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Author Topic:   CIA Leaker Fired
jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 22, 2006 01:47 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
April 22, 2006
C.I.A. Fires Senior Officer Over Leaks
By DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, April 21 — The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency's secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday.

The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under President Bill Clinton and into the Bush administration.

At the time of her dismissal, Ms. McCarthy was working in the agency's inspector general's office, after a stint at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an organization in Washington that examines global security issues.

The dismissal of Ms. McCarthy provided fresh evidence of the Bush administration's determined efforts to stanch leaks of classified information. The Justice Department has separately opened preliminary investigations into the disclosure of information to The Post, for its articles about secret prisons, as well as to The New York Times, for articles last fall that disclosed the existence of a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants supervised by the National Security Agency. Those articles were also recognized this week with a Pulitzer Prize.

Several former veteran C.I.A. officials said the dismissal of an agency employee over a leak was rare and perhaps unprecedented. One official recalled the firing of a small number of agency contractors, including retirees, for leaking several years ago.

The dismissal was announced Thursday at the C.I.A. in an e-mail message sent by Porter J. Goss, the agency's director, who has made the effort to stop unauthorized disclosure of secrets a priority. News of the dismissal was first reported Friday by MSNBC.

Ms. McCarthy's departure followed an internal investigation by the C.I.A.'s Security Center, as part of an intensified effort that began in January to scrutinize employees who had access to particularly classified information. She was given a polygraph examination, confronted about answers given to the polygraph examiner and confessed, the government officials said. On Thursday, she was stripped of her security clearance and escorted out of C.I.A. headquarters. Ms. McCarthy did not reply Friday evening to messages left by e-mail and telephone.

"A C.I.A. officer has been fired for unauthorized contact with the media and for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," said a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. "This is a violation of the secrecy agreement that is the condition of employment with C.I.A. The officer has acknowledged the contact and the disclosures."

Mr. Gimigliano said the Privacy Act prohibited him from identifying the employee.

Intelligence officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said that the dismissal resulted from "a pattern of conduct" and not from a single leak, but that the case involved in part information about secret C.I.A. detention centers that was given to The Washington Post.

Ms. McCarthy's departure was another unsettling jolt for the C.I.A., battered in recent years over faulty prewar intelligence in Iraq, waves of senior echelon departures after the appointment of Mr. Goss as director and the diminished standing of the agency under the reorganization of the country's intelligence agencies.

The C.I.A.'s inquiry focused in part on identifying Ms. McCarthy's role in supplying information for a Nov. 2, 2005, article in The Post by Dana Priest, a national security reporter. The article reported that the intelligence agency was sending terror suspects to clandestine detention centers in several countries, including sites in Eastern Europe.

Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, said on its Web site that he could not comment on the firing because he did not know the details. "As a general principle," he said, "obviously I am opposed to criminalizing the dissemination of government information to the press."

Eric C. Grant, a spokesman for the newspaper, would not address whether any C.I.A. employee was a source for the secret prison articles, but said, "No Post reporter has been subpoenaed or talked to investigators in connection with this matter."

The disclosures about the prisons provoked an outcry among European allies and set off protests among Democrats in Congress. The leak prompted the C.I.A. to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department. Lawyers at the Justice Department were notified of Ms. McCarthy's dismissal, but no new referral was issued, law enforcement officials said. They said that they would review the case, but that her termination could mean she would be spared criminal prosecution.

In January, current and former government officials said, Mr. Goss ordered polygraphs for intelligence officers who knew about certain "compartmented" programs, including the secret detention centers for terrorist suspects. Polygraphs are routinely given to agency employees at least every five years, but special polygraphs can be ordered when a security breach is suspected.

The results of such exams are regarded as important indicators of deception among some intelligence officials. But they are not admissible as evidence in court — and the C.I.A.'s reliance on the polygraph in Ms. McCarthy's case could make it more difficult for the government to prosecute her.

"This was a very aggressive internal investigation," said one former C.I.A. officer with more than 20 years' experience. "Goss was determined to find the source of the secret-jails story."

With the encouragement of the White House and some Republicans in Congress, Mr. Goss has repeatedly spoken out against leaks, saying foreign intelligence officials had asked him whether his agency was incapable of keeping secrets.

In February, Mr. Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission." He said it was his hope "that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."

"I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less," he said.

Ms. McCarthy has been a well-known figure in intelligence circles. She began her career at the agency as an analyst and then was a manager in the intelligence directorate, working at the African and Latin America desks, according to a biography by the strategic studies center. With an advanced degree from the University of Minnesota, she has taught, written a book on the Gold Coast and was director of the social science data archive at Yale University.

Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.

Republican lawmakers praised the C.I.A. effort. Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, "I am pleased that the Central Intelligence Agency has identified the source of certain unauthorized disclosures, and I hope that the agency, and the community as a whole, will continue to vigorously investigate other outstanding leak cases."

Several former intelligence officials — who were granted anonymity after requesting it for what they said were obvious reasons under the circumstances — were divided over the likely effect of the dismissal on morale. One veteran said the firing would not be well-received coming so soon after the disclosure of grand jury testimony by Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff that President Bush in 2003 approved the leak of portions of a secret national intelligence estimate on Iraqi weapons.

"It's a terrible situation when the president approves the leak of a highly classified N.I.E., and people at the agency see management as so disastrous that they feel compelled to talk to the press," said one former C.I.A. officer with extensive overseas experience.

But another official, whose experience was at headquarters, said most employees would approve Mr. Goss's action. "I think for the vast majority of people this will be good for morale," the official said. "People didn't like some of their colleagues deciding for themselves what secrets should be in The Washington Post or The New York Times."

Paul R. Pillar, who was the agency's senior analyst for the Middle East until he retired late last year, said: "Classified information is classified information. It's not to be leaked. It's not to be divulged." He has recently criticized the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/washington/22leak.html?ei=5065&en=126c3f48aea48e3f&ex=1146283200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 22, 2006 01:53 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Oh yeah, I remember Sandy Berger. He's the Clintonista clown caught stuffing secret documents from the archives into his shorts and socks. Figures.

17 June 1998

BERGER APPOINTS MCCARTHY SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR INTELLIGENCE
(And senior director on NSC Staff for intelligence programs)

Washington -- 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.

She succeeds Rand Beers in that post, an announcement by the office of
the White House Press Secretary said.

Mary McCarthy had been Director of Intelligence Programs on the
National Security Council Staff since July 1996. Previously, said the
White House, 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.

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.

Following is the White House text:

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. She
and her husband Michael McCarthy have a son, Michael.
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1998/06/98061701_tpo.html

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jwhop
Knowflake

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From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 22, 2006 01:58 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Now, they need to find the other CIA, Senate and House clowns who are leaking classified information and documents to the press and put all their sorry @sses in jail.

Saturday, April 22, 2006 10:47 a.m. EDT
CIA Leaker Was Top Intel Aide to Clinton

The CIA officer fired Friday for leaking classified information to the Washington Post about U.S. counterterrorism efforts once served as a top intelligence aide to President Clinton.

Appointed in 1998 by then-National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Mary O'Neil McCarthy held the post of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs.

Prior to her appointment as President Clinton's Special Assistant, McCarthy served as the Clinton administration's National Intelligence Officer for Warning from 1994-1996.

The loose-lipped spy was fired from her White House job in the first few months of the Bush adminsitration and returned to the CIA.

McCarthy allegedly leaked critical national security information to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, who went on to report that the CIA maintained a secret network of prisons overseas for high-ranking terrorism suspects.

The former top Clinton advisor was cashiered after reportedly failing a polygraph test conducted as part of several CIA investigations into leaks. On Thursday she was escorted from the agency's Langley campus in McLean, Va., an agency official told the Los Angeles Times.

One U.S. official indicated that McCarthy had engaged in a "pattern of contacts" with more than one reporter, the Times said. McCarthy has not been indicted in the case, though the Justice Department began a criminal investigation into the CIA prison leak last December.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/4/22/105032.shtml?s=ic

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AcousticGod
Knowflake

Posts: 4415
From: Pleasanton, CA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 22, 2006 10:48 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I see that not only are you coming around on the Times, but you're showing that NewsMax backs up what the Times has said. Isn't that interesting?

I also see that the NYT is selling out a Democrat:

quote:
Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.

Would you say that this is a 'credible' story, or a 'fictitious' story? On a scale of 4 to 1 with 4 meaning that you believe 'All or Most' of this story, and 1 meaning you believe 'Almost Nothing' contained in this story, how would you rate it?

And now for more philosophical questions:

What do you think about the CIA outright admitting the existence of these prisons as a result of this firing? Perhaps they should have taken her to one of those prisons instead of releasing her to the wild. Then again, perhaps they did.

What is the purpose of having secret prisons, and who besides the CIA oversee their operation? Why does the prison have to be secret? Why couldn't just the prisoner be secret? Would we get in trouble for throwing a bag over some guy's head while he's in prison? Would that kind of trouble be more welcomed by the international community than the kind of trouble it stirs when the U.S. has secret prisons that potentially work outside the bounds of any law whatsoever?

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Petron
unregistered
posted April 23, 2006 12:15 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
April 17, 2006

UCSC alumna Dana Priest receives Pulitzer Prize

By Jim Burns

Dana Priest, who visited UC Santa Cruz in March to receive the Division of Social Sciences' first Distinguished Alumni Award, has received a Pulitzer Prize. The annual awards were announced on April 17 by Columbia University.


Priest, who graduated from UCSC (Merrill College) in 1981 with a bachelor's in politics, received journalism's highest honor in the category of "beat reporting."

A Washington Post reporter, Priest was recognized "for her persistent, painstaking reports on secret 'black site' prisons and other controversial features of the government's counterterrorism campaign." The prize includes a $10,000 award.
http://currents.ucsc.edu/05-06/04-17/priest.asp


***********

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 2, 2005; Page A01

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.

Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.

"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. "Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?' "

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.


Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.

The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency's prisons.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

Most of the facilities were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees' chairmen and vice chairmen on the program's generalities.

The Eastern European countries that the CIA has persuaded to hide al Qaeda captives are democracies that have embraced the rule of law and individual rights after decades of Soviet domination. Each has been trying to cleanse its intelligence services of operatives who have worked on behalf of others -- mainly Russia and organized crime.

The idea of holding terrorists outside the U.S. legal system was not under consideration before Sept. 11, 2001, not even for Osama bin Laden, according to former government officials. The plan was to bring bin Laden and his top associates into the U.S. justice system for trial or to send them to foreign countries where they would be tried.

"The issue of detaining and interrogating people was never, ever discussed," said a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, during that period. "It was against the culture and they believed information was best gleaned by other means."


On the day of the attacks, the CIA already had a list of what it called High-Value Targets from the al Qaeda structure, and as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack plots were unraveled, more names were added to the list. The question of what to do with these people surfaced quickly.

The CTC's chief of operations argued for creating hit teams of case officers and CIA paramilitaries that would covertly infiltrate countries in the Middle East, Africa and even Europe to assassinate people on the list, one by one.

But many CIA officers believed that the al Qaeda leaders would be worth keeping alive to interrogate about their network and other plots. Some officers worried that the CIA would not be very adept at assassination.

"We'd probably shoot ourselves," another former senior CIA official said.

The agency set up prisons under its covert action authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a covert action, by signing a document called a presidential finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal advisers.

Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world.

It could not be determined whether Bush approved a separate finding for the black-sites program, but the consensus among current and former intelligence and other government officials interviewed for this article is that he did not have to.

Rather, they believe that the CIA general counsel's office acted within the parameters of the Sept. 17 finding. The black-site program was approved by a small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials, according to several former and current U.S. government and intelligence officials.

Deals With 2 Countries

Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for security and logistics reasons.

CIA officers also searched for a setting like Alcatraz Island. They considered the virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia, which were edged with craggy cliffs and covered in woods. But poor sanitary conditions could easily lead to fatal diseases, they decided, and besides, they wondered, could the Zambians be trusted with such a secret?

Still without a long-term solution, the CIA began sending suspects it captured in the first month or so after Sept. 11 to its longtime partners, the intelligence services of Egypt and Jordan.

A month later, the CIA found itself with hundreds of prisoners who were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan. A short-term solution was improvised. The agency shoved its highest-value prisoners into metal shipping containers set up on a corner of the Bagram Air Base, which was surrounded with a triple perimeter of concertina-wire fencing. Most prisoners were left in the hands of the Northern Alliance, U.S.-supported opposition forces who were fighting the Taliban.


"I remember asking: What are we going to do with these people?" said a senior CIA officer. "I kept saying, where's the help? We've got to bring in some help. We can't be jailers -- our job is to find Osama."

Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would be used for CIA prisoners.

The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.

The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras and tough Afghan guards, but the road leading to it was not safe to travel and the jail was eventually moved inside Bagram Air Base. It has since been relocated off the base.

By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black-site deals with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern European nation, current and former officials said. An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.

Then the CIA captured its first big detainee, in March 28, 2002. Pakistani forces took Abu Zubaida, al Qaeda's operations chief, into custody and the CIA whisked him to the new black site in Thailand, which included underground interrogation cells, said several former and current intelligence officials. Six months later, Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh was also captured in Pakistan and flown to Thailand.

But after published reports revealed the existence of the site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it down, and the two terrorists were moved elsewhere, according to former government officials involved in the matter. Work between the two countries on counterterrorism has been lukewarm ever since.

In late 2002 or early 2003, the CIA brokered deals with other countries to establish black-site prisons. One of these sites -- which sources said they believed to be the CIA's biggest facility now -- became particularly important when the agency realized it would have a growing number of prisoners and a shrinking number of prisons.

Thailand was closed, and sometime in 2004 the CIA decided it had to give up its small site at Guantanamo Bay. The CIA had planned to convert that into a state-of-the-art facility, operated independently of the military. The CIA pulled out when U.S. courts began to exercise greater control over the military detainees, and agency officials feared judges would soon extend the same type of supervision over their detainees.

In hindsight, say some former and current intelligence officials, the CIA's problems were exacerbated by another decision made within the Counterterrorist Center at Langley.

The CIA program's original scope was to hide and interrogate the two dozen or so al Qaeda leaders believed to be directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, or who posed an imminent threat, or had knowledge of the larger al Qaeda network. But as the volume of leads pouring into the CTC from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and former officials.

The original standard for consigning suspects to the invisible universe was lowered or ignored, they said. "They've got many, many more who don't reach any threshold," one intelligence official said.

Several former and current intelligence officials, as well as several other U.S. government officials with knowledge of the program, express frustration that the White House and the leaders of the intelligence community have not made it a priority to decide whether the secret internment program should continue in its current form, or be replaced by some other approach.

Meanwhile, the debate over the wisdom of the program continues among CIA officers, some of whom also argue that the secrecy surrounding the program is not sustainable.

"It's just a horrible burden," said the intelligence official.

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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lalalinda
Moderator

Posts: 1120
From: nevada
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 23, 2006 01:43 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for lalalinda     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I don't see Scooter or Karl Rove's name anywhere

Jwhop

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lalalinda
Moderator

Posts: 1120
From: nevada
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posted April 23, 2006 01:59 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for lalalinda     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
oh scratch that, we're not talking about Valerie Plame are we?

still Jwhop

------------------
Courage is fear that's said its prayers
Michael Cole

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TINK
unregistered
posted April 23, 2006 12:30 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I'm inclined to think she probably did the right thing. We can't all be good Germans.

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 24, 2006 01:03 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
She violated the law in addition to violating her own written acceptance of the conditions upon which she received her security clearance.

McCarthy should be speedily prosecuted and jailed.

Not only McCarthy, but whoever leaked the existance of the NSA program to the press.

Jail time for both of them.

Loose Lips Sink Ships
Geoff Metcalf
Monday, April 24, 2006

"We must do the thing we must Before the thing we may; We are unfit for any trust Till we can and do obey."

- George MacDonald

Mary O. McCarthy is the CIA officer recently fired for allegedly leaking classified information to the press. She is in the process of becoming a tool for dueling partisan interests.

Critics of McCarthy have and will attack her oath breaking, perceived political proclivity, and more. Her sins and motivations will be guesstimated and assigned arbitrarily contingent on the accusers' personal preconceptions and pursued agenda.

Her defenders will manufacture defenses for her from whole cloth and seek to vilify her accusers.

What McCarthy allegedly did (leaking information to Dana Priest at The Washington Post) is empirically flat out wrong. Any defense of her motives, or insinuations about her political partisanship is immaterial. Consequences in life are real ... for everything we do and do not do.

There exists a mutually exclusive duality. We insist on honor and principles, but seem comfortable, as we tend to rationalize and mitigate, contingent on our inherent prejudices.

We want (and need) enterprising journalists to dig and uncover stuff we are not supposed to know. However, (and stay with me here because some of you will get angry) often the journalist "Jones" presupposes a "right to know" absent the consequences of "should we know."

All whistle blowers are both lauded and condemned, dependent on the perceived result of the leak (is it good or bad for my team).

The journalist's objective is to collect information and disseminate it. All the beltway beats cultivate, develop and exploit sources. Sometimes, the symbiotic relationships result in the reporters being exploited. Such is life in D.C. reportage. However, blame should not be showered on the reporters but rather the leakers who (for whatever reason) tell what they shouldn't.

Dana Priest is a good reporter; the Pulitzer merely validates her professional expertise. I've never met her but she once called me for information she had heard I had on the rescue of Jessica Lynch (female captive U.S. soldier in Iraq). I knew stuff she would have loved to print, but I declined to share. It was very easy to say "Sorry, I can't help you." No harm, no foul.

By the way, despite having venues to distribute what I knew online and on the radio, I never did write or say publicly anything I was told about her rescue or what happened to her in captivity.

McCarthy for some unknown reason chose to share classified information with a reporter. That is her bad, and for sure earned her termination. Once upon a time, it would have earned her far worse.

Henry Clay said, "Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people."

Our government is flawed and not infrequently it makes mistakes. However, it is way beyond presumptuous (even if they are right) for leakers to presume that the information they are disseminating is critical and the people's right to know overshadows negative consequences of should they know.

McCarthy was not fired because she was close to the Clinton administration or because Sandy Berger supported her (Sandy Berger should be in jail for his abuse of trust of classified material). She was fired for "failing a polygraph examination and confessing that she had disclosed classified information to reporters."

"We're talking about a person with great integrity who played by the book and, as far as I know, never deviated from the rules," said Steven Simon, a Clinton National Security Council aide who worked closely with McCarthy.

Yeah? So what? Aaron Burr was a hero of the war for independence and Thomas Jefferson's vice president before he resigned to embrace treason http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/burr/burraccount.html

When it comes to security issues, and especially at the puzzle palace in Langley, perception becomes reality. The fact she admitted to have engaged in inappropriate discussions with a media representative is sufficient to fire her tail.

Some claim McCarthy was disenchanted with the Bush administration. Hey, then quit, write a book, and join the loyal opposition. You don't violate your oath and disseminate classified material because you think your boss is a jerk.

Frankly for a mid level wonk to presume to have the omniscient overview of the big picture and is better suited to make strategic decisions regarding release of classified information is penultimate arrogance, even if she is right.

No criminal charges have been filed against McCarthy ... yet. If the government is serious about stopping leaks, they should correct that oversight sooner rather than later.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/4/24/112756.shtml

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 28, 2006 10:28 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Mary McCarthy's leftist ties
Posted: April 28, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
WorldNetDaily.com


Melanie Morgan

The world can sometimes seem a bit upside down.

Take for example the fact the constant complaints by "journalists" at the big mainstream media outlets about their reputation for having a liberal bias.

Then watch as the journalistic community awards Pulitzer Prizes to the Washington Post for undermining the detention of terrorists by the Bush administration. Or how about the New York Times for undermining the Bush-supported program that involves wiretapping of phone conversations by suspected terrorists.

How did we get to the point where journalists are rewarded when they put American national security at risk?

Can you imagine the crop of left-wing reporters of contemporary times being shipped back to the 1930s and 1940s? We'd all be reading about the allegations of inappropriate treatment of Nazi POW's and the need to withdraw our troops from the Asian theater of war to stop the further loss of American lives there.


The Pulitzer Prize that went to the Washington Post has interested me in particular, because one of the reporters who earned the award for the Post, Dana Priest, has been tied into the far left of the American political scene.

One of Priest's friends and sources is CIA leaker Mary McCarthy, a liberal Democrat activist who was telling Dana Priest about how upset she was that the Bush administration was being mean to terrorists.

If you didn't already know who Dana Priest or Mary McCarthy were, then you probably were not making the rounds at the Democratic National Committee fund-raisers.

When Ms. Priest isn't writing unflattering columns about the Bush administration under the Washington Post masthead, she's busy listening to her husband tell her about the need for a new foreign policy that is kinder to the despots of the world. More support for Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein – and less for the freedom fighters who have lost their lives trying to fight for democratic values under these tyrants.

Priest's husband, William Goodfellow, is the executive director for the Center for International Policy, a group that proudly condemns U.S. foreign policy and attacks the evils of capitalism.

They describe themselves as an organization, "dedicated to exposing and confronting the failures and excesses of our intelligence and national defense apparatus in the post-9/11 world."

Hmmm, maybe they could start by exposing the failures and excesses of reporters who leak classified information on the war on terrorism to America's enemies?

Reading through the policy goals of the Center for International Policy is an exercise in frustration. It's one "Blame America First" idea after another, but then that's hardly surprising given their ties to the public -relations firm, Fenton Communications, who are perhaps best known for being the PR firm for MoveOn.org.

MoveOn.org members have a high opinion of not only the CIP, but also Dana Priest's friend, CIA leaker Mary McCarthy.

In their discussion forum, MoveOn.org's members insisted that McCarthy should earn a Congressional Medal of Honor for leaking classified secrets to Dana Priest, who could then go and use that information to undermine America's fight against terrorism.

McCarthy is a revolting figure who deserves condemnation and prosecution for her crimes against the CIA and her nation.

Her motivations are obvious: She has an abundance of disdain for the Bush administration and a tough, pro-American foreign policy, in general.

McCarthy contributed $7,000 to help John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, along with other contributions she has made to the Democratic National Committee and to Democrat candidates running on a "Blame America First" platform.

Most notably, McCarthy has twice contributed to the Democrat challenger to Republican Congressman Curt Weldon. Weldon achieved fame when he broke the news that the 9-11 commission and others were covering up the fact that the Clinton aministration knew the identities of the 9-11 terrorists before 2001 and knew they were in this country taking flight lessons.

The Washington Post's Dana Priest was happy to team up with her friend Mary McCarthy in the anti-Weldon campaign. Priest wrote an error-filled story about Weldon on June 9, 2005, that belittled and criticized Weldon.

The common theme to many of McCarthy's political contributions is the presence of Clinton's NSC chief, Sandy Berger. Berger achieved fame for stuffing top secret documents down his pants and stealing them from the National Archives. He later destroyed those documents that incriminated the Clinton administration for their failures to address the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida.

Another figure who plays prominently in the political networking by Mary McCarthy is Richard Clarke. Clarke obtained fame by trashing the Bush administration to the news media following the 9-11 attacks and defending the efforts of Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger and everyone else involved in national security during the Clinton years.

So to sum things up, the Washington Post was just awarded a Pulitzer Prize for reporting by Dana Priest that jeopardized the war against terrorism. Priest's husband is involved in raising public opposition to the war against terrorism and working with MoveOn.org to advance a politically liberal foreign-policy agenda.

One of the sources for Ms. Priest's writings has been ex-Clinton administration NSC official, Mary McCarthy, who has given almost 10 percent of her net income to Democrat candidates and causes in recent years.

The Clintonites are so desperate to regain power that they are willing to sell out our national security to do it. And the reporters who serve as agents for this effort are rewarded for executing their role in the effort.

Right has become wrong. Good has become bad.

And the people who are hurting America are being rewarded.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49957

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AcousticGod
Knowflake

Posts: 4415
From: Pleasanton, CA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 28, 2006 01:32 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
That's a fascinating article there, Jwhop. Read every word I promise.

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TINK
unregistered
posted April 29, 2006 08:20 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I wholeheartedly agree that she should suck it up and pay whatever penalty is dished out. What she did was illegal, but that does not necessarily mean it was wrong.

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Mirandee
unregistered
posted May 02, 2006 12:33 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Gee, It's not like Bush didn't staff the CIA with his cronies to run it causing most of the real CIA to quit or anything like that. We know with Bush anyone who tells the truth gets fired, smeared or otherwise retaliated against. That is unless of course it is someone on his own staff that is ordered by him to leak. Then it's whole different ballgame. No penalties there. Not even a reprimand.


Democrats Suggest Double Standard on Leaks
White House Aides' Actions Are Cited

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 24, 2006; Page A02

Key Democratic legislators yesterday joined Republicans in saying they do not condone the alleged leaking of classified information that led to last week's firing of a veteran CIA officer. But they questioned whether a double standard exists that lets the White House give reporters secretly declassified information for political purposes.

"I don't know this woman, and I do not condone leaks of classified information," said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, referring to the firing of Mary McCarthy.

Harman added that "while leaks are wrong, I think it is totally wrong for our president in secret to selectively declassify certain information and empower people in his White House to leak it to favored reporters so that they can discredit political enemies," she said on Fox News Sunday.

Harman was referring to White House staff members disclosing the classified identity of CIA case officer Valerie Plame in 2003.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) echoed Harman, saying, "A CIA agent has an obligation to uphold the law, and clearly leaking is against the law. And nobody should leak." But he added: "If you're leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you . . . put on that person."

McCarthy, while working for CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson, is alleged to have "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information" to journalists including The Washington Post's Dana Priest. Last week, Priest was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting that included the revelation of secret, CIA-run prisons for suspected terrorists in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Kerry, on ABC's "This Week," said, "Classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people." He added, "I'm glad she told the truth," but if McCarthy did it, she will have to face the consequences of breaking the law.

Then drawing a parallel to the Plame case, Kerry said that with McCarthy, "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 order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, D.C."

From 1996 to 2001, McCarthy worked as a senior intelligence aide on the National Security Council staff. She has been denounced by critics for leaking classified material; some suggested she had a political motive and noted that she gave $2,000 to Kerry's presidential primary campaign.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence panel, took issue with Harman on the question of a double standard. Appearing on the same Fox program, Hoekstra said the president has the legal authority to decide "what is classified and what is not," whereas "this person in the CIA thought that they were above the law." As a result, he added, McCarthy put the country at greater risk through her alleged disclosures.

Asked about the administration's statements about Iran's fast-advancing nuclear program, Hoekstra and Harman gave support to Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte's prediction last week that it could be the next decade before Tehran has enough fissile material to make a nuclear weapon.

"We really don't know," Hoekstra said, but "we're getting lots of mixed messages." Pressed about the apparent lack of clear intelligence on Iran, Hoekstra said: "Sometimes it's better to be honest and to say there's a whole lot we don't know about Iran that I wish we did know . . . as decisions are being made on Iran."

Harman picked up the point, saying, "Our intelligence is thin. I don't think we have enough sources." Referring to recent statements from Tehran that it had begun enriching uranium, Harman said: "Just the fact that the Iranian government is making a lot of noise doesn't prove their capability."

She compared Iran today to Iraq in 2002, when "the Iraqi government made a lot of noise, and they had nothing." She said when the Bush White House did not have a strong case that Saddam Hussein had unconventional weapons, "those who tried to speak truth to power were shut out."

As for Iran, Harman said, "This is not a time to be saber rattling in our government, talking about the military option. We don't know enough."


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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted May 04, 2006 03:46 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Clueless aren't you Mirandee?

You are not aware CIA are career people for the most part. Those who have left or been fired had been at the CIA for years...and that housecleaning only began last year.

The CIA is not a policy making agency. Those who were fired or were forced to resign were attempting to make foreign policy. They should have been fired a long time ago.

There are some at the State Department with the same policy making agenda. They need a good housecleaning too.

The administration..the President in consultation with the various Cabinet officers and advisors make foreign and domestic policy. The job of the CIA and State Dept. is to carry those policies out or get the hell out of the department.

Posting BS sour grapes from those who didn't do their jobs but now want to influence policy is exactly what one would expect from the no longer entrenched but still incompetent bureaucracy.

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AcousticGod
Knowflake

Posts: 4415
From: Pleasanton, CA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted May 04, 2006 05:42 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I thought I was the one with the poor memory Jwhop.

The CIA is often called on for input into policy matters, and their input is valued by most administrations. I guess that when they opine differently than what the administration wants, then it's time to clean house.

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TINK
unregistered
posted May 04, 2006 05:43 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Jwhop, wouldn't you be willing to break a law in order to do what you felt was morally and ethically right?

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