Larry Johnson notes in The Firing of Mary McCarthy
Sometime within the last year she returned to CIA on a terminal assignment. I've heard through the grapevine that she was attending the seminar for officers who are retiring while working with the Inspector General (IG). Now things get interesting. She could find out about secret prisons if Intelligence Officers involved with that program had filed a complaint with the IG or if there was some incident that compelled senior CIA officials to determine an investigation was warranted. In other words, this program did not come to Mary's attention (if the allegations are true) because she worked on it as an ops officer. Instead, it appears an investigation of the practice had been proposed or was underway. That's another story reporters probably ought to be tracking down.
Once again, and admittedly it is still early in the story, we find ourselves in the middle of a storm which conservative apologists for the administration will try and define the story as one about the leaks and some hyperbole about the grave dangers to national security when the story is about administration wrong doing and people with courage speaking up to expose that wrong doing. I don't know that hiding behind the smoke screen of national security is a new kind of cowardice and partisan gamesmanship, but we shouldn't mistake it for anything else. I'm not going to highlight anything from the conservative blogs today, let's just say that this story has opened the flood gate on some of the most paranoid delusional conspiracy laden garbage you're ever likely to read.
Those that are bouncing on M's McCarthy will likely skim over her dissent with the Clinton administration over bobmbing a factory in the Sudan and focus on her poltical contribution to John Kerry. Once again proving that most conservatives are incapable of understanding the sometimes complicated procresses at work in defining what is right. I have no envy at all for those conservatives who in their moronically blind alligence to all things Bush. Ultimately thier piling on the leakers the leaks that embarrass Bush is what this is all about. If we were having leaks about that were embarrassing to a Democratic administration which highlighted their Machiavellian governance they'd be squealing like pigs at dinner time. Colleagues Say C.I.A. Analyst Played by Rules
In sociology there are several structured ways to view society and its institutions, one of them is functionalism. One interpretation of which is that there are sometimes conflicting dynamic forces at work within cultural institutions like government, the military, or education and between those institutions. The sum of that tension creates a kind of dynamic equilibriuim, sets of checks on excess. That equilibriuim is out of whack, we have some weaker lone forces at work within some institutions like the CIA, the media, and Congress and between those institutions and the current administration. Since we're under one party rule in every branch of government we're reliant on lone whistleblowers and those members of the press courageous enough to brave the career damage, hate mail and death threats to speak out on behave of the American people. Though most of us would prefer it otherwise just call it real politik to think that while bending or breaking secrecy agreements may be wrong, so it is also wrong that the Bush administration has sanctioned torture, illegal warrantless domestic spying, rendered people to secret prisons in oppressive countries without due process, bent intelligence findings to their own ends and lied to the American people. As morally repugnant as the administration's activities have been they could have been worse, but leaks may very well be the check that that has stopped Bush and company from pushing their messianic ambitions to the next level. On that note this interesting post from Who is IOZ, Saturday Morning and All's Not Well and No More Mr. Nice Guy!, with Spy vs. Spy
Life in the United States of Bushistan is now one permanent Swift-boat attack. The latest victim, Mary McCarthy, was sacked for blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture gulag, and the sleaze attacks began almost before the news was announced.
Speaking of which, why was the news announced? I mean, why was it necessary to plaster McCarthy's name, position in the CIA, etc. over the front page of every newspaper? Isn't that in itself a damaging leak? Oh, I forgot – when the junta betrays CIA agents, it's to "enable folks to see the truth" about why we need to destroy other countries. When anyone else leaks information on the crimes and misdeeds of the regime, it's treason.
He walked quickly and resolutely, and though he felt shattered, he was afraid that in another half-hour, another quarter of an perhaps, instructions would be issued for his pursuit, and so at all costs, he must hide all traces before then. He must clear everything up while he still had some strength, some reasoning power left him … Where was he to go?
That had long been settled: “Fling them into the canal, and all traces hidden in the water, the thing would be at an end.” So he had decided in the night of his delirium when several times he had had the impulse to get up and go away, to make haste, and get rid of it all. But to get rid of it, turned out to be a very difficult task. He wandered along the bank of Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and looked several times at the steps running down to the water, but he could not think of carrying out his plan; either rafts stood at the steps’ edge, and women were washing clothes on them, or boats were moored there, and people were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and noticed from the banks on all sides; it would look suspicious for a man to go down on purpose, stop, and throw something into the water. And what if the boxes were to float instead of sinking? And of course they would. Even as it was, every one he met seemed to stare and look round, as if they had nothing to do but to watch him. “Why is it, or can it be my fancy?” he thought.
from Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Long Goodbye 