A Bad Week For Dinosaur Media

On Friday Fox News reported that a CIA analyst had been fired for leaking classified information to the press.

"The officer has acknowledged unauthorized discussions with the media and the unauthorized sharing of classified information," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "That is a violation of the secrecy agreement that everyone signs as a condition of employment with the CIA."

One official called this a "damaging leak" that deals with operational information and said the fired officer "knowingly and willfully" leaked the information to the media and "was caught."

The CIA officer was not in the public affairs office, nor was he someone authorized to talk to the media. The investigation was launched in January by the CIA's security center. It was directed to look at employees who had been exposed to certain intelligence programs. In the course of the investigation, the fired officer admitted discussing classified information including information about classified operations.

Since then the story has exploded across the blogsphere with more and more details coming out about the leaker, one Mary McCarthy, as well as some of her interesting political connections and the impact that this will have on the reputation of the Pulitzer Prize. I for one think that this sort of thing has permanently tarnished the reputation of the Pulitzer people and The Elite Media Monoculture and rightly so. The Angry Leftists of the committee are so brazen in their hate for George W. Bush that they don't care that national security has been damaged.

McCarthy leaked her information to Dana Priest of The Washington Post who subsequently won the famed prize for the story. Obviously an investigation has been underway because it has now been reported that McCarthy failed a polygraph test before being fired from the CIA. I would imagine that criminal proceedings are in the works. But even more interesting is the backstory, because it is now clear that McCarthy is a Clinton holdover who got her job thanks to Sandy "documents in the pants" Berger.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

June 16, 1998

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY

National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger announced today the appointment of Mary O'Neil McCarthy as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs. Mrs. McCarthy succeeds Rand Beers.

Mary McCarthy had been Director of Intelligence Programs on the National Security Council Staff since July 1996. Previously, Mrs. McCarthy served as the National Intelligence Officer for Warning from 1994-1996 and as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Warning from 1991-1994. She began government service in 1984 as an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Prior to her government service, Mrs. McCarthy held positions in both the private sector and academia. She was a Director, then Vice President of BERI, SA, a firm conducting financial and political risk assessments, from 1979-1984. Previously, she had taught at the University of Minnesota and was Director of the Social Science Data Archive at Yale University.

Mrs. McCarthy has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Michigan State University and an M.A and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

But the story get even better. Because we now also know that McCarthy is a big Democrat contributor. In 2004 she gave thousands both to the Kerry campaign as well as to the Democratic party in Ohio.

Cliff Kincaid argues that the Tainted Pulitzer should be given back, but does anyone really think that will happen in the face of Bush Derangement Syndrome?

I didn't think so.

In this article he not only details the story of McCarthy being fired, but also points out that the story of the "secret prisons" in Europe was bogus and that to date there is no evidence of them ever existing. The real story here, as Kincaid argues, is that a left-wing faction installed in the CIA by Clinton Democrats is waging war, not against the terrorists, but against the Bush administration and doing whatever it can to bring the administration down and undermine the war on terrorism. The bogus story, leaked to the newspapers, was in fact disinformation designed to destroy American credibility and make our efforts to work with over seas allies more difficult than is already the case. This is, in a word, treason of the highest order. The individuals responsible for this, including the reporters who published the story, need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.