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Newsweak: It wuddent Mary
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 McCarthys 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 Clintons 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 Beers role as the Clinton NSCs 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. LOL 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 CIAs intelligenceor analytical branch, was the individual in question. 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. More fish to go in the pan Two official sources familiar with the inquiry which led to McCarthys 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 McCarthys 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. No story on CIA ladies woul be complete without a quote from Agency stud muffin Larry Johnson 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 communitys professional ethos. EFL Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-04-24 |
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