The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
CIA Replies to lawyer's assertion: Um...YES Mary McCarthy DID give up classified information to reporters
Despite her rushing to get a lawyered up yesterday, who then proclaimed her innocence, the CIA today again reiterated that McCarthy DID give up classified secrets to the press. From the "leaky" New York Times:
The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday defended the firing of Mary O. McCarthy, the veteran officer who was dismissed last week, and challenged her lawyer's statements that Ms. McCarthy never provided classified information to the news media.
[...]
A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, said: "The officer was terminated for precisely the reasons we have given: unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters. There is no question whatsoever that the officer did both. The officer personally admitted doing both."
Ty Cobb, a lawyer representing Ms. McCarthy, said again on Tuesday that she never admitted divulging sensitive material. "She did not confess, orally or in writing, to leaking classified information," Mr. Cobb said.
Since 2004, the inspector general's office has been investigating the agency's role in the interrogation and detention of high-level terrorist suspects, as well as its network of secret jails abroad. At a minimum, intelligence officials said, Ms. McCarthy's work in that office gave her access to some of the agency's most sensitive information, including details about highly secret "compartmented programs."
It is clear that someone here is lying; my guess is that the liar is the big time Democratic donor and activist who just got summarily FIRED from her highly sensitive intelligence post...
And--what do you know--it looks like the DNC may help to pick up the tab for her defense (from Sweetness and Light):
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.
Perhaps that’s why the Howard Dean and others at the Democrat National Committee are looking to some of their donors to set up a legal defense fund for McCarthy."If Scooter Libby can have a legal defense fund and website, then McCarthy should have one too," says a DNC staffer. "The DNC wouldn’t set it up, we’d have some of our donors do it on the outside. There are plenty of consultants willing to help on this one, we think."
The whole legal defense fund notion is interesting if only because McCarthy is claiming that there is no need for one. The FBI has not received a request from the CIA to formally investigate her activities while an active CIA employee, and McCarthy claims she wasn’t the source. So case, closed, right?
Well, not quite. Republicans in both the House and the Senate view McCarthy as the first of what they believe are four or five individuals who used access to information for political purposes.
"Going back to the Presidential election in 2004, there was a lot of negative information coming out of Democratic campaigns," says a former Bush Administration staffer. "And it wasn’t the kind of stuff that was readily available from opposition research. This was leaked material. A lot of it wasn’t national security related, but it established a pattern that has followed form for almost two years now. There is orchestrated leaking, and the FBI, the CIA and Congress has to do something about it."
Fairly or unfairly, McCarthy may become a test case, and given her interest in the law, it should be quite the learning experience for all involved.
The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday defended the firing of Mary O. McCarthy, the veteran officer who was dismissed last week, and challenged her lawyer's statements that Ms. McCarthy never provided classified information to the news media.
[...]
A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, said: "The officer was terminated for precisely the reasons we have given: unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters. There is no question whatsoever that the officer did both. The officer personally admitted doing both."
Ty Cobb, a lawyer representing Ms. McCarthy, said again on Tuesday that she never admitted divulging sensitive material. "She did not confess, orally or in writing, to leaking classified information," Mr. Cobb said.
Since 2004, the inspector general's office has been investigating the agency's role in the interrogation and detention of high-level terrorist suspects, as well as its network of secret jails abroad. At a minimum, intelligence officials said, Ms. McCarthy's work in that office gave her access to some of the agency's most sensitive information, including details about highly secret "compartmented programs."
It is clear that someone here is lying; my guess is that the liar is the big time Democratic donor and activist who just got summarily FIRED from her highly sensitive intelligence post...
And--what do you know--it looks like the DNC may help to pick up the tab for her defense (from Sweetness and Light):
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.
Perhaps that’s why the Howard Dean and others at the Democrat National Committee are looking to some of their donors to set up a legal defense fund for McCarthy."If Scooter Libby can have a legal defense fund and website, then McCarthy should have one too," says a DNC staffer. "The DNC wouldn’t set it up, we’d have some of our donors do it on the outside. There are plenty of consultants willing to help on this one, we think."
The whole legal defense fund notion is interesting if only because McCarthy is claiming that there is no need for one. The FBI has not received a request from the CIA to formally investigate her activities while an active CIA employee, and McCarthy claims she wasn’t the source. So case, closed, right?
Well, not quite. Republicans in both the House and the Senate view McCarthy as the first of what they believe are four or five individuals who used access to information for political purposes.
"Going back to the Presidential election in 2004, there was a lot of negative information coming out of Democratic campaigns," says a former Bush Administration staffer. "And it wasn’t the kind of stuff that was readily available from opposition research. This was leaked material. A lot of it wasn’t national security related, but it established a pattern that has followed form for almost two years now. There is orchestrated leaking, and the FBI, the CIA and Congress has to do something about it."
Fairly or unfairly, McCarthy may become a test case, and given her interest in the law, it should be quite the learning experience for all involved.
