A CIA officer has been fired over media leaks — on a day when there also allegations that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked information to an Israeli lobbyist.
So on one hand there’s the news that the administration is clamping down on leaks…and an allegation that an administration official leaked.
In the case of the CIA official, the Washington Post reports:
The CIA fired a long-serving intelligence officer for sharing classified information with The Washington Post and other news organizations, officials said yesterday, as the agency continued an aggressive internal search for anyone who may have discussed intelligence with the news media.
CIA officials said the career intelligence officer failed more than one polygraph test and acknowledged unauthorized contacts with reporters. The “officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information” with journalists, the agency said in a statement yesterday.
The CIA did not reveal the identity of the employee, who was dismissed Thursday, but NBC News reported last night she is Mary McCarthy. An intelligence source confirmed that the report was accurate.
McCarthy began her career in government as an analyst at the CIA in 1984, public documents show. She served as special assistant to the president and senior director for intelligence programs at the White House during the Clinton administration and the first few months of the Bush administration. She later returned to the CIA. Attempts to reach her last night were unsuccessful.
The Post goes on to recap the CIA’s determination to clamp down on leaks and the Justice Department’s hard line on them as well. The Post also reports that the fired CIA officer is not yet being charged with any crime.
Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said people who provide citizens the information they need to hold their government accountable should not “come to harm for that.”
“The reporting that Dana did was very important accountability reporting about how the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government have been conducting the war on terror,” Downie said. “Whether or not the actions of the CIA or other agencies have interfered with anyone’s civil liberties is important information for Americans to know and is an important part of our jobs.”
In an effort to stem leaks, the Bush administration launched several initiatives earlier this year targeting journalists and national security employees. They include FBI probes, extensive polygraphing inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.
The effort has been widely seen among members of the media, and some legal experts, as the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and has worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.
In the case of Rice, the AP reports:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist’s lawyer said Friday.
Posecutors disputed the claim.
The allegations against Rice came as a federal judge granted a defense request to issue subpoenas sought by the defense for Rice and three other government officials in the trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. The two are former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are charged with receiving and disclosing national defense information.
Defense lawyers are asking a judge to dismiss the charges because, among other things, they believe it seeks to criminalize the type of backchannel exchanges between government officials, lobbyists and the press that are part and parcel of how Washington works.
During Friday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said he is considering dismissing the government’s entire case because the law used to prosecute Rosen and Weissman may be unconstitutionally vague and broad and infringe on freedom of speech.
Rosen’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the testimony of Rice and others is needed to show that some of the top officials in U.S. government approved of disclosing sensitive information to the defendants and that the leaks may have been authorized.
Prosecutors opposed the effort to depose Rice and the other officials.
If you look at the CIA officer’s dismissal, the allegation about Rice, the Plamegate case, reports that President Bush himself leaked some classified info to the press (his defense now being that he had the power to declassify what he wants and did that first) you come away with one growing impression:
This administration goes after leakers who leak info that makes it look bad, warns the press about publishing leaked info, then leaks information itself when it thinks it could make it look good…to the press…which it wants to publish or broadcast the leaked information making it look good.
That’s hardly a surprise in politics. Rather than using one standard, the administration changes the rules when it wants to leak something to help itself out. It seems part of a pattern — one that will please many Republicans, outrage many Democrats, likely lead to further erosion of this administration’s support among many independent voters (polls show this erosion as constant) and spur on many editors to investigate this administration, its actions and the validity of its public pronouncements even further.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.