Friday, April 21, 2006

Democrat CIA employee fired for leaking classified information.

NBC and other news outlets have reported that CIA employee Mary O'Neil McCarthy has been fired from the CIA after admitting she was the source of the leaked information about secret prisons in Europe. The leak did serious damage to our relationship with several European allies.

Mary was at one time a Special Assistant to President Clinton, as noted in this story from USIS in 1998:

National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger announced June 16 the appointment of Mary O'Neil McCarthy as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs.

Ironic that the man guilty of stealing classified documents by hiding them in his clothes appointed the woman guilty of leaking classified information to the press.

From the NBC News story:

In a rare occurrence, the CIA fired an officer who acknowledged giving classified information to a reporter, NBC News learned Friday.
...
The leak pertained to stories on the CIA’s rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting.

Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well.


Unlike the Valerie Plame "leak", this was a serious breach of security with national implications -- and yet the media and the democrats said not a single word about "finding the leaker", nor are there congratulatory stories in the press about plugging this "leak", as was the case when Libby was indicted.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

She's lucky not to be going to jail. BTW, how do we know that she's a Democrat?

Charles said...

If you read the Sunday Post article about her, you'll almost believe she's being unfairly persecuted.

I had presumed that appointment by Clinton would appropriately label her a democrat -- but that was sloppy on my part (after all, her position was a civil service one, just like that pedophile that people blamed on Bush but later turned out to be a democrat)

Her Wikopedia entry provides the information necessary. including:

In the wake of her dismissal, The New York Times reported that McCarthy had donated the maximum $2,000 to John Kerry, President Bush's opponent in the 2004 election.[5] Bloggers quickly uncovered additional contributions[6] by McCarthy to Democratic Party entities, including $5,000 to the Ohio Democratic Party on October 5, 2004, and $500 to the Democratic National Committee on October 29, 2004.[7]

There are also ties with Joe Wilson which I'm still reading through that make a fascinating story (something with the company that arranges his speaking engagements).