Say Anything Blog

Great info Ken

Thanks, but this is mostly a compilation of stuff gathered by other people, like Michelle Malkin, Rick Moran, Flopping Aces, Wizbang and so on.

I put this together as much for my own education as anything.

I’ve seen bits and pieces, but when you put all of the info together it’s quite a bit more powerful.

As I said, great post. 

Or am I supposed to say.."You go Girl!"?

*LOL*

But these are "good" leaks, designed to hurt Chimpy McHitlerBurton and the Eeeeeevil Karl Rove, not "bad " leaks like the one about poor Ms. Plame.

Seriously, read McCarthy’s statement before the 9/11 commission. She is calling for a "terroist warning system". Isn’t that exactly what the NSA had working until leaks exposed the system? The MSM will try to ignore this, and call her a "whistleblower", but this is huge. And no, I don’t see a vast left-wing conspiracy, I just see some interconnected people sacrificing National Security for personal or ideological gain. 

(Secret prisons that Rick Moran tells us nobody can seem to find.

So she’s fired for leaking the existence of something that doesn’t exist? Interesting.

The problem I have with works of analysis like this and stuff like diane’s is that they provide evidence of linkage then tie it all together with a proposed motive that satisfies the author’s partisan bent. McCarthy supported Democrats financially and worked with Democrats which proves that she leaked information for partisan purposes...Haliburton overbilled for work in Iraq and Cheney has ties to Haliburton so Cheney is a crook.

Maybe she did and maybe he is but the arguments advanced don’t prove the cases. 

Not sure she did for partisan purposes either Mike - there is a whole constellation of reasons why someone would leak the info that she did.

You will note that I am trying to debunk the notion that there is a conspiracy afoot here.

As for partisanship however - it is becoming more and more difficult to find other explanations for her actions.

Ken...maybe she doesn’t agree with the American policy on the treatment of detainees?

It’s not her place to run to the press.

Ken,

This is really great work!  Thank you.

Over at Belmont, Richard quotes from Thomas Jocelyn’s blog, noting that the memo used as justification for the Great African Aspirin Factory Raid by the Clinton administration was signed by one Richard Clarke and Mary McCarthy:

"Thomas Jocelyn compares Mary McCarthy’s position on the attack on the so-called Al-Shifa chemical weapons factory in the Sudan with that of Richard Clarke. Jocelyn brings up this bit of history from page 128 of the 9-11 Commission Notes:

On November 4, 1998, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed its indictment of Bin Ladin, charging him with conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations. The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hezbollah. The original sealed indictment had added that al Qaeda had "reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq." This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was "probably a direct result of the Iraq-Al Qida agreement." Clarke added that VX nerve precursor traces found near al Shifa were the "exact formula used by Iraq."

Mary McCarthy did not at first support the decision to strike the chemical factory at al-Shifa, but she soon came on board.

The report of the 9/11 Commission notes that the National Security staff reviewed the intelligence in April 2000 and concluded that the CIA’s assessment of its intelligence on bin Laden and al-Shifa had been valid; the memo to Clinton on this was cosigned by Richard Clarke and Mary McCarthy, the NSC senior director for intelligence programs, who opposed the bombing of al-Shifa in 1998. The report also notes that in their testimony before the commission, Al Gore, Sandy Berger, George Tenet, and Richard Clarke all stood by the decision to bomb al-Shifa."

So… was there an Al Qaeda – Saddam link?  The very same people who swore that there was such a link when they were in power, now swear with equal fervor that there was not?

Did Saddam have a WMD program?  Again, the same persons who vouched for the intelligence that justified the Clinton era strike on a “VX nerve gas production facility” back then now aver that Saddam had no such program.

As I wrote earlier, the so-called “insurgency” in Iraq is far less meaningful and far less a threat to the US than the very real insurgency taking place right here in DC.

Just how friendly were Mary McCarthy and Valerie Plame?  What was Joe Wilson doing in Niger in 1999 (apparently at the behest of CIA) at the very same time that Saddam’s chief diplomat and top nuclear weapons expert, Wissam al-Zahawie, was there looking for yellowcake?  Exactly what documents did Sandy Berger steal from the National Archives and destroy?  Whatever happened to the missing 400 tons of yellowcake, and why was the warehouse in Gabon checked thoroughly?

Finally, what were McCarthy’s true links to the Kerry campaign… aside from the fact that her former mentor, Rand Beers, who brought her into the White House as his deputy at the National Security Council later left (replaced by McCarthy) to become foreign policy and intelligence advisor to the Kerry Campaign?

Brilliant questions Bat One . . .

With any luck we will get some answers now that this thing is gathering steam . . . .

Doc says,

"The leftist mantra comes home once again i.e. the end justify the means."

A very shrewd observation, Doc.  Without question this is the one basic principle subscribed to by those on the Left.

Ironically, it was also the one basic principle subscribed to Hitler and the Nazis.  It takes a truly breath-takingly stupid indiviidual to adopt the foremost priniple of Nazi-ism as their own, while using the comparison to Hitler to describe those whom they oppose.   

Watching Democrats and Republicans attack each other is like watching a tennis match between two inept players.

She also rubs elbows with lots of Democratic enemies of the Bush administration...

The guilt by association fallacy rears its ugly head again.

Bat One,

Without question this is the one basic principle subscribed to by those on the Left.

This is a bit silly.  The principle is not the sole balliwick of the left or leftists nor do leftists necessarily dominate it either. 

No fallacy at all Epicurus, because I am not trying to convict her on it.

Again, as I stated I don’t think there is any conspiracy here.

Just pointing out some facts - if you draw fallacious conclusions from it, that is your damn fault.

The problem I have with works of analysis like this and stuff like diane’s is that they provide evidence of linkage then tie it all together with a proposed motive that satisfies the author’s partisan bent.

Uh, Mike.  I am not seeing any of my comments, surprisingly, in this thread.  I may have missed them, but this is one thread I hadn’t really gotten involved in until now.  So, I suppose you mean my general theme here rather than specific comments in this thread?  If so, I had thought you were the intelligent guy here who stayed above the dray and only dropped in to lay an egg of stinging witticism now and then, mostly because it made you feel slightly more advanced than the Neandrathals who inhabit this site on a long-term basis.  Did you really take me that seriously?

Heck, I stumbled on this thing and was actually wondering if there was one Rushsite that had thinkers, only to find myself being called names for not supporting the havoc Bush is spreading throughout the world.  Since that time, it’s just been playtime for me.  No serious good will come of this site. 

Anyone who still supports Bush after a needless pre-emptive war that is breaking our country and mutilating and destroying in the most vicious way imagineable decent Iraqi people is just too far gone for reason.

I’m mad as you know what at what people like this have allowed the monster administration to do and you should be too if you have any conscience whatever.  Sure it’s fun to expose ignorance like this, but the bottom line is, these people are dangerous to our country and we have to find a way to get it back.

Unfortunately, the Democrats are not even close to the answer. 

Ken McCracken,

Whether there is a conspiracy or not isn’t related to my statement.  Why you would think that conspiracy and guilt by association charges are synonymous I can’t say, but they aren’t.

This is ‘playtime’ for you Diane?

What do you do when you are away from this blog - stick forks in outlets?

Ken McCracken,

In other words, I can argue that X person must be Y (some negative trait) and that be a guilt by association fallacy without ever making a claim about whether a conspiracy exists between them.

Indeed, my statement is born out by this language:

They don’t need to coordinate their efforts to decide what to do however, they probably all share the congenital impulse to break and/or bend the law for partisan purposes.

Why do you lump them together like this?  Well, given the statements supra concerning who she knows, you apparently draw this conclusion based on how they are associated.

No you have it exactly backwards.

Since they are steeped in the Leftist ideology, they know how to behave regardless of whether they communicate as a conspiracy or not.

Ergo, no conspiracy is needed to achieve these very results.

"...The principle is not the sole balliwick of the left or leftists nor do leftists necessarily dominate it either. "

Epicurus,

If you are inclined to disagree with what I write, at least have the honesty quote me accurately.  I did not offer that Doc’s statement was the "sole baliwick" of the Left.  Obviously there are plenty of people on the Left, the Right, and many too who are apolicital, who are primarily guided by expediency.

Your attempt at changing my contention merely to make your own argument more intellectually palatable is no different than those pitiful arguments offered up by most indignant 13 year olds.  If you are inclined to be contentious, the least you could do is not start out by "misunderestimating" and misrepresenting what I’ve said merely to bolster your own point of view (and in the process, proving my point!)

As for expediency as the guiding principle of the Left, how else would a rational person comprehend the fact that those on the Left argued vehemently in favor of one point of view or one set of conclusions while in power, and now argue just as vehemently for the exact opposite when they are later out of power? 

Was McCarthy the one who told Wilson that the "Yellowcake" documents were forgeries or did it come it come to him in a dream?

"Was McCarthy the one who told Wilson that the "Yellowcake" documents were forgeries or did it come it come to him in a dream?"

Or was it McCarthy who actually told Dana Priest and Nick Kristoff, and Wilson has been lying about his role, taking credit for the leak, merely to cover for McCarthy?  Hmmm? 

diane said

I suppose you mean my general theme here rather than specific comments in this thread?  If so, I had thought you were the intelligent guy here who stayed above the dray and only dropped in to lay an egg of stinging witticism now and then, mostly because it made you feel slightly more advanced than the Neandrathals who inhabit this site on a long-term basis.

Yes...your general theme and I intended no personal insult...your work happened to pop into my head first. As to my intelligence and commenting behaviour...not particularly guilty on the first count and nolo contendre to the second. I do tend to stay out of the fray more than I used to but that is due more to the changing attitude and outlook here rather than any assessment of "me" versus "them".

Ken said

It’s not her place to run to the press.

She most certainly can run to the press if she wants so long as she understands that it might mean her job...which it did. 

"...They don’t need to coordinate their efforts to decide what to do however, they probably all share the congenital impulse to break and/or bend the law for partisan purposes."

I may be mistaken, but this sounds very much like the burden of proof set down by the Federal RICO statute.  There can be a conspiracy for purposes of criminal prosecution without each of the participants having signed an affadavit acknowledging the existence of the conspiracy. 

Or was it McCarthy who actually told Dana Priest and Nick Kristoff, and Wilson has been lying about his role, taking credit for the leak, merely to cover for McCarthy?

and who hired McCarthy in the first place? Perhaps Jimmy Carter is mixed up in this somehow. 

"She most certainly can run to the press if she wants so long as she understands that it might mean her job...which it did. "

Ah, yes!  That terrible, terrible boogeyman of the Left… consequences.

And apparently she faces a considerably sterner set of such consequences than the loss of her federal paycheck.  What McCarthy did, whatever her real motivation might have been (she will certainly try to claim whistleblower status) is a clear violation of federal law.  Adn the severity of that violation is directly proportionate to the classification of the material she released without authorization. 

MikeA,

Your sarcasm notwithstanding, there is still no explanation of how Wilson could have seen the forged Italian contract between Iraq and Niger.  Much less how he could have done so BEFORE CIA had seen it.

He was only a junioor level ambassador to begin with, and had been retired from government service prior to his 1999 trip to Niger.  How could he have had access to the infoormation he says he passed to Priest and Kristoff?

Doc,

Excellent point.  I believe the very first "social security" style program came from Germany.

The myth of Naziism as a far right political movement is one of the great linguistic misappropriations of the Left.  I suspect the idea is to make socialism itself appear more benign.  That’s why those on the left never get around to mentioning Stalin. 

Incidentally, its not the mere fact that Wilson identified the contract as a forgery, or even when he did so.   What is even more troubling is that he specifically identified the signatures on the contract and the State Seal as being erroneous.   These despite the fact that he had not clearance to have seen the document, no "need to know," and no legal access either.

Once again, the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is a very curiously compelling document for those who trouble themselves to read it. 

Time to call it.  Liars.  Communists/socialists/democrats.  The ends do not justify the means.  Clinton learned this from his Arkansas senator Fulbright:  do anything to stay in power, because if you are not in power, you can not manipulate the system.

Hey, Chief, and now we are learning it first-hand from the master, Prez Bush.

Chief,

In other words, if I may paraphrase, the first rule of the game is to stayi n the game.

Thus, we are back to expediency, or the ends justifies the means.  My point is merely that this is what happens when a person is congentially devoid of any sort of principles or moral or ethical compass… beyond, of course, staying in power.  As are most of the national leadership of the Democrat Party and the liberal Left.

P,

Do you even bother to read the contents of a thread before appending your latest trivial screed? 

Simply responding to the last line in Chief’s post, Bat One, very easy to read actually.

Bat One,

Alright, then I stand corrected.  How about this then, its not something which all members of the left practice or argue is proper. 

Excellent point.  I believe the very first "social security" style program came from Germany.

Long before the Nazis came to power, under the regime of Bismark. 

docdave,

Yes, bat, as did gun control, environmentalism and I think national health care. . 

Modern day environmentalism grew out of concepts formed in the British Empire in the 17th century.  There’s an excellent book entitled Green Empirialism that details much of this.

Gun control neither came from Germany nor was it something practiced by the Nazis for "Germans" (meaning all those not classified as Jews, etc,).  Your average "German" freely owned firearms as much under the Nazis as any other German regime prior to the Nazis, which means that gun ownership was common. 

Now, some of the instances of gun control that I know of came out of the post-bellum American South and they were enacted to attack the ability of black southerners to defend themselves.  The Japanese also enacted a gun control regime in the 17th century; one which rid Japan of firearms for the most part until the 19th century.

Bat One-  Correct on all accounts.  P—you trivialize and do not justify any comments with actual facts for behaviors.   E--The next election is this November.  There are now plenty of charges to file against these people and many reporters on the NYT.   By the way, lying includes deception:http://magyartruth.blogspot.com/2006/01/nyt-communist-since-1920s.html 

Bat One said

That terrible, terrible boogeyman of the Left… consequences.

You mean the Right doesn’t know consequences? I don’t get it. If she broke the law then she should be charged...she can always get a pardon if the next President deems it appropriate.

No free rides for leakers...my new motto. 

"...she can always get a pardon if the next President deems it appropriate."

MikeA,

It’ll have to be the next one too, Mike.  In his two terms as Texas Governor, I don’t believe Mr. Bush commuted even on death sentence.  Likewise, while I could be wrong, I don’t think he has pardoned anyone since his first innauguration as President.

Of course, if the next president is a Democrat, its doubtful that Ms. McCarthy will be able to afford a presidential pardon. 

Bat One...I wouldn’t expect Bush to pardon someone leaking details about one of his less savoury programs. Bush has pardoned or commuted sentences for 82 people according to this article...not many when compared to other Presidents but it shows he does have a heart.

Apparently the Vast Leftwing Conspiracy has a website so Ken may indeed be on to something.

Oh my god . . . it does exist.

Forget what I said about no conspiracy.

"… not many when compared to other Presidents but it shows he does have a heart."

A couple more posts like that, Mike, and they’ll cancel your subscription to New Republic and demand that you send back the Michael Moore decoder ring. 

Mike Adamson said:

Yes...your general theme and I intended no personal insult...your work happened to pop into my head first.

Thank you, Mike.  Perhaps you are intelligent enough, no, I’m sure you are, to understand that my intense dislike of Mr. Bush’s filthy ‘war’ in Iraq doesn’t make me a Democrat nor a liberal nor a commie.  I am pro-life, was against Terry Schiavo’s starvation and look at each issue on a case by case basis.  That’s why my dander is up; I came on in my first post to intensely disagree with the war and was immediately termed a dhimmi slut, a watercarrier for the Wahhabis, etc.  I can play nice and debate or play naughty and folks like Robert decided the way it has gone down.  They can change that at any time, and I can speak to them as I am speaking to you.

This ‘for us or against us’ lack of mental maturity is really enough to make one wretch after being ont he receiving end of it since Bush decided to bomb the crap out of small Iraqi children and mothers (and fathers and grandmas and grandpas and and and).

MikeAdamson,

When Bush stops promoting the War on Drugs we might start to look kindly on bush.

Epi,diane and Bat...I feel you. I happen to subscribe more to the "Bush as patsy" model than the "Bush is evil" theory so I find it possible to see good in him. I suspect that my general view is similar to most non-Americans...I appreciate the good that America does in the world and it frustrates me when its foreign policy so clearly brings the world closer to jeopardy. It may be a Republican in the WH now but the Democrats have had their share of adventurists too.

MikeAdamson,

I appreciate the good that America does in the world and it frustrates me when its foreign policy so clearly brings the world closer to jeopardy.

I guess I just don’t look at the world in these terms.  Anyway, the U.S. would do the world a lot more good by stripping away its agricultural subsidies than by doing anything else. 

"When Bush stops promoting the War on Drugs we might start to look kindly on Bush."

Epicurus,

Perhaps you’d go into more detail on this for me.  The reason I ask has little to do with the "War on Drugs," but I am always curious about persons whose stand on a single issue is of such importance that other issues are of little relative importance.  I’m not disparaging your position as much as I am curious that such a relatively secondary issue would have such prominence in your thinking. 

Bat One,

You’re reading into my statement a single-issue viewpoint. 

I’m not disparaging your position as much as I am curious that such a relatively secondary issue would have such prominence in your thinking.

From a 4th Amendment perspective, or the perspective of government intrusion into the lives of citizens generally, or from the perspective of the number of people effected, or from the perspective of federalism, etc. its not a secondary issue. 

In other words, the liberty interests effected by federal drug laws are done so in both deep and wide fashion.    

Epicurus,

Just a suggestion, but why not put together a post on drug laws (War on Drugs versus Legalization versus "benign neglect".

One of the more common mistakes is the assumption that those of us who support the Bush administration’s foreign policy and both the GWOT and the War in Iraq are by definition blind supporters of everything else that Mr. Bush does or says.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  I suspect that this is one such area of policy.  Why not find out? 

Bat One,

After I finish my Intoonfada article perhaps. 

Actually, one of the biggest negatives of the Bush administration is that people in other countries who once (and for years) looked at the U.S. as a symbol of freedom and opportunity now see it as losing both and it saddens them. 

Mike Adamson, I agree with you that Bush is a patsy.  Anyone so obviously clueless has to be ‘run’ on batteries.  But, not to lose sight of why I am furious with him....he’s perfectly willing to be one as long as he gets to play cowboy and fighter pilot and boss the whole world around.

We start with a Dem/leftie criminal endangering national security for political purposes and end up, courtesy of our resident monomaniac with.....an attack on the President.  How original!  Diane, at least you’re dependable.

I try to be.

I know you all love to play ‘guilty until proven innocent’ when it comes to Dem/lib/leftie/commies and all:

What may have motivated Mary O. McCarthy to leak classified information about ‘secret prisons’ in Europe to the press?

 but Mary says she ain’t the one:

Secrets of the CIA
A former colleague says the fired Mary McCarthy ‘categorically denies’ being the source of the leak on agency renditions.

April 24, 2006 - A former CIA officer who was sacked last week after allegedly confessing to leaking secrets has denied she was the source of a controversial Washington Post story about alleged CIA secret detention operations in Eastern Europe, a friend of the operative told NEWSWEEK.

The fired official, Mary O. McCarthy, “categorically denies being the source of the leak,” one of McCarthy’s friends and former colleagues, Rand Beers, said Monday after speaking to McCarthy. Beers said he could not elaborate on this denial and McCarthy herself did not respond to a request for comment left by NEWSWEEK on her home answering machine. A national security advisor to Democratic Party candidate John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign, Beers worked as the head of intelligence programs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff and later served as a top deputy on counter-terrorism for President Bush in 2002 and 2003. McCarthy, a career CIA analyst, initially worked as a deputy to Beers on the NSC and later took over Beer’s role as the Clinton NSC’s top intelligence expert.

McCarthy’s lawyer, Ty Cobb, told NEWSWEEK this afternooon that contrary to public statements by the CIA late last week, McCarthy never confessed to agency interrogators that she had divulged classified information and "didn’t even have access to the information" in The Washington Post story in question.

After being told by agency interrogators that she may have been deceptive on one quesiton during a polygraph, McCarthy did acknowledge that she had failed to report contacts with Washington Post reporter Dana Priest and at least one other reporter, said a source familiar with her account who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. McCarthy has known Priest for some time, the source said.

McCarthy, 61, a career CIA analyst who was working in the inspector general’s office, was then told on Thursday that she was being fired. She was not escorted out of the CIA buiilding, the source said. She also had been assured that the CIA would protect her privacy--just one day before her name became publicly known as the agency official who had been dismissed for leaking to the press, the source said. Ironically, McCarthy, who presvously worked as chief intelligence official for the National Security Council during Bill Clinton’s second term, was planning on retiring from the CIA soon to pursue a new career as a lawyer working on adoption and family cases.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano re-affirmed on Monday that an agency official had been fired after acknowledging “unauthorized contacts with the media and discussion of classified information” with journalists. Gimigliano and other administration spokespersons said they were prohibited by law from disclosing the identity of the person who was fired. But government officials familiar with the matter confirmed to NEWSWEEK that McCarthy, a 20-year veteran of the CIA’s intelligence—or analytical— branch, was the individual in question. 

The officials, who asked for anonymity because they were discussing sensitive information, said that McCarthy had been fired after allegedly confessing during the course of a leak investigation based heavily on polygraph examinations that she had engaged in unauthorized contacts with more than one journalist regarding more than one news story. The only journalist so far identified by government sources as one of the unauthorized persons with whom McCarthy admitted contact is Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, who last week won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing details of a secret airline and prison network that the CIA operates to detain and interrogate high-level Al Qaeda suspects. 

Priest’s most contentious story, published by the Post last November, alleged that the CIA had been “hiding and interrogating some of its most important Al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.”  Even though the Post said it decided, in response to administration appeals, not to identify the Eastern European countries involved in secret CIA detention operations, intelligence officials said at the time that the story caused potentially serious damage to agency activities. The officials said the CIA would be filing a “crime report” with the Justice Department regarding possible leaks of classified information. (Eric C. Grant, public affairs director of the Washington Post, says none of the paper’s reporters has been subpoenaed or talked to investigators in connection with this matter.)

A counter-terrorism official acknowledged to NEWSWEEK today that in firing McCarthy, the CIA was not necessarily accusing her of being the principal, original, or sole leaker of any particular story. Intelligence officials privately acknowledge that key news stories about secret agency prison and “rendition” operations have been based, at least in part, upon information available from unclassified sources.

British freelance journalist Stephen Grey, who published the first detailed revelations of the CIA’s secret airline system for transporting terrorist detainees in the London Sunday Times in late 2004, affirmed to NEWSWEEK over the weekend that “almost all” of the information that he assembled regarding the CIA operations came from “unclassified sources.” Several news organizations, including NEWSWEEK and The New York Times, reported stories about the CIA’s secret transport and detention operations based on airplane flight plan information which originally was assembled by Grey. Other foreign journalists put together early reports about CIA “rendition” operations—in which terror suspects allegedly were transferred by undercover CIA teams to a foreign countries where they were wanted for questioning—by using public record data bases to trace the ownership and history of suspicious private airplanes that were observed at foreign airstrips around the times that local terror suspects allegedly disappeared. Administration critics have described these renditions as the outsourcing of torture.

While acknowledging that information about the CIA operations was indeed available from unclassified sources, intelligence officials maintain that revelations like those made in the Post story about Eastern Europe could not have been put together without input from people who had access to classified information. These informants could confirm the stories and add detail to them. But the fact that McCarthy evidently is denying leaking the CIA prison story to the Post—and that other key information for stories revealing CIA detention and rendition operations originated with unclassified sources—does raise questions about how far the Bush administration will be able to press its crackdown on suspected leakers.

Two official sources familiar with the inquiry which led to McCarthy’s firing cautioned that news reports indicating that McCarthy was aggressively being pursued by the Justice Department for possible criminal violations were ahead of the facts.

The sources told NEWSWEEK that because McCarthy’s alleged acknowledgements that she leaked classified information were made as a result of an inquiry based on polygraph examinations, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for prosecutors to use any admissions she made in trying to put together any criminal prosecution. One of the sources, a law enforcement official close to the investigation, noted that polygraph evidence is normally inadmissible in criminal court cases because of judicial doubts about the reliability and credibility of lie-detector machines.  Also, the official said, witnesses submitting to a polygraph examination usually give up their rights not to make self-incriminating statements.  The use of any admissions McCarthy gave under these circumstances for a criminal investigation would therefore be problematic, the official indicated.

The law enforcement official and a counter-terrorism official familiar with the case indicated that because the polygraph evidence was likely unusable, any effort by prosecutors to make a criminal case against McCarthy would therefore have to be based on an entirely fresh reconstruction of evidence from other sources. The sources indicated that it was possible, though by no means certain, that prosecutors could still put together some kind of case against McCarthy from evidence untainted by the CIA polygraph inquiry that led to her firing.

The McCarthy case troubles some former U.S. intelligence officials, who note that the CIA, while aggressively pursuing leaks to the news media, has failed to take disciplinary action against any of its officials for the widely acknowledged intelligence failures of recent years. “Nobody got fired for September 11 and nobody gets fired for [mistakes about,] but they fire someone for this?” said one former U.S. senior intelligence official. In the case of the September 11 attacks, a report by the same Inspector General’s office where McCarthy worked recommended the convening of CIA disciplinary boards for a number of current and former officials. But CIA director Porter Goss rejected the recommendation and has refused to allow even an unclassified version of the inspector general’s report to be publicly released. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, sent the CIA two letters seeking a public disclosure of the inspector general’s findings—one only a few weeks ago—but has yet to get a response.

At the same time, some former officials said, the use of polygraphs on officials inside the inspector general’s office is potentially controversial, given the fact that the inspector general is by statute supposed to be an independent officer. “This gives them [CIA management] entrée to the I,.G’s office which they’re not supposed to have,” said another former agency official. But a former CIA Inspector General, Frederick Hitz, said he was polygraphed by the FBI over the leak of a report the internal watchdog’s office produced on Soviet mole Aldrich Ames in the mid 1990s.  Hitz says that security concerns would override concerns about the IG’s independence.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who got into a dispute with McCarthy in the late l980s when she was his supervisor and remains critical of her management style, nonetheless says that he “never saw her allow her political [views] to cloud her analytical judgment.” Johnson maintains the Bush White House is “really damaging the intelligence community” by sending a message to career officials that “unless you are a partisan of the party in power, you cannot be trusted.” This message, Johnson says, is destroying the intelligence community’s “professional ethos.”

A serving CIA official said that the day that McCarthy was escorted out of the CIA’s Langley, Va., headquarters, some former colleagues of McCarthy defended her, even while acknowledging they were not familiar with the details of the case. “She worked for me on the most sensitive national security material there is and I had no reason to think she ever did anything like what’s been alleged to have been done here,” said Beers. McCarthy was a “quality intelligence officer who handled the matters with skill and understanding,” he added.

 URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12466719/site/newsweek/

But, of course, how can you believe a Dem/lib/yadda yadda yadda yadda......

You certainly are trying.

 “Nobody got fired for September 11 and nobody gets fired for [mistakes about,] but they fire someone for this?” said one former U.S. senior intelligence official. In the case of the September 11 attacks, a report by the same Inspector General’s office where McCarthy worked recommended the convening of CIA disciplinary boards for a number of current and former officials. But CIA director Porter Goss rejected the recommendation and has refused to allow even an unclassified version of the inspector general’s report to be publicly released. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, sent the CIA two letters seeking a public disclosure of the inspector general’s findings—one only a few weeks ago—but has yet to get a response.

LOL

As noted above… tediously… McCarthy is denying everything.  At least her attorney is.  Which is what one would expect him to do.

The attorney, Ty Cobb, has presumably figured that given the subject matter, the sensitivity of the material at issue, and the continuing investigations at CIA and other organizations, that there is unlikely to be a trial of McCarthy on criminal charges.  But having read up on Mr., Alberto Gonzalez, including some of his work back in Texas, I’m inclined to disagree. 

Meanwhile, Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse notes that lawyer Cobb has represented the Clinton Whitehouse Travel Office, was "a member of the First Lady’s staff in connection with the Congressional and Independent Counsel investigations into "Whitewater", and represented Juan Huang.

Fact is, the deeper I look into this, the more convinced I am that we are witnessing a cross between an insurection within our own government by those on the left, and Spring Training style try-outs for a Hillary Clinton administration. 

Any connection to the Stone Cutters?

The attorney, Ty Cobb

This Ty Cobb?

 the deeper I look into this, the more convinced I am that we are witnessing a cross between an insurection within our own government by those on the left, and Spring Training style try-outs for a Hillary Clinton administration. 

Wow, how deeply have you looked into this?  An ‘insurrection’?  From what is happening with high ranking retired generals (who presumably are very close to many other still active generals and other military officers), perhaps a military coup is closer to reality?  I doubt either one though; most people are too afraid of being labeled commies, nutcases, or just ending up as a human concrete block in the bottom of some murky river with this administration in power.

More monomania from diane.