and publishers were publicly subjected to that same critical examination they might regain their sense of responsibility to the nation. And they might, in a moment of private introspection, regain the perspective that freedom of the press is not the only essential right enshrined in the Constitution. If a free press is not responsible, it cannot be a defender of freedom. It can become the enemy of all who fight in defense of our way of life. What will they publish next?
You're welcome. There's two of us. I don't suppose any more are really necessary. I can hit a bullseye WITHOUT my glasses.
"Their now at the point where they feel they really can pull off just about anything they want to and never face criminal negligence."
In my heart of hearts, I believe that was what they've been led to believe. In my heart of hearts, I believe housekeeping starts now.
"The 60's era Marxists continue their long march through the institutions. The logical outcome is civil war. When the State department and the CIA can actively oppose the sitting President without fear, then the republic itself is in danger."
Exactly, the Republic is in danger. McCarthy NEEDS to do jail time. She has to be the first in a long line of criminal prosecutions.
"Babin fails to mention that McCarthy is a political partisan who (herself and her husband) gave over $10K to the Dems in 2004."
That is a lot of money for a government employee. Giving the max amount!
Question. Does her IRS returns and income support her lifestyle. This is how Aldridge Ames was spotted (I believe).
Is this her legitimate money or money funneled to her to avoid "campaign laws"?
Was it possibly Kerry "back-door money" or Soros?
Thanks for the information.
I wish they would get her for Treason but, you know as I do that it will swept under the rug .
[Mrs T]
Good questions. At the very least it suggests that she was an intense partisan whose donations to the Dems probably put her in the top 5% of all donors. The fact that she gave $5K in October 2004 to the Ohio Dem Party indicates that she probably was personally solicited by the Kerry campaign to fund their last minute charge to win the battleground state of Ohio.
"Hitler believed that Jews were sub-human and should be exterminated. Well, hey, if that's what he believes ...
Leftists. They are dangerous, crazy people."
That is so typical of their thinking. You know, all ideas deserve equal respect and every viewpoint is valid. Nonsense!
As one person already noted, any of us who have ever held a security clearance know we'd be prison-bound for disclosing it. If the government doesn't bring charges against this woman and throw her in the cell next to Aldrich Ames, our country will be done a disservice by encouraging others to spill their guts because, after all, they "believe it's the right thing."
Well, I believe the right thing is to git a rope!
I'm starting to get mad at the dem spin on this story now.
Treason against America is just the kind of thing that can galvanize the conservative base. There must be consequences for treason.
Remember Mo, you said it first. :)
That's not correct. Only ideas that emanate from places where it's hard to find decent toilet paper get respect.
Oh, you mean kinda like the ROSENBERGS?
Once upon a time we hung traitors.
"Paging Mister Clark. Mister Clark, please pick up the nearest courtesy phone."
I agree with you and welcome to Free Republic.
Jeb Babbin .........SO ELOQUENTLY SAID !!
Williams? Is this the stone nut that almost cried when President Bush was elected second term? He is a liberal hack and sad indeed. Always mute my TV when he speaks.
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