The war between the Bush Administration and the CIA continues. David Corn spotted this at the end of a Washington Post story on Mary McCarthy:
The White House also has recently barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers, according to intelligence officials.
Hmm. Porter Goss, the news story says,
… personally oversaw the leak investigation that led to McCarthy’s dismissal, rather than asking the Justice Department to do it — as previous directors had requested in similar probes.
I wonder if Goss checked McCarthy’s political affiliations before he made her a target.
Even the agency’s employment policies have changed: Applicants are now asked more aggressively whether they have any friends in the news media, several agency employees said. And the hurdles to making public statements persist for those who have left: Former CIA agents report that the agency’s process for reviewing what they write about current events has recently become lengthier and more difficult.
If the Bushies had only been half as interested in catching Osama bin Laden as they are in gagging the CIA …
Speaking of McCarthy, head on over to Juan Cole’s place to play “All Right, Not All Right.” Example:
It IS all right for Bush campaign strategist Karl Rove to leak classified intelligence about the identity of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative.
It is NOT all right for CIA employee Mary McCarthy to leak classified information and blow the whistle on secret torture prisons maintained by the US government in Eastern Europe.
Update: See Glenn Greenwald, “Treason by Association” and “Eliminating all checks against lawbreaking.”
‘If the Bushies had only been half as interested in catching Osama bin Laden as they are in gagging the CIA …’
*mirthless laughter* as well as showing even a speck of real interest in things like policy, accountability and reality.
As hard as he tries, Porter Goss wouldn’t make a pimple on Beria’s ass. Porter is a puke.
The Neocons, the Repugs, the Conservatives and every other assorted idiot out there are drooling all over themselves thinking that they are defending freedom when they bring down a true American patriot…They delude themselves in thinking that our freedoms have been won by our military, when in fact thay have been won by an army of courageous Americans who have stood up against tryanny, injustice, and inequality. People like Susan B.Anthony, Lenny Bruce, Martin Luther King, the walking man and countless others of unsung Americans who paid the price for our freedom. A truth that some can’t grasp is that America experienced a greater victory in freedom at a Woolworths lunch counter than it did on the sands of Iwo Jima.
All Right, Not All Right
I found this comment on a rightie site: “The administration, by definition, cannot leak.” [makes me wonder why all administration staff have to sign those security agreements…..]
And I found this rightie comment about McCarthy: “This trail leads right to the Democrats!” [hmmm, wasn’t the AIPAC leaker a Republican?]
Ok, I suppose Rove has started feeding the piranha some tidbits, test driving some stuff that might get those fatigued-with-Bush-and-other-unethical-Repugs to turn out next fall. Recall that the latest polls show Americans now trust Democrats more than Republicans to provide national security.
How ‘opportune’, then, to find [or create] ‘a treasonous Dem’ for the feeding of piranha babies, especially when leaker-in-chief
can keep secret whether there actually are torture gulags. If those gulags exist, that would make McCarthy a whistleblowing heroine to decent folks of both parties.
Those on the rightie blogs seem to want to believe that there really are no Buh-sponsored torture gulags and that, chortle, chortle, McCarthy ‘took the bait’ in a sting operation.
But, wait a sec, if it was a sting, and if McCarthy believed ‘the bait’ was true [ and also realized that ‘going through channels’ led to Cheney and Bush], wouldn’t she still have been following the brave resolve of a whistleblower risking all in the patriotic knowledge that torture gulags are ILLEGAL and UNAMERICAN?
oops, typing too fast…should read Bush-sponsored torture gulags.
[don’t want you to think I conflate duh, buh, and Bush…..].
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