McCarthy: Leaker in Chief

Michael Isikoff, joined by Mark Hosenball, have a WEB EXCLUSIVE!

In typical Newsweek fashion, the story is based on the account of a "friend;" in this case, Rand Beers, a pal and former colleague of the fired and disgraced CIA official and leaker Mary McCarthy.

Naturally, the article is packed with secondary sources. McCarthy is staying mum.

That's particularly ironic, given that she was in the business of leaking to the press to undermine the Bush Administration, and subsequently aid our enemies. Suddenly, she's quiet.

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.

If Isikoff and Hosenball think they are doing McCarthy any favors by highlighting the role that her good friend Beers had in the Kerry campaign, they are mistaken.

There are so many grinding axes in this story that it's hard to keep them all straight.

The Democrats are looking rather...CORRUPT. I'd go so far as to call them immersed in a CULTURE OF CORRUPTION.

McCarthy's lawyer also is defending the leaker today. Considering this all broke last Friday, it took quite a while for these denials to surface.

It took even longer than it did for the White House press corps to learn that the Vice President had been involved in a hunting accident.

This seems far too little far too late to me. It doesn't look good for McCarthy.

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.

Again with the unnamed sources -- that is so Isikoffian.

I love this one: "a source familiar with her account who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities."

The lag time between the initial allegations coming to light and these denials and clarifications is highly suspicious.

Did it take a while for the Clintonistas to get their act together? Is that the explanation?

Did they realize that they had to get the old machince up and running and chugging away as more and more information tying McCarthy to the center of the Dem apparatus began to bubble up?

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.

The CIA hasn't backed off. Good.

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.

Ever since the toilet-flushed Quran fiasco, I've noticed that Isikoff obsessively supplies readers with rationalizations as to why so many of his sources are of the anonymous sort.

Very amusing.

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.

"A counter-terrorism official" -- What official?

So many people, so few names.

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.

Oh! This time it's "two official sources with the inquiry." I'm impressed.

The article goes on to defend McCarthy's integrity and credibility, citing "a serving CIA official" that was present when McCarthy was escorted out of CIA headquarters in Langley, VA.

You're familiar with Langley. That's where Valerie Plame worked while she was supposedly a covert CIA agent, the covert type that conspicuously drives herself to the office every day. I digress.

It's as if Hosenball and Isikoff are McCarthy's PR agents.

The fact is, even according to this lib spin, she admitted to talking to reporters and failed to report the contacts.

McCarthy cannot be trusted.

Her attorney is digging in, and her friends and her anonymous buddies are rallying around her.

That doesn't change the reality that she is hostile to the policies of the Bush Administration and was/is a threat to our national security.