The Spinning of the Mary McCarthy Story

Just as I wrote in my last post about alleged CIA leaker, Mary McCarthy, she is definitely innocent until proven guilty.

Newsweek has a more in depth look at the story behind the anatomy of this leak that goes beyond the accusation that since Mrs McCarthy reportedly failed a polygraph test, she was summarily fired.

Mrs McCarthy has denied being the leaker of the supposedly classified information about secret CIA prisons. Supposedly because, apparently, some of this information had already been declassified and was public knowledge:

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.”

The article also states that Mary McCarthy had conversations with the Washington Post reporter who ran the secret prisons story, Dana Priest, but notes that they had actually known each other for years. So, personal contact between the two was not something that should have raised suspicion or in any way confirmed that McCarthy was Priest's source.

Futher:

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.

Mrs McCarthy's lawyer has stated that she did not even have access to such information that may have been classified.

And, doesn't it all come down to this?

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

I'll bet George Tenet polishes his Medal of Freedom every morning.