Best of the Web Today - April 24, 2006
By JAMES TARANTO
A Real CIA Leak Case
A CIA officer, Mary McCarthy, was fired Friday "for discussing operational intelligence matters with journalists," the Washington Post reports:
Officials have said the journalists included Washington Post correspondent Dana Priest, who last week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for national security reporting that included the revelation of secret, CIA-run prisons for suspected terrorists in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. . . .
[McCarthy's] last job at the CIA was in the office of Inspector General John L. Helgerson, who has a unique status at the agency.
The inspector general's combination of independence and access may have been combustible in McCarthy's case, if allegations about her involvement in leaks prove true. Since the revelation in 2004 of prisoner abuses by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the CIA inspector general's office was charged with examining allegations of torture and other ill treatment of detainees by CIA officers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The allegations arose, according to sources, from complaints made by others within the agency about wrongdoing. . . .
Several former intelligence officials said they were particularly alarmed about McCarthy's alleged involvement in any leaks because of where she worked at the CIA. L. Britt Snyder III, who was CIA inspector general from 1997 to 2000, said if McCarthy leaked information while working in the IG office, "we would have considered that a fairly egregious sin." The IG, he said, "gets into everything, including personal things. That makes it a little different than other places."
On National Review Online Andrew McCarthy of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies--no relation--explains why it is particularly egregious for someone in Mrs. McCarthy's position to leak information about investigations in which she is participating:
Mary McCarthy's position--the post from which she is likely to have learned the most sensitive information at the heart of the leak controversy--was inside the CIA's inspector general's office. This is the unit that investigates internal misconduct. This is the unit to which government employees are encouraged to report government abuse or illegality so it can be investigated, potentially reported to Congress, and prosecuted if appropriate.
That is, it is the legal alternative to leaking national secrets to the media.
It is, therefore, the process that has to be protected if our intelligence community is to have credibility with the public and with the foreign intelligence services on which we are so dependent. If it becomes just another Washington sieve--a place where people who comply with their oaths and exercise professional discretion may nevertheless expect to find the information they confide trumpeted on Page One of the Washington Post--we are guaranteed to have much more leaking. And much less security.
If Mrs. McCarthy leaked information that came her way as part of an inspector general's investigation, there also is no reason to assume that it--or the Pulitzer prize-winning story it helped produce--is true. Investigators often gather material that does not pan out or that turns out to be false or exaggerated. And indeed, before her firing last week, the New York Times was casting doubt on the secret-prison tale:
The European Union's antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe.
"We've heard all kinds of allegations," the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. "It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt."
But Mr. de Vries came under criticism from some legislators who called the hearing a whitewash. Kathalijne Buitenweg, a Dutch member of Parliament from the Green Party, said that even without definitive proof, "the circumstantial evidence is stunning."
"Why isn't she in handcuffs?" Andrew McCarthy wonders about Mrs. McCarthy. The obvious answer is that she was fired based on an internal investigation, and the Justice Department, which would handle any prosecution, operates at its own pace. The Post notes a less obvious answer: Charging her with a crime could "force a trial that several former intelligence officials said could wind up airing sensitive information."
It also could wind up airing sensitive information about the Post. At a trial, Priest could be called to testify by the prosecution or, more likely, by the defense. One result of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle is that such federal protection as existed for reporters and their sources has been weakened. So if Dana Priest is forced to take the stand or go to prison, she will have the New York Times, Judy Miller and Floyd Abrams to thank for it.
Party Gal
Mary McCarthy turns out to be a politically active Democrat. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it may be probative in establishing her motive for revealing national-security secrets. She also served as a special assistant to the president during the Clinton administration. The New York Times reported Saturday that she contributed $2,000 to the 2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry*. Blogger Tom Maguire notes that she also donated $5,000 to the Ohio Democratic Party, and that a male landscaper who shares her address and her last name--we're guessing they also share a connubial bed, but the FEC doesn't keep tabs on that--also gave $2,000 to Kerry, plus $500 to Maryland's Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat.
Yesterday on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Kerry returned the favor, defending McCarthy, according to the Drudge Report:
Stephanopoulos: CIA official Mary McCarthy lost her job this week for disclosing classified information according to the CIA probably about a Washington Post story which reveal revealed the existence of secret prisons in Europe. A lot of different views. Sen. Pat Roberts praised action but some former CIA officers described Mary McCarthy as a sacrificial lamb acting in the finest American tradition by revealing human rights violations. What's your view?
Kerry: Well, I read that. I don't know whether she did it or not so it's hard to have a view on it. Here's my fundamental view of this, that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent [in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle] in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, D.C., here.
Kerry allows that "nobody should leak," but claims it's a less serious offense "if you're leaking to tell the truth." Then he says: "I'm glad she told the truth."
Leave aside the question of whether the information McCarthy leaked was true. Leave aside, too, that the biggest falsehood in the VPK is the claim that Plame was a covert agent. Even if you credit Kerry his premises, he cannot possibly believe in the principle he is putting forward here. The problem with leaking is not that it spreads falsehood but that it exposes information that is supposed to be secret. Surely a man who once had serious ambitions to be president understands that truth is no defense when the issue is confidentiality.
It seems likely that what Kerry is really getting at is that the end justifies the means. Possibly he's being crassly partisan: The McCarthy leak is justified because it aims to hurt the Bush administration, while the Plame "leak" was not because it was in defense of the administration.
But there's something more to this than ordinary partisanship. Note how casually Kerry utters the phrase "in order to support a lie." He seems to have bought into the Angry Left notion that Republicans don't just lie on occasion, as politicians are wont to do, but are fundamentally, metaphysically corrupt--the idea that every word President Bush says is a lie, including "and" and "the." One suspects Mary McCarthy would agree.
To hear the Angry Left talk, Bush is as corrupt as Nixon, as evil as Hitler, and as incompetent as Jimmy Carter. Convince yourself of this, and cutting legal or ethical corners in the name of stopping him doesn't seem so bad. In other words, the Democrats are being corrupted by their own imaginings about Bush's badness.
The Democrats need some adult supervision before they really end up damaging themselves. Where are the Clintons when you need them?
* We don't remember who he is either, but his book "A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America" is available on Amazon.com for the BARGAIN PRICE of $3.99.
Sssssssssss . . .
From a Friday Associated Press dispatch on the Mary McCarthy leak probe:
A law enforcement official confirmed there was a criminal investigation under way and said the CIA officer had provided information that contributed to a Washington Post story last year saying there were secret U.S. prisons in Eastern Europe. The law enforcement official spoke only on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter. . . .
On Friday, another government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said the fired officer had failed a polygraph test.
Looks as though the leak-prevention effort still needs some work.
A Legend in His Own Mind
Amazingly enough, John Kerry** gave a speech over the weekend to mark the 35th anniversary of his notorious testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which quite possibly cost him the presidency 33 years later. The Boston Globe carries a version of his speech as an op-ed. Mostly he raises questions about his own patriotism:
Thirty-five years later, in another war gone off course, I see history repeating itself. It is both a right and an obligation for Americans today to disagree with a president who is wrong, a policy that is wrong, and a course in Iraq that weakens the nation. Again, we must refuse to sit quietly and watch our troops sacrificed for a policy that isn't working while Americans who dissent and ask tough questions are branded unpatriotic.
Just as it was in 1971, it is again right to make clear that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice, and disserves the American people and our principles.
As blogger Harry Forbes points out, here is what Kerry said in 1971, which he now describes as "the best way to support the troops":
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.
It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. . . .
I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.
But he supports the troops!
** According to Amazon.com reviewer "isala 'Isabel and Lars,' " "Kerry does not come out as 100% inspiring, but do we really want a 100% inspiring guy as president? I mean Hitler, Stalin, and those lads were 100% inspiring, idea-driven, and idealistic. Much good they did to the world."
Who's Afraid of Dissent?
"Those who are right should never fear scrutiny of their policy and thorough debate."--John Kerry***, Boston Globe, April 22, 2006
"Kerry Accuses Bush of Stifling Dissent"--headline, Associated Press, April 23, 2006
"The Kerry campaign has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to ban the Swift Boat ads."--Robert Samuelson, Newsweek, Aug. 25, 2004
*** "This man clearly has a gift of directness and an uncanny ability with the English language. Who would have thought to rhyme 'Cancel the Dance' with 'Sansabelt pants'..seriously, who?"--Amazon.com reviewer "Jeff Wagner's Taint 'Don't make me come up there' "
He Will if He Run Again
"Kerry Need to Suffer More"--headline, Irish Examiner, April 22
Bin Laden on the Run
Another purported Osama bin Laden audio press release aired on al-Jazeera over the weekend, and if it's for real, it's pretty encouraging. He has developed a sudden interest in his former home of Sudan. From the BBC's excerpts:
Britain . . . separated Sudan from Egypt. Then it returned once again to Sudan and sought to separate the south. It formed an army there from the people of the south and supported them with money, weapons, and expertise. It directed them to demand secession from Sudan. America then adopted this army through material and moral support and through its international tools, like the United Nations.
It pressured the Khartoum government into signing an unfair agreement which allows the south to break away six years after signing the agreement. Let [Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad] al-Bashir and [US President George W.] Bush know that this agreement is not worth the ink with which it was written. It does not bind us in the least.
Not satisfied with all these intrigues and crimes, America moved on to stir up more strife. One of the areas of gravest strife was western Sudan, where some differences among the tribesmen were used to trigger a ferocious war among them that consumes everything in its way, in preparation for sending Crusader forces to occupy the region and steal its oil under the cover of maintaining security there. It is a continuous Zionist-Crusader war against the Muslims.
In this respect, I urge the mujahidin and their supporters in general, and in Sudan and the surrounding areas, including the Arabian Peninsula, in particular, to prepare all that which is necessary to fight a long-term war against the Crusader thieves in western Sudan. Our aim is clear: that is, defending Islam, its people, and land, and not defending the Khartoum government, although there could be common interests between us. Our differences with it are great. Suffice it to say that it failed to implement sharia law and relinquished the south.
Blogger TigerHawk offers some context:
Less than 2 1/2 years ago, al Qaeda broke the news to the Taliban that it was diverting resources to Iraq so as to humiliate the American "Crusaders." . . .
Al Qaeda drew a line in the sands of the Sunni Triangle, and the United States Army and Marines walked right across it. First, al Qaeda tried to kill Americans, per bin Laden's orders. It largely failed. Then al Qaeda went after America's allies, and succeeded only in turning public opinion against itself in every Muslim country it attacked. After thirty months of battlefield defeats and political embarrassments, bin Laden won't even mention Iraq in one of his rare public utterances, and he rallies his troops to fight a war where American soldiers aren't. How humiliating. How delightful.
Al Qaeda has lost in Iraq, and bin Laden is desperate to change the subject. He and his organization are at grave risk of being discredited, and when that happens it will be much harder for al Qaeda to attract recruits, raise money, or deal with governments.
It may have the added benefit of encouraging America to do something about the horrors in Sudan.
Insert Clinton Joke Here
"Darwin Awaits Monica's Fury"--headline, News.com.au, April 24
Old Testament vs. New Testament
"Ark. Man Pleads Guilty to Cross-Burning"--headline, Associated Press, April 24
They Said the Same Thing About Moses
"Democrats Say Lieberman Too Close to Bush"--headline, Associated Press, April 24
Great, They Can Have Ours
"County Considers Trash Fine"--headline, Danville (Va.) Register & Bee, April 20
Does He Prefer Fists or Baseball Bats?
"SEIU President Supports Striking Janitors"--headline, Associated Press, April 22
Her Defense Is Another Matter
"Riley: Mom's Passing Won't Affect Playoffs"--headline, Associated Press, April 22
Bottom Story of the Day
"High Gas Prices Keep Me From Exercising"--headline, Concord (N.H.) Monitor, April 23
Where's the Accountability?
Time magazine blogger Andrew Sullivan was off "fishing" for the past couple of weeks, and, as we noted April 14, in his absence the blog became a chamber of horrors, with substitute blogress Michelle Cottle advocating the use of shocking forms of torture.
"In a just world," she wrote, "[terrorist Zacarias] Moussauoi would be torn apart by angry ferrets." Her second choice was to "throw the failed jihadist into a cell with a large, surly redneck with a scorching case of xenophobia and let [Moussaoui] spend the rest of his miserable life learning about pain and terror firsthand."
We had faith that Sullivan would act quickly to put a stop to such atrocities, but no. According to his first post upon returning, he hadn't even read his own blog until this morning. His silence for 10 days would be astonishing enough, but he actually proclaims himself "delight[ed]" by Cottle's sickening advocacy of torture and describes her as a "decent, lovely" person.
It saddens us to see Time magazine's reputation tarnished in this way. And really, it's not enough just to repudiate Cottle. There ought to be accountability all the way up the chain of command. |
