It’s hard to imagine how you can have an effective intelligence service if members of that service leak to the press. The level of trust necessary for intelligence work would simply disappear in several directions, internal and external, simultaneously. At the same time what was and is reported in the press from those leaks is suspect, not only to due to the possible bias of the leaker but also obviously the possible bias of the reporter (and his editor, publisher, etc.). Nothing can be fully authenticated because the intelligence agency which has been compromised can and should not talk in its own defense. The agency is at a natural disadvantage because of the secret nature of its work. The rationale for this dance is that the public is informed- but is it? Do we really know anything, anything that we can fully believe anyway? I doubt it.
So where does that leave us? I was not surprised to read in today’s Washington Post of the firing of CIA agent Mary McCarthy for leaking to that paper and others. I was only surprised that it didn’t happen earlier. Meanwhile, the literary association of Ms. McCarthy’s name has a certain je ne sais quoi given that one of the people to whom she leaked her information, Dana Priest, has just won a Pulitzer Prize for her “revelations” about the CIA. How are we supposed to regard that? Tim Rutten has an article in the Los Angeles Times this morning about the dustup concerning this and other Pulitzers and some conservative bloggers who think the reporters who revealed classified information don’t deserve the prize. They deserve to go to jail for violating the Espionage Act instead.
I agree with Rutten to some extent that this may be overkill. (If anyone deserves prosecution, it is the leakers, who undoubtedly have employment contracts that forbid such disclosures.) But I certainly wouldn’t give these reporters a prize for their work, which seems to me more like a fancy version of taking dictation. They were, for reasons we of course do not know, chosen by these leakers to be trusted conduits of the leakers’ version of the truth. This deserves a prize? Not in my school yard. But what I do know? Most of the time I have been nominated for a prize (including one even better known than the Pulitzer), I lost. So you can just assume I’m a sorehead when I say that prizes of this nature are nothing more than self-serving political nonsense.
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19 Comments
1. Charlie (Colorado):So why shouldn’t Dana Priest be liable under the law? No argument about mary McCarthy, but why should we give Dana a pass when she was clearly part of, at least an accessorty to, the crime?
Apr 22, 2006 - 8:42 pm 2. Roger:I certainly see your point, Charlie, and I tend to agree with you to certain extent, especially if Dana presents the material as fact, rather than something she has been “told.” Revised my comments slightly.
Apr 22, 2006 - 8:46 pm 3. Rick Ballard:Why is the interrogation of terrorists in clandestine locations by the CIA news in the first place? What presumed rule has been broken and why is secrecy unimportant? If the fact that the terrorists were taken was unknown to their organization then that fact in itself has a reasonably high intelligence value. Does McCarthy propose that an ACLU attorney should accompany interrogation teams in order to advise the terrorist of hsi rights? If so, what rights does she propose apply to terrorists?
I don’t believe that Priest gave any indication in her stories that McCarthy and her husband were donors to the Dems for a total of $10K in the ‘04 election cycle. Unimportant in assessing the information provided? I’m sure Howard Dean and Harry Reid would say so.
I agree with Roger’s conclusion that the Pulitzer Prize would most appropriately be printed on absorbent, perforated paper but I believe that I would have phrased it “self-serving Democrat political nonsense.” If McCarthy professed minimal scruples there is an effective whistleblower law and a precise method to employ it which is known to her. Her intent had nothing to do with scruples and everything to do with politics and aubversion.
Both Priest and McCarthy are Democrat Party prostitutes - perhaps the Pulitzer committee should consider a “Best Political Prostitute” category with awards both to the taker as well as the giver of the dictation to be turned into propaganda.
Let us hope that the DoJ makes their very own special award to these two in the near future.
Apr 22, 2006 - 9:08 pm 4. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):There have been substantial indications that there is a large “get-Bush” faction within the CIA. I suspect this is one manifestation of that.
What possible justification can there be for leaking this information? I would guess it was classified at the SCI (beyond Top Secret) level, and for good reasons. The revelations damaged us diplomatically and probably significantly reduced our ability to handle terrorist interrogation (and hide their capture). Americans will die because of these leaks.
For revealing this information, McCarthy should no doubt be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We can hope that other CIA members who feel that they are entitled to damage their country in order to fulfill their own political agendas will also be prosecuted. Some may already be - in cases where the publicization of prosecution itself could be a damaging leak.
As for the journalists involved, they are merely tarnishing the already tarnished Pulitzer Prize (remember the NYT’s Duranty - a prize the Times has yet to return?).
It is time to go through the CIA with a steel broom. The organization has long populated its analytical branch (and I guess its operations directorate) from exactly those schools which give their students the feeling of being the chosen elite - the Ivy League. Those same institutions for decades have been dominated by teachers with biases strongly against an affirmative US foreign policy, against the use of force, against the idea that the US is one of the best countries, and who imagine the world would be a much more genteel place if we would just stop annyoning other countries, such as Saddam’s Iraq.
The CIA needs to start recruiting from the red states - preferably from tech schools and others with much less bias. We need patriots first, and elites second (or third, or fourth). I’d rather have a good student from a third rate school, but who is patriotic and believes in American greatness, than a “genius” from Harvard.
Apr 22, 2006 - 10:50 pm 5. HA:Roger,
I agree with Rutten to some extent that this may be overkill.
Overkill? I don’t think so.
Sandy Berger was a Kerry campaign advisor until he was forced to quit after getting caught stealing classified documents from the National Archives.
Joe Wilson was a Kerry campaign advisor until he was forced to quit after being revealed as a liar by the Senate Intelligence Committee when it released its report about Iraq’s WMD program.
Mary McCarthy was hired by Sandy Berger and served with Joe Wilson.
Without any hyperbole at all, what we may be looking at here is nothing less than an attempted coup d’etat using a campaign of disinformation by rogue elements of the CIA in coordination the Kerry campaign during wartime.
Remember names like Rosenberg, Fuchs, Hiss, and Chambers? Well their names will soon be joined by the likes of Berger, Wilson, McCarthy (Mary, not Joe) and Kerry in the pantheon of American treason.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_ACCT.HTM
Of course John Kerry should have already been there for meeting with Madame Binh and conciously serving as a Vietnamese Communist agent of influence in 1971. Kerry has walked this path before.
And if you wonder why the Democrats are up in arms about NSA warrantless survelliance “scandal” then keep in mind the precedent of the Venona files, which put to rest once and for all whether or not the Rosenbergs and their comrades were spies.
This is extremely serious business. There is a Culture of Treason in the Democrat party for over 50 years. This should not be taken lightly.
Apr 23, 2006 - 5:39 am 6. timmah!:“I don’t believe that Priest gave any indication in her stories that McCarthy and her husband were donors to the Dems for a total of $10K in the ‘04 election cycle.”
There’s a simple explanation: you report the news. That Times and WaPo anti-Bush anonymous sources are Democrat operatives is not news.
Apr 23, 2006 - 5:59 am 7. HA:Roger,
One more thing. Recall Scooter Libby’s cryptic comment to Judy Miller:
“It is fall now ? Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work - and life.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2128205/
What do you suppose he was referring to? Time will tell…
Apr 23, 2006 - 6:04 am 8. Terrye:HA:
That is an odd statement for Libby to make isn’t it?
I am wondering how much the Plame/Wilson scam and all of this is connected.
Apr 23, 2006 - 7:36 am 9. RogerA:Seems to me that this case is a brightline case: admissions, polygraphs, etc. If the Bush administration chooses not to prosecute this one–including Dana Priest, they will have lost a chance to clean out what has to be one of the worst rogue agencies inside the beltway–I will be extraordinarily disappointed with the President.
Apr 23, 2006 - 8:40 am 10. Kevin Peters:Roger:
For those who want to claim that she is a whistleblower and a hero there is one thing they should keep in mind. Someday, maybe soon, a Democrat is going President. And more then likely that President will be involved in a war or intelligence operation that could politically divisive. And, since our intelligence agencies have never been able to stay away from the nations political battles and have internal political struggles of their own, they have set up a standard where agency employee’s are allowed to try to sabotage any war effort or intelligence operation they deem unworthy by leaking selective info to the press.It also allows those employee’s the ability to cripple political races for national office by a well timed leak. Or if they think they can cripple an internal rival by leaking embarrasing info and thus cripple a seniors career by leaking they will. How we handle this case could set up a system that will destroy our ability to conduct intelligence operations for decades.
Apr 23, 2006 - 11:04 am 11. Ari Tai:re: suitable punishment for “the high born” leaking that places lives of our citizens, soldiers and allies at risk (given we’ve lost our appetite for corporeal punishment).
We should negotiate with some half-friendly destitute country (hopefully with strict Sharia) who, for some small sum, will automatically confer citizenship to any we exile (to remove any legal objection to unreasonable punishment since we will not be making them a “person without a country.”)
Then we should revoke these miscreants’ citizenship, give them a one-way plane ticket, and wish them well.
Apr 23, 2006 - 12:42 pm 12. flenser:Kevin Peters
Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I can’t help thinking that if somebody tried to “blow the whistle” to Priest during a Democratic administration, then a) the story would not see the light of day, and b) word of the attempted leak would make its way back to the whistleblowers boss in short order.
Apr 23, 2006 - 1:23 pm 13. Linc:I have this gleeful wish that the Mary McCarthy affair turns out to be as sting regarding the CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.
If so, would Dana Priest feel obliged to return her Pulitzer–the Pulitzer for which taking dictation would then seem to be the apparent effort taken? And would the Pulitzer committee change its evaluation criteria?
One can only wish.
Apr 23, 2006 - 1:23 pm 14. jedrury:Freedom of the press protects the press for
Apr 23, 2006 - 1:49 pm 15. David Thomson:its publication of the nation’s secrets. It does not protect the press from disclosure of their sources, and, it does not and should not protect the leakers. It is appropriate and timely under this administration that these two aspects of the freedom of the press, or lack thereof, are defined, litigated and made plain for the country; for those who are awake and sensitive
it is now clear: sources are not protected and leakers will be dismissed and maybe indicted. This will not impede the press from their disclosures but but it will bring clarity to our sense of justice, satiate our outrage, scare the wits out of the snotty press and make money for lawyers.
ìMaybe I’m just a cynic, but I can’t help thinking that if somebody tried to “blow the whistle” to Priest during a Democratic administration, then a) the story would not see the light of day, and b) word of the attempted leak would make its way back to the whistleblowers boss in short order.î
Your cynicism is probably justified. I once thought some twenty years ago that Woodward and Bernstein would have vigorously investigated the Watergate scandal regardless of which party was in power. No longer am I so naive. I am now utterly convinced that Ben Bradlee would have discretely stopped everything if a Democratic administration were in jeopardy. Was this an overt conspiracy? No, this sort of nonsense goes on subconsciously. Everybody is on the same page—and nobody has to say anything.
Apr 23, 2006 - 3:29 pm 16. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):Thinking this over, I now believe that people in the press *should* be prosecuted for knowingly publicizing damaging classified information. The prosecution and punishment should depend on the damage done to the country and whether the reporter could reasonably be expected to know that the information could be released without damaging national interests.
We have a system of elected representatives. They, not the arrogant press, have been given the responsibility and capability of determining national policy. When the press circumvents that democratically granted capability, though these leaks, it is attacking representative democracy. It empowers the unelected bureaucrat to override the elected official. That attack on democracy is just as dangerous as suppressing a free press.
The press deserves some protection. Otherwise, even more information will be classified for political reasons. But when disclosing the information will endanger a policy, the framers of which believe is important to national security, then the reporter should pay.
Apr 23, 2006 - 7:28 pm 17. Neo:Starting with the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence, which went to Walter Duranty of the New York Times, the downward trend of the Pulitzer Prize has been unstoppable, most especially in the news field.
Apr 23, 2006 - 10:13 pm 18. AST:Most of the prizes are now irreparably damaged.
Like the writing of history, prizes for excellence are awarded by the winners. If this republic survives, future generations will surely see these times as an era of corruption where the government was infiltrated by journalists who arrogated to themselves the right to decide what should and should not be classified. These people would surely consider William Randolph Hearst a disgrace for beating the drums for war, but aren’t they doing the same thing in a negative sense?
Isn’t leaking “sensitive” information, i.e. that which could hurt the national security or important government operations, as corrupt as what Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen did? Our media have substituted political loyalty for loyalty to the nation. They can’t fail soon enough for me.
Apr 24, 2006 - 1:53 pm 19. Ari Tai:re: freedom of the press and sharing (aka “connecting the dots”).
We (the people, congress, executive, etc.) are demanding that these agencies share their information and break down the barriers to sharing.
It occurs to me that the more sharing there is the more leaks there will be, including a few that sharing enables that are malicious and likely more that are just inadvertent - normal accidents.
Should we have to bear those additional risks of sharing, or is it possible to create some framework that doesn’t damage the first amendment while giving these (very human) agencies a “do over” (mulligan)? i.e. “I’d like that back please.” With those that stumble over things that average reader would think should be secret be obligated to check with the appropriate authorities first?
Any chance the press would cooperate? I know the average citizen would, as seen when they find money (or secrets) in the street, they almost always “do the right thing.”
I’d support an official secrets act given suitable congressional (and regular) review of what’s being protected (in my interest). And rather than a criminal punishment, perhaps allow civil liability judgments (i.e. “someone died, you’re the deep pockets MSN company that published the materials that a jury believes contributed to that death, pay up.”)
Apr 24, 2006 - 3:19 pm