| Bush Administration Allegedly Held Secret Meetings With News Editors
December 27, 2005 4:30 p.m. EST - Ayinde O. Chase - All Headline News Staff Writer
Washington, D.C. (AHN) - President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors in recent weeks in an effort to prevent publication of stories the administration deems damaging to national security. The muffling efforts have failed with editors opting to publish stories they see fit with few if any concessions.
Rare White House meetings with executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times lead some to believe how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics and interrogation measures.
Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects.
However, Downie does say, "When senior administration officials raised national security questions about details in Dana's story during her reporting, at their request we met with them on more than one occasion." He goes on to say, "The meetings were off the record for the purpose of discussing national security issues in her story."
Allegedly at least one of the meetings involved John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and CIA Director Porter Goss.
Intelligence officials remaining unnamed say, "This was a matter of concern for intelligence officials, and they sought to address their concerns."
While some are grateful for the initial story uncovering the supposed secret prisons, some readers criticized The Post for withholding the location of the prisons at the administration's request. - allheadlinenews
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| Worker fired over CIA leaks named
- BBC Saturday, 22 April 2006
The CIA has sacked an employee for leaking secret information to the media, an agency official said.
Several US media outlets named her as Mary McCarthy, an intelligence analyst who served as a special assistant to Bill Clinton and George W Bush. The CIA refused to confirm any names, but said a worker had admitted to "the unauthorized sharing of classified information" with the media.
The agency said the employee was fired after a three-month long investigation.
Ms McCarthy was a senior director for intelligence programs on the White House National Security Council staff and testified to the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
'Secret jails'
In her final position at the CIA, she was assigned to its Office of Inspector General, looking into allegations the CIA was involved in torture at Iraqi prisons, reports the Associated Press. The CIA was rocked by reports in November that the US was housing terror suspects at "secret jails" abroad.
The information, initially published in US daily The Washington Post, sparked an outcry in several countries whose governments are allied to the US.
The US has never confirmed it is using prisons in allied nations to hold terror suspects.
Speaking to Congress in February, CIA director Porter Goss called for a federal grand jury to uncover the origin of the leaks. "The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission," Mr Goss said.
The CIA did not specify whether the firing of its employee was related to the leaks in The Washington Post. The employee's case has been referred to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution, the CIA said.
Citing the Privacy Act, the CIA would not disclose any details about the officer's identity or what she might have told the news media. According to the BBC's Washington correspondent, Adam Brookes, the US intelligence community has been infuriated by a series of recent disclosures of material it sought to keep secret.
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so...Mary O. McCarthy, a senior career officer was
investigating abuse at Iraqi Prisons...
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C.I.A. Fires Senior Officer Over Leaks
By DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE NY Post
WASHINGTON, April 21 - The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency's secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday.
The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under President Bill Clinton and into the Bush administration.
At the time of her dismissal, Ms. McCarthy was working in the agency's inspector general's office, after a stint at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an organization in Washington that examines global security issues.
The dismissal of Ms. McCarthy provided fresh evidence of the Bush administration's determined efforts to stanch leaks of classified information. The Justice Department has separately opened preliminary investigations into the disclosure of information to The Post, for its articles about secret prisons, as well as to The New York Times, for articles last fall that disclosed the existence of a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants supervised by the National Security Agency. Those articles were also recognized this week with a Pulitzer Prize.
Several former veteran C.I.A. officials said the dismissal of an agency employee over a leak was rare and perhaps unprecedented. One official recalled the firing of a small number of agency contractors, including retirees, for leaking several years ago.
The dismissal was announced Thursday at the C.I.A. in an e-mail message sent by Porter J. Goss, the agency's director, who has made the effort to stop unauthorized disclosure of secrets a priority. News of the dismissal was first reported Friday by MSNBC.
Ms. McCarthy's departure followed an internal investigation by the C.I.A.'s Security Center, as part of an intensified effort that began in January to scrutinize employees who had access to particularly classified information. She was given a polygraph examination, confronted about answers given to the polygraph examiner and confessed, the government officials said. On Thursday, she was stripped of her security clearance and escorted out of C.I.A. headquarters. Ms. McCarthy did not reply Friday evening to messages left by e-mail and telephone.
"A C.I.A. officer has been fired for unauthorized contact with the media and for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," said a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. "This is a violation of the secrecy agreement that is the condition of employment with C.I.A. The officer has acknowledged the contact and the disclosures."
Mr. Gimigliano said the Privacy Act prohibited him from identifying the employee.
Intelligence officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said that the dismissal resulted from "a pattern of conduct" and not from a single leak, but that the case involved in part information about secret C.I.A. detention centers that was given to The Washington Post.
Ms. McCarthy's departure was another unsettling jolt for the C.I.A., battered in recent years over faulty prewar intelligence in Iraq, waves of senior echelon departures after the appointment of Mr. Goss as director and the diminished standing of the agency under the reorganization of the country's intelligence agencies.
The C.I.A.'s inquiry focused in part on identifying Ms. McCarthy's role in supplying information for a Nov. 2, 2005, article in The Post by Dana Priest, a national security reporter. The article reported that the intelligence agency was sending terror suspects to clandestine detention centers in several countries, including sites in Eastern Europe.
Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, said on its Web site that he could not comment on the firing because he did not know the details. "As a general principle," he said, "obviously I am opposed to criminalizing the dissemination of government information to the press."
Eric C. Grant, a spokesman for the newspaper, would not address whether any C.I.A. employee was a source for the secret prison articles, but said, "No Post reporter has been subpoenaed or talked to investigators in connection with this matter."
The disclosures about the prisons provoked an outcry among European allies and set off protests among Democrats in Congress. The leak prompted the C.I.A. to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department. Lawyers at the Justice Department were notified of Ms. McCarthy's dismissal, but no new referral was issued, law enforcement officials said. They said that they would review the case, but that her termination could mean she would be spared criminal prosecution.
In January, current and former government officials said, Mr. Goss ordered polygraphs for intelligence officers who knew about certain "compartmented" programs, including the secret detention centers for terrorist suspects. Polygraphs are routinely given to agency employees at least every five years, but special polygraphs can be ordered when a security breach is suspected.
The results of such exams are regarded as important indicators of deception among some intelligence officials. But they are not admissible as evidence in court - and the C.I.A.'s reliance on the polygraph in Ms. McCarthy's case could make it more difficult for the government to prosecute her.
"This was a very aggressive internal investigation," said one former C.I.A. officer with more than 20 years' experience. "Goss was determined to find the source of the secret-jails story."
With the encouragement of the White House and some Republicans in Congress, Mr. Goss has repeatedly spoken out against leaks, saying foreign intelligence officials had asked him whether his agency was incapable of keeping secrets.
In February, Mr. Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission." He said it was his hope "that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information." "I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less," he said.
Ms. McCarthy has been a well-known figure in intelligence circles. She began her career at the agency as an analyst and then was a manager in the intelligence directorate, working at the African and Latin America desks, according to a biography by the strategic studies center. With an advanced degree from the University of Minnesota, she has taught, written a book on the Gold Coast and was director of the social science data archive at Yale University.
Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.
Republican lawmakers praised the C.I.A. effort. Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, "I am pleased that the Central Intelligence Agency has identified the source of certain unauthorized disclosures, and I hope that the agency, and the community as a whole, will continue to vigorously investigate other outstanding leak cases."
Several former intelligence officials - who were granted anonymity after requesting it for what they said were obvious reasons under the circumstances - were divided over the likely effect of the dismissal on morale. One veteran said the firing would not be well-received coming so soon after the disclosure of grand jury testimony by Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff that President Bush in 2003 approved the leak of portions of a secret national intelligence estimate on Iraqi weapons.
"It's a terrible situation when the president approves the leak of a highly classified N.I.E., and people at the agency see management as so disastrous that they feel compelled to talk to the press," said one former C.I.A. officer with extensive overseas experience.
But another official, whose experience was at headquarters, said most employees would approve Mr. Goss's action. "I think for the vast majority of people this will be good for morale," the official said. "People didn't like some of their colleagues deciding for themselves what secrets should be in The Washington Post or The New York Times."
Paul R. Pillar, who was the agency's senior analyst for the Middle East until he retired late last year, said: "Classified information is classified information. It's not to be leaked. It's not to be divulged." He has recently criticized the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs.
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting for this article.
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Mary O'Neil McCarthy: Fired CIA Leaker, Clinton Spec. Assistant
Clayton Hallmark | 22.04.2006 via Indymedia UK
Mary O'Neil McCarthy is the senior CIA official who has been fired for blowing the whistle about the CIA's illegal secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Her leak provided the grist for the Pulitzer Prize-winning of Dana Priest of the Washington Post, breaking the news about the CIA black sites. She was a Special Assistant to President Clinton. She was serving, at the time she was fired, under the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations, Jose A. Rodriguez of McLean, VA.
Here are McCarthy's duties as National Intelligence Officer for Warning. Presumably this function would have including warning the President about the 9/11 attacks, if the CIA had intelligence about them. This lady should have a lot more beans to spill.
i. To oversee analysis of intelligence from all sources which might provide warning. In particular, he should be alert to alternate interpretations within the community and assess these with a view to the need for issuance of warning. He should encourage consultation and substantive discussion at all levels in the Community.
ii. To recommend to the Director or Deputy Director of Central Intelligerce the issuance of warning to the President and National Security Council, and to ensure the dissemination of such warning within and by the organizations of the Intelligence Community. When time is of the essence, the National Intelligence Officer may issue such warning directly to the President and the National Security Council, with concurrent dissemination to the Director and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and senior officers of the Intelligence Community.
iii. To advise the Deputy Director for Collection Tasking and Deputy Director for National Foreign Assessment on appropriate Community response to developing warning situations.
iv. To develop plans and procedures for support of the Director of Central Intelligence in crisis situations.
v. To support the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and the National Foreign Intelligence Board on warning matters.
vi. To chair the Warning Working Group (Paragraph 3c).
vii. To oversee the warning activities of the National Intelligence Officers (Paragraph 3d).
viii. To supervise the Strategic Warning Staff (Paragraph 3e).
ix. To arrange for intelligence research and production with respect to strategic warning.
x. To develop a warning consciousness and discipline throughout the Community.
xi. To seek improvements in methodologies and procedures for warning, including communications and dissemination of information.
xii. To arrange with appropriate organizations of the government for provision to the National Intelligence Officer for Warning and the Strategic Warning Staff of the information they need to carry out their mission.
xiii. To promote improved analyst training in indications and warning techniques and in other analytic techniques that might contribute to improved warning.
xiv. To advise the Deputy for Collection Tasking and the Deputy for Resource Management, as appropriate, on warning activities that relate to their responsibilities.
Here is the announcement of McCarthy's appointment as a Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton:
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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
June 16, 1998
STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY
National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger announced today the
appointment of Mary O'Neil McCarthy as Special Assistant to the
President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs. Mrs. McCarthy
succeeds Rand Beers.
Mary McCarthy had been Director of Intelligence Programs on the
National Security Council Staff since July 1996. Previously, Mrs.
McCarthy served as the National Intelligence Officer for Warning from
1994-1996 and as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Warning
from 1991-1994. She began government service in 1984 as an analyst in
the Directorate of Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Prior to her government service, Mrs. McCarthy held positions in both
the private sector and academia. She was a Director, then Vice
President of BERI, SA, a firm conducting financial and political risk
assessments, from 1979-1984. Previously, she had taught at the
University of Minnesota and was Director of the Social Science Data
Archive at Yale University.
Mrs. McCarthy has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Michigan State
University and an M.A and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She
and her husband Michael McCarthy have a son, Michael.
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[note added by webmaster:]
National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger announced
June 16 the appointment of Mary O'Neil McCarthy as Special Assistant
to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs.
She succeeds Rand Beers in that post, an announcement by the office of
the White House Press Secretary said.
Mary McCarthy had been Director of Intelligence Programs on the
National Security Council Staff since July 1996. Previously, said the
White House, Mrs. McCarthy served as the National Intelligence Officer
for Warning from 1994-1996 and as the Deputy National Intelligence
Officer for Warning from 1991-1994. She began government service in
1984 as an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
McCarthy has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Michigan State University
and an M.A and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
- TEXT: BERGER APPOINTS MCCARTHY SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR INTELLIGENCE
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CIA Leaker - Mary McCarthy - Busted For Disclosing National Security Secrets To Attack Journalist
April 22, 2006 - Washington, DC - PipeLineNews.org - In a move called "unusual" by the mainstream press only because they have grown accustomed to this administration rolling over like a dead whale when confronted by leakers, the CIA has fired Mary McCarthy - of the spy bureau's Inspector General's Office - for the disclosure of classified information.
The announcement was personally authored by CIA Director Porter Goss, AP reports.
Not only has McCarthy been fired, she is reportedly the target of a Justice Department investigation that may result in the filing of criminal charges associated with the revelation of top-secret national security information.
McCarthy is now believed to be at least one of the sources for the Washpost's series of articles on American operated clandestine detentions centers in Europe authored by Dana Priest, a this week recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for leftist attack journalism.
Of similar interest to the DOJ and the CIA are the source of leaks to James Risen and Eric Lichtblau whose New York Times articles revealed that the Bush administration had the temerity to surveil al-Qaeda electronic transmissions.
Mr. Risen and Lichtblau were also were rewarded this week - for valiant service to the cause - by the Pulitzer Committee.
Previous to her employment at the CIA's IG office Mary McCarthy was the NSC's Senior Director for Intelligence from 1998-2001. She served on the staff of vitriolic Bush critic Richard Clarke the NSC's National Counterterrorism Coordinator from 1997-2001.
A more complete bio for McCarthy
Mary McCarthy, a CIA officer,is currently a visiting fellow at The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Prior to joining CSIS in August 2001, Mary O. McCarthy was a senior policy adviser to the CIA's deputy director for science and technology. Until July 2001, she served as special assistant to the president and senior director for intelligence programs on the National Security Council (NSC) Staff, under both Presidents Clinton and Bush. From 1991 until her appointment to the NSC, McCarthy served on the National Intelligence Council. She began her government service as an analyst, then manager, in CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, holding positions in both African and Latin American analysis. From 1979 to 1984 she was employed by BERI, S.A., conducting financial, operational, and political risk assessments for multinational companies and banks. Previously she had taught at the University of Minnesota and was director of the Social Science Data Archive at Yale University. She is the author of Social Change and the Growth of British Power in the Gold Coast (University Press of America, 1983). McCarthy has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Michigan State University, an M.A. in library science from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota. - Mary McCarthy Bio, courtesy NYU
911 Commission report mentions McCarthy in six instances, one of which is merely a note of her NSC status which is mentioned above.
"Ever since March 1995, American officials had had in the backs of their
minds Aum Shinrikyo's release of sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway. President
Clinton himself had expressed great concern about chemical and biological
terrorism in the United States. Bin Ladin had reportedly been heard to
speak of wanting a "Hiroshima"and at least 10,000 casualties.The CIA reported
116 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
that a soil sample from the vicinity of the al Shifa plant had tested positive for
EMPTA, a precursor chemical for VX,a nerve gas whose lone use was for mass
killing.Two days before the embassy bombings, Clarke's staff wrote that Bin
Ladin "has invested in and almost certainly has access to VX produced at a plant
in Sudan."43 Senior State Department officials believed that they had received
a similar verdict independently, though they and Clarke's staff were probably
relying on the same report. Mary McCarthy, the NSC senior director responsible
for intelligence programs, initially cautioned Berger that the "bottom line"
was that "we will need much better intelligence on this facility before we seriously
consider any options." She added that the link between Bin Ladin and al
Shifa was "rather uncertain at this point." Berger has told us that he thought
about what might happen if the decision went against hitting al Shifa, and nerve
gas was used in a New York subway two weeks later.44" - pg 116-117
"Covert Action and the Predator -
In March 2001, Rice asked the CIA to prepare a new series of authorities
for covert action in Afghanistan. Rice's recollection was that the idea had
come from Clarke and the NSC senior director for intelligence, Mary
McCarthy, and had been linked to the proposal for aid to the Northern
Alliance and the Uzbeks. Rice described the draft document as providing
for "consolidation plus," superseding the various Clinton administration
documents. In fact, the CIA drafted two documents. One was a finding that
did concern aid to opponents of the Taliban regime; the other was a draft
Memorandum of Notification, which included more open-ended language
authorizing possible lethal action in a variety of situations.Tenet delivered
both to Hadley on March 28. The CIA's notes for Tenet advised him that
"in response to the NSC request for drafts that will help the policymakers
review their options, each of the documents has been crafted to provide the
Agency with the broadest possible discretion permissible under the law."At
the meeting,Tenet argued for deciding on a policy before deciding on the
legal authorities to implement it. Hadley accepted this argument, and the
draft MON was put on hold.235" - pg 210
The following text footnoted [77] and sourced to - Mary McCarthy, Fritz Ermarth, and Charles Allen briefing (Aug. 14, 2003).
"During the 1990s, the rise of round-the-clock news shows and the Internet
reinforced pressure on analysts to pass along fresh reports to policymakers at an
ever-faster pace, trying to add context or supplement what their customers were
receiving from the media.Weaknesses in all-source and strategic analysis were
highlighted by a panel, chaired by Admiral David Jeremiah, that critiqued the
intelligence community's failure to foresee the nuclear weapons tests by India
and Pakistan in 1998, as well as by a 1999 panel, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld,
that discussed the community's limited ability to assess the ballistic missile threat
to the United States. Both reports called attention to the dispersal of effort on
too many priorities, the declining attention to the craft of strategic analysis, and
security rules that prevented adequate sharing of information.Another Cold War
craft had been an elaborate set of methods for warning against surprise attack,
but that too had faded in analyzing new dangers like terrorism.77" - pg 91
The following text footnoted [9] and sourced to -
9. See Joint Inquiry briefing by Mike, Sept. 12,2002.For briefings to the NSC,see NSC email,Clarke to Berger,
"Threat Warning: Usama bin Ladin," Mar. 7, 1998; Mary McCarthy interview (Dec. 8, 2003); CIA memos, summary
of weekly Berger/Tenet meeting, May 1, 1998.
"By the fall of 1997, the Bin Ladin unit had roughed out a plan for these
Afghan tribals to capture Bin Ladin and hand him over for trial either in the
United States or in an Arab country. In early 1998, the cabinet-level Principals
Committee apparently gave the concept its blessing.9" - pg 110
The following text footnoted [16] and sourced to -
16. Randy Moss interview (Feb. 6, 2004). In sending the draft MON to the CIA, the NSC's senior director
for intelligence programs, Mary McCarthy, cited only the August 1998 and July 1999 MONs as relevant precedents -
indicating that these new authorities were limited to using the capture and rendition approach.There was
no indication that this MON authorized kill authority, although lethal force could be used in self-defense.See NSC
memo, McCarthy to CIA, Dec. 1999.
"In mid-December,President Clinton signed a Memorandum
of Notification (MON) giving the CIA broader authority to use foreign
proxies to detain Bin Ladin lieutenants, without having to transfer them to U.S.
custody.The authority was to capture, not kill, though lethal force might be
used if necessary.16" - pg 176
©1999-2006 PipeLineNews.org, all rights reserved
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The Firing of Mary McCarthy
By Larry Johnson
The case against the CIA Intelligence Officer, Mary McCarthy, fired for her alleged role in leaking information about secret prisons to the Washington Post's Dana Priest smells a little fishy. Let me state at the outset that the officer in question, Mary McCarthy, is an old acquaintance. I hasten to add that I do not consider her a friend. She was my immediate boss in 1988-89 and was instrumental in my decision to leave the CIA and take a job at the State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism. Mary, in my experience, was a terrible manager. I left the CIA in 1989 despite having received two exceptional performance awards during my last eight months on the job because I could not stand working under her.
That said, I take no delight in the news that she was fired. In fact, there are some things about the case that puzzle me. For starters, Mary never worked on the Operations side of the house. In other words, she never worked a job where she would have had first hand operational knowledge about secret prisons. She worked the analytical side of the CIA and served with the National Intelligence Council. According to press reports, she subsequently worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from 2001 thru 2005. That is a type of academic/policy wonk position and, again, would not put her in a position to know anything first hand about secret prisons.
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.
I am struck by the irony that Mary McCarthy may have been fired for blowing the whistle and ensuring that the truth about an abuse was told to the American people. There is something potentially honorable in that action; particularly when you consider that George Bush authorized Scooter Libby to leak misleading information for the purpose of deceiving the American people about the grounds for going to war in Iraq. While I'm neither a fan nor friend of Mary's, she may have done a service for her country. She was a lousy manager in my experience, but she is not a traitor and has not betrayed the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. That dirty work was done by the minions of George Bush and Dick Cheney. It is important to keep that fact in the forefront as the judgment on Mary McCarthy's acts is rendered.
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.OSS CEO Praises Mary McCarthy, Calls for Censure of DNI & DCI
WASHINGTON, April 22 / PRNewswire / --
Robert David STEELE Vivas, a career intelligence officer who went on to found the Marine Corps Intelligence Command and then the international Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) movement, spoke today in praise of Mary McCarthy, and simultaneously called for the censure of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).
"I know Mary McCarthy personally, and I have a deep understanding of the pathologies extant within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the new layer of bureaucracy created by the DNI at a cost to the taxpayer of close to $1 billion a year.
"There is absolutely no question that Mary acted in the finest traditions of the Republic, helping reveal and reduce terrible violations of international law and human rights by the CIA. I have been through this once before. Director Negroponte and I are two of the unindicted participants in the high crimes and misdemeanors that characterized the Ollie North-Alan Fiers era of misadventures in direct violation of the law of the land, misadventures that included the mining of the Nicaraguan harbors.
"America has lost sight of the fundamentals. If the DNI and DCI were more astute and more willing to engage with those who actually know how to reform intelligence, we would be committing fewer crimes against humanity and catching more terrorists. We would also be educating the President, overcoming his largely deficient education, by presenting the real world in compelling terms demanding sensible strategy and sustained attention.
"Mary McCarthy should accept her firing with pride -- she served the Republic, and has been fired by individuals who will eventually be censured if not impeached. America owes her a vote of thanks. She certainly has my respect."
For information on the death of U.S. Intelligence, visit http://tinyurl.com/lj6um. OSS.Net is the foremost site in the world on OSINT, and is now focusing on ethical legal means of achieving Collective Intelligence, which empowers the public and holds government accountable.
We can do better. The continued failure of intelligence -- and of intelligence oversight in Congress -- must be an issue in the 2006 elections. We plan to make it so.
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Are these notions of "secret prisons" actually a distraction?
The secret torture prison plays like something out of a 007 movie
Spun as a psychological weapon - reports often cite these black sites as being in 'mystical & threatening "Eastern Europe"
thier purpose is to strike fear into those percieved as the enemy of US interests
it's just a thought: because evidence does exist of an expansionist US policy
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Spy Chief: CIA Detainees Will Be Held Indefinitely
Exclusive: John Negroponte says accused Al-Qaeda members will remain in secret prisons as long as 'war on terror continues'
By MICHAEL DUFFY AND TIMOTHY J. BURGER/WASHINGTON Wednesday, Apr. 12, 2006 - TIME magazine
John Negroponte has seen his share of tribal warfare. As the top U.S. official in Baghdad in 2004, Negroponte spent more than a year trying to transform long-standing and often violent resentments between Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds into a shared desire to form a new democratic government In Iraq.
That experience was just one reason Negroponte seemed the right man to take on a just-as-impossible task when he came home last summer: convincing three secretive, self-protecting and hidebound Washington tribes - the FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon - to put aside their differences and work together to avoid the kind of intelligence failures that have beset the U.S. in the last decade. The job came with a new title - Director of National Intelligence - and impressive but hardly unlimited new powers.
Negroponte's first year has been challenging, to say the least. TIME spent several weeks talking to current and former U.S. officials from the intelligence agencies, on Capitol Hill and in the DNI's office itself about the progress made since Negroponte was confirmed as the nation's intelligence czar a year ago. Progress has been made, most experts agree, but it is difficult to measure. Each of the agencies Negroponte is trying to get in harness has at times dragged - or is still dragging - its feet. And few of the reform's original authors are satisfied with the pace of the change. "We have had a bit of a slow start at the DNI," said Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Agency. "There have been a number of disappointments."
In an exclusive interview, Negroponte, a career diplomat who has been a senior White House official and a U.N. ambassador, told TIME that the intelligence is "improving and we intend to improve it some more. We're off to a good start. But I don't want to make exaggerated claims here because this is a job that's going to take some time."
Nor did Negroponte exaggerate the claims about the quality of U.S. intelligence on Iran, which this week announced that it is accelerating its production of enriched uranium, which Western countries fear is a step on the road to building nuclear weapons. Negroponte told TIME the U.S. had good but not perfect intelligence on the state of Iranian nuclear facilities. "Certainly, we know where the key installations are. Are there others that we're not aware of at all? You don't know what you don't know."
Negroponte also told TIME that three dozen or so of the worst al-Qaeda terrorists held in secret CIA prisons are likely to remain in captivity as long as the "war on terror continues." He added, "These people are being held. And they're bad actors. And as long as this situation continues, this war on terror continues, I'm not sure I can tell you what the ultimate disposition of those detainees will be." Negroponte's comments appear to be the first open acknowledgement of the secret U.S. detention system and the fact that captives such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammad - involved in Sept. 11 or other major attacks on U.S. interests around the world - may be held indefinitely.
Before Congress created the super spook's job in late 2004, America's intelligence system was verging on dysfunction. Too many agencies were doing too many unrelated missions. Intelligence officers were hostile to the concept of information sharing; each agency had its own procedures for tradecraft, hiring, promotion and discipline. There was far too much overlap in some areas and huge gaps in others. Human intelligence - agents stealing secrets - had fallen into decline while often useful public information was considered unreliable. Most worrisome of all, and perhaps as a consequence, the intelligence itself was often poor; first on the warning signs before 9/11 and then on their assessment in 2002 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Both were massive intelligence failures for which no senior officials were fired, or even punished.
The question now is: What has changed? Negroponte started at the top: U.S. officials point first to a more careful and conditioned and "painstaking" President's Daily Brief, or PDB. "Rather than saying, 'Country X has system Y,' we say, 'A source over whom we have some control who has secondhand knowledge, secondhand access to this information, reports that...' There is a much higher tolerance for ambiguity," explained Deputy Director Michael Hayden. Added Kenneth Brill, director of the DNI's new National Counterproliferation Center: "If there is a disagreement, we flag it."
DNI officials also say a new "open source" center near Reston, Virginia, where analysts sift through information that comes from public sources like websites and chat rooms, is adding value, too. Open source data was available to the spooks before the reform was enacted but was not "terribly valued in the product for the ultimate consumers," Mary Margaret Graham, deputy director of national intelligence for collection, told TIME. U.S. officials say they are gathering more from open sources on counter-proliferation and terror in particular. For example, open source analysts recently detected what Hayden called a "shift in the themes that have been appearing on Jihadist websites." He described the catch as "pretty useful strategic intelligence," though he declined to describe the shift further.
Negroponte says he is trying to boost the number of Chinese-, Arabic- and Farsi-speaking officers and get them into the field; Graham says they are pouring money into computational linguistics, or machine translation, so that the relatively few translators the U.S. has don't waste time translating irrelevant documents. Negroponte has hired an ombudsman to hear complaints from officers when their views are ignored or underemphasized, and officers are now encouraged to start chat rooms to exchange ideas and tips. Another change: when mistakes are made, a review is launched immediately. For example, when the U.S. failed to predict the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories earlier this year, an after-action team fingered poor sampling assumptions in the opinion polls analysts had relied on.
But the real test of the new super spook is whether he can bring the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon to heel. These three agencies have distrusted one another for decades, hoarding information and dismissing one another's accomplishments. Getting them to work together - much less relinquish control of their both human and technical assets - could take years. Even Hayden admits this is an uphill climb: "Let me tell you what we've learned. There is no way to get to self-aware, self-synchronizing [intelligence] system without a kickass center because no one plays nice with each other voluntarily."
It is clear that the DNI's office has created something of a culture shock at CIA, an agency accustomed to virtual autonomy and an almost evangelical faith in its own leaders. Negroponte's arrival has made the storied office of CIA Director less important in Washington and around the world; and the DNI has fought and won a series of personnel fights with the agency as well. Negroponte insists he is not yet running operations from his downtown office and says he never will be. His office recently asked for a list of all the CIA's stations and bases worldwide, as well as the rotation schedule for station chiefs. But he told TIME he would not be choosing them. "That's below my level of interest," he said.
If Congress gave Negroponte considerable power over the CIA, a purely intelligence agency, it gave him much more limited clout over the Pentagon. Nonetheless, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been disappointed by Negroponte's unwillingness to "reach in" to Pentagon matters and direct policy - in part because Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who opposed the reforms in the first place, doesn't like outside meddling. One example: Negroponte, lawmakers told TIME, too quickly deferred to the Pentagon on the rewriting of the Army interrogation manual over the winter. Both the Army and the CIA have an interest in how that manual is reworded in the wake of abuses at Guantanamo Bay and a Congressional directive to revise the manual. But Negroponte told TIME the revision is in the Pentagon's hands. "That's extremely disappointing," said Sen. Christopher Bond, a member of the intelligence committee, "but it's par for the course." Bond and other lawmakers said Negroponte still lacks the legal authority of a real intelligence czar. Negroponte, said Bond, is a "good man" who "doesn't have a good hand to play."
At the Pentagon, there is an unmistakable feeling of satisfaction that the new director of national intelligence isn't as powerful as some in Congress had hoped. Stephen Cambone, the Pentagon intelligence chief, said it was unrealistic to expect the DNI to get everything right immediately. "I think it does Ambassador Negroponte a grave disservice if he is expected to be clairvoyant in an undertaking which is by any stretch of the imagination one of the most difficult" ever undertaken in government.
There seems to be lingering tension with the FBI as well. Negroponte told TIME that the FBI is "moving toward the idea of having officers writing up reports for their intelligence value, not only to make cases." But he added that the G-men have not been quick to make the leap from law enforcement to intelligence analysts. "They're probably not doing it as much as they could." Asked about FBI complaints that the DNI has underemphasized the bureau in budgetary decisions, Negroponte said, "The FBI has experienced some fairly consistent increases in budget which I think compare very favorably." The joke going around the FBI, meanwhile, is that Negroponte is going to give the bureau one new agent - "but it's going to be a good one."
Negroponte's minders on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, would prefer that he wield a stronger hand in budgetary matters, particularly in shifting funds in Pentagon and CIA operations to more useful purposes. The DNI and his aides say this will emerge over the next year, but point to Negroponte's decision to correct serious management and technical problems in a highly classified Pentagon satellite imagery system. Negroponte's critics dismiss this feat, however, saying Congress had all but ordered it anyway and add that he is still too tentative. "Negroponte has not been a change agent," said Harman. "The goal we had is that he would use the budget to force change. I don't see him doing that."
And there are complaints from members of both parties on both House and Senate intelligence committees that the DNI's office has slowed the flow of intelligence briefings to Capitol Hill. Republican Bond says it is because the reports have to "go through another bureaucracy on the way to us." For his part Negroponte says he has made more than 100 reports on intelligence matters to Capitol Hill in his first year.
Almost all observers have noted an obvious division of labor between Negroponte and Hayden, the four-star Air Force general. Negroponte, the smooth Yale-trained diplomat who once played grammar-school football against the President's uncle, appears to leave the day-to-day management of the office to Hayden, a trim, energetic Pittsburgh native known for his football analogies.
If Negroponte's start has been too slow for his critics, it's little wonder after a visit to his headquarters. The DNI suite looks nothing like the sleek and spacious workspaces of TV's "24" - the Hollywood version of U.S. terror-hunting headquarters. Instead, it's a warren of pathetic-looking workspaces in a 40-year-old building around the corner from the White House. The rooms are dingy, stuffy and overcrowded. People are working with heavily classified material almost on top of each other; there's hardly space for a visitor to sit and not much more to stand. Next week, the DNI will move all operations across the Anacostia River to an Air Force base - a long way from the White House.
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are the destinations of the rendition program... already located in familiar places? IE Imperial outposts gained from the 'war on terror' which sprang into life due to the attacks on 911
militarty bases:
Iraq [Abu Ghriab] ...Afghanistan [Bagram]...Diego Garcia...Guam...Guantanamo Bay...
CIA outposts: Libya...Egypt, Uzbekistan, Morrocco & SYRIA
Syria is the most interesting country named on various reported lists, because it is labelled a member of the 'axis of evil'
so logically are other axis [or economic competitor] countries involved in secret interrogation and incarceration of suspects? Countries such as North Korea, Iran...China?
make no mistake: This situation is now deliberately being labelled a world war...
The President of the USA now refers to himself as 'The Commander in Chief'......new laws and 'shake-ups in the 'intelligence community' are all justified in this 'global war on terror' or 'Long war' - this means that all intelligence is under a military dictat by the DIA chief John Negronponte...and his chain of command goes to the President
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The CIA “Wehrmacht”
Posted on Wednesday, April 19, 2006.
By Ken Silverstein.
With the war in Iraq an utter debacle and public opinion turned against the White House, anger within the armed forces towards
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Administration is growing, and the Pentagon is fighting back (see “Pentagon Memo Aims to Counter Rumsfeld Critics” in the April 16 New York Times). But what's been little noted thus far is what looks to be a similar revolt brewing at the CIA. An ex-senior agency officer
who keeps in contact with his former peers told me that there is a “a big swing” in anti-Bush sentiment at Langley. “I've
been stunned by what I'm hearing,” he said. “There are people who fear that indictments and subpoenas could be coming down,
and they don't want to get caught up in it.”
This former senior officer said there “seems to be a quiet conspiracy by rational people” at the agency to avoid involvement
in some of the particularly nasty tactics being employed by the administration, especially “renditions”—the practice whereby
the CIA sends terrorist suspects abroad to be questioned in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, and other nations where the regimes
are not squeamish about torturing detainees. My source, hardly a softie on the topic of terrorism, said of the split at the
CIA: “There's an SS group within the agency that's willing to do anything and there's a Wehrmacht group that is saying, 'I'm
not gonna touch this stuff'.”
Scott Horton, a human rights activist who has become a principal spokesman for the New York City Bar Association in evaluating the Bush Administration's tactics, said that he's also hearing stories of growing dissent at the CIA. “When the shit hits the fan,” he explained, “the administration scapegoats lower-level people. It doesn't do a lot in terms
of inspiring confidence.”
The expanding revolt against Rumsfeld is nothing new. I received a note way back on June 22, 2004 from a source at the Naval
War College that put the situation in sharp perspective:
From my vantage point...cracks
definitely have developed in the Administration's relationship with the Armed
Forces. Most recently, several active duty senior commanders who spoke on the
record at the “Current Strategy Forum” that ended here last week were critical
to a point that walked a fine constitutional line of disloyalty to the
political leadership. It was clear that many of the officers in the audience
agreed with them and admired them for telling it like it is...[W]hat I think is
going on here is serious concern among officers to protect the integrity of the
institution. After unquestionably following policy, as we would expect, the
increasing strains on the military plus the devolution in Iraq seem to have
retrieved a collective wisdom from the shadow of Vietnam.
Other signs of serious military anger toward the administration were
apparent by the spring of 2004 when a group of very senior officers from the Judge
Advocate General's Corps, the legal arm of the U.S. armed forces, were so upset
about the administration's loosening of rules against torture that they
complained in private to Horton, who was then a committee chair at the New York
City Bar Association. Horton and the Bar subsequently prepared a groundbreaking
report on U.S. interrogation tactics, “Human Rights
Standards Applicable to the United States' Interrogation of Detainees,”
which challenged the Pentagon's actions. Horton and the Bar also were involved
in publishing the “torture memoranda” and used them to disprove
Rumsfeld's claims that the abuses at Abu Ghraib resulted from a few low-ranking
“bad apples” (to use the administration's phrase).
Today's “Wehrmacht” officers at the CIA are right to be
worried about subpoenas: a legal analysis prepared by a senior FBI attorney in
2002 deemed that renditions to countries that torture detainees were illegal.
The attorney concluded that such actions were designed to circumvent American
laws against torture and that anyone even discussing such a plan could be found
criminally liable. If the political winds shift, some “bad apples” in the CIA
could find themselves indicted for torture.
* * *
[Harper's Magazine Blog]
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Death-squads...detainees in black sites in Iraq...torture...rape...
where better to hide renditioned subjects than in a war zone?
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29,565 Iraqis Illegally Detained, 14,222 of them by US Forces, Says UN Official Gianni Magazzeni
Thousands Illegally Detained in Iraq
Arab News, Agencies - GENEVA/BAGHDAD, 22 April 2006 -
Iraqi authorities are illegally detaining thousands of people, the United Nations’ senior human rights official for the country said yesterday, and also urged the US-led coalition to charge or release its prisoners. Gianni Magazzeni, who is based in Baghdad, told reporters a total of 29,565 people were being detained in Iraq, some 14,222 of them by coalition forces.
Of the 15,000 people held by the local Iraqi authorities, only 8,300 were being held by the Justice Ministry, which is the only body that has the right to detain suspects for more than 72 hours, Magazzeni said. He said another 6,000 held by the Interior Ministry and some 460 held by the Defense Ministry were therefore "not even being detained in accordance with Iraqi law."
Magazzeni added that the United Nations believed the number of suspects being detained by coalition forces was far too high. "We think that the 15,000 being held for ‘urgent security reasons’ are far too many and we are working very closely (with the coalition) to reduce that number considerably," the UN envoy said. He said the United Nations still does not have access to prisoners being held in unidentified coalition prisons, and called for them to be released or handed over to Iraqi authorities to be charged.
"Torture and summary executions happen every day," he said. Magazenni said so-called death squads had become more active since the bombing of the revered Shiite shrine at Samarra, and there were indications that the police and other authorities were involved.
At least seven people were killed in violence across Iraq yesterday, including five police commandos who were shot dead by gunmen near the northern city of Tikrit, police said. The five police commandos, dressed in civilian clothes, were ambushed and shot dead by gunmen who opened fire on their car, police said. The driver of the car was wounded.
A baker in Baghdad and a policeman in Baquba were also shot and killed in separate incidents, defense and interior ministry officials said. Nebil Ashur, a Shiite baker, was gunned down in the majority Sunni neighborhood of Al-Dura in southern Baghdad. In Baquba, some 60 kilometers northeast of the capital, the policeman was shot dead as he was on his way home.
Twenty suspected militants were also arrested in Baquba, where violence has flared in recent weeks, on suspicion of planting bombs directed at police and US troops. In another incident, 11 policemen were wounded in two roadside bomb blasts. Three were hurt in a first one in the Al-Qadisiya district of western Baghdad, and the other eight in an explosion as they arrived to investigate. Also in Baghdad, two corpses with their hands tied and bearing signs of torture were discovered in separate areas of the city.
In another development, Jordan said yesterday it has postponed a conference of Muslim religious leaders to try to heal sectarian divisions among Iraq’s main Sunni and Shiite sects that has pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani had phoned King Abdallah on Thursday asking for the delay in the Arab League-sponsored conference planned for today in the presence of some of the Muslim world’s most prominent clerics and many of Iraq’s religious and tribal leaders.
"The Iraqi request to delay the Iraqi-Islamic Reconciliation Summit at the last minute was due to the preoccupation of a number of leading Iraqi figures with the consultations over the next government and their inability to attend the conference," Abdul Salam Al-Abbadi, the conference chairman, said
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Colleagues Say C.I.A. Analyst Played by the Rules
By DAVID S. CLOUD WASHINGTON, April 22 - NY Times
In 1998, when President Bill Clinton ordered military strikes against a suspected chemical weapons factory in Sudan, Mary O. McCarthy, a senior intelligence officer assigned to the White House, warned the president that the plan relied on inconclusive intelligence, two former government officials say.
Ms. McCarthy's reservations did not stop the attack on the factory, which was carried out in retaliation for Al Qaeda's bombing of two American embassies in East Africa. But they illustrated her willingness to challenge intelligence data and methods endorsed by her bosses at the Central Intelligence Agency.
On Thursday, the C.I.A. fired Ms. McCarthy, 61, accusing her of leaking information to reporters about overseas prisons operated by the agency in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks. But despite Ms. McCarthy's independent streak, some colleagues who worked with her at the White House and other offices during her intelligence career say they cannot imagine her as a leaker of classified information.
As a senior National Security Council aide for intelligence from 1996 to 2001, she was responsible for guarding some of the nation's most important secrets.
"We're talking about a person with great integrity who played by the book and, as far as I know, never deviated from the rules," said Steven Simon, a security council aide in the Clinton administration who worked closely with Ms. McCarthy.
Others said it was possible that Ms. McCarthy - who made a contribution to Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 - had grown increasingly disenchanted with the methods adopted by the Bush administration for handling Qaeda prisoners.
Ms. McCarthy, who began attending law school at night several years ago and was preparing to retire from the C.I.A., may have felt she had no alternative but to go to the press.
If in fact Ms. McCarthy was the leaker, Richard J. Kerr, a former C.I.A. deputy director, said, "I have no idea what her motive was, but there is a lot of dissension within the agency, and it seems to be a rather unhappy place." Mr. Kerr called Ms. McCarthy "quite a good, substantive person on the issues I dealt with her on."
Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who worked for Ms. McCarthy in the agency's Latin America section, said, "It looks to me like Mary is being used as a sacrificial lamb."
Ms. McCarthy did not respond Saturday to e-mail and telephone messages seeking comment.
During her time at the White House, she was known as a low-key professional who paid special attention to preventing leaks of classified information and covert operations, several current and former government officials said. When she disagreed with decisions on intelligence operations, they said, she registered her complaints through internal government channels.
Some former intelligence officials who worked with Ms. McCarthy saw her as a persistent obstacle to aggressive antiterrorism efforts.
"She was always of the view that she would rather not get her hands dirty with covert action," said Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. official, who said he had been in meetings with Ms. McCarthy where she voiced doubts about reports that the factory had ties to Al Qaeda and was secretly producing substances for chemical weapons.
In the case of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, her concerns may have been well-founded. Sudanese officials and the plant's owner denied any connection to Al Qaeda.
In the aftermath of the attack, the internal White House debate over whether the intelligence reports about the plant were accurate spilled into the press. Eventually, Clinton administration officials conceded that the hardest evidence used to justify striking the plant was a single soil sample that seemed to indicate the presence of a chemical used in making VX gas.
Ms. McCarthy was concerned enough about the episode that she wrote a formal letter of dissent to President Clinton, two former officials said.
Over the last decade, Ms. McCarthy gradually came to have one foot in the secret world of intelligence and another in the public world of policy. She went from lower-level analyst working in obscurity at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., to someone at home "downtown," as Washington is called by agency veterans, where policy is more openly fought over and leaks are far more common. Though she was a C.I.A. employee for more than 20 years, associates said, her early professional experience was not in the world of spying and covert operations.
After a previous career that one former colleague said included time as a flight attendant, she earned a doctorate in history from the University of Minnesota. She worked for a Swiss company "conducting risk assessments for international businesses and banks," Ms. McCarthy wrote in a brief biography she provided to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also called the 9/11 Commission. She testified before the commission in 2003. The biography notes that she once wrote "a book on the social history of Ghana."
Even after joining the C.I.A. in 1984, Ms. McCarthy, who was hired as an intelligence analyst for Africa, was far from a covert operative. In the late 1980's, she was promoted to management, taking over as chief of the Central America and Caribbean section, though she had no previous experience in the region, said a former officer who worked with her.
By 1991, she was working as deputy to one of the agency's most senior analysts, Charles E. Allen, whose job as "national intelligence officer for warning" was to anticipate major national security threats. Ms. McCarthy took over the job from Mr. Allen in 1994 and moved to the Clinton White House two years later.
Rand Beers, who at the time was Mr. Clinton's senior intelligence aide on the National Security Council, said he had hired Ms. McCarthy to be his deputy. "Anybody who works for Charlie Allen and then replaces him has got to be good," said Mr. Beers, who went on to serve as an adviser to Mr. Kerry's campaign in 2004. Ms. McCarthy took over from Mr. Beers as the senior director for intelligence programs in 1998.
Though she was not among the C.I.A. officials who briefed Mr. Clinton every morning on the latest intelligence, she "worked on some of the most sensitive programs," a former White House aide said, and was responsible for notifying Congress when covert action was being undertaken. The aide and the other unnamed officials were granted anonymity because they did not want to be identified as discussing her official duties because she may be under criminal investigation.
When President Bush took office in 2001, Ms. McCarthy's career seemed to stall. A former Bush administration official who worked with her said that although Ms. McCarthy was a career C.I.A. employee, as a holdover from the Clinton administration she was regarded with suspicion and was gradually eased out of her job as senior director for intelligence programs. She left several months into Mr. Bush's first term.
But she did not return immediately to a new assignment at C.I.A. headquarters. She took an extended sabbatical at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research organization. In late 2003, she testified publicly before the 9/11 Commission about ways to reorganize the intelligence agencies to prevent another major terrorism attack.
She served on a Markle Foundation group, the Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, working with academics as well as current and former government officials on recommendations for sharing classified information more widely within the government, according to a report issued by the group. The report identifies Ms. McCarthy as a "nongovernment" expert.
H. Andrew Schwartz, a spokesman for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Ms. McCarthy's relationship with the organization lasted from 2001 to 2003.
Several associates of Ms. McCarthy said she returned to the C.I.A. in 2004, taking a job in the inspector general's office. That year, public records show, she contributed $2,000 to Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign, identifying herself as a "government analyst."
Married with one child, she also began attending law school at night, two former co-workers said, and talked about switching to a career in public interest law.
After an article last November in The Washington Post reported that the C.I.A. was sending terror suspects to clandestine detention centers in several countries, including some in Eastern Europe, Porter J. Goss, the agency's director, ordered polygraphs for intelligence officers who knew about certain "compartmented" programs, including the secret detention centers for terrorism suspects.
Polygraphs are routinely given to agency employees at least every five years, but special ones can be ordered when a security breach is suspected.
Government officials said that after Ms. McCarthy's polygraph examination showed the possibility of deception, the examiner confronted her and she disclosed having had conversations with reporters.
But some former C.I.A. employees who know Ms. McCarthy remain unconvinced, arguing that the pressure from Mr. Goss and others in the Bush administration to plug leaks may have led the agency to focus on an employee on the verge of retirement, whose work at the White House during the Clinton administration had long raised suspicions within the current administration.
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Associates Say CIA Officer Not Leak Source
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press - 25 April 2006 - WASHINGTON -
The CIA officer fired for unauthorized contacts with the media denies being a source for The Washington Post's award-winning story on secret CIA detention centers.
"She did not leak any classified information, and she did not have access to the information apparently attributed to her by some government officials," Washington lawyer Ty Cobb, who is representing veteran CIA analyst Mary McCarthy, said Monday.
A law enforcement source, speaking last week on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, linked her to the Post's story about the CIA's covert sites in Eastern Europe and elsewhere used to hold terror suspects. The story caused an international clamor last fall.
The CIA said McCarthy was fired on Thursday for knowingly disclosing classified information, but gave no details. Cobb said she hopes to find a way to clear up the allegations and move on.
"Her hope is to be able to pursue her planned retirement from two decades of distinguished public service to do community service law," Cobb said. She wants to focus on adoptions.
Earlier Monday, a McCarthy friend and former professional associate also asserted she was not the Post's source. "She was not the source for that story," said Rand Beers, who has spoken with her.
Beers headed intelligence programs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration at a time McCarthy also worked in the White House. He said McCarthy authorized him to make the brief statement, but declined to discuss the matter further.
Senior Bush administration officials have vowed to make clamping down on leaks of classified information a top priority - to the dismay of whistleblower advocates who find merit when the disclosures unveil wrongdoing.
Stephen Kohn, chairman of the National Whistleblower Center, said he believe McCarthy could have a strong case to contest her firing. "If she was blowing the whistle on something that's illegal, it's our position you cannot classify the illegal conduct of government. You can't say that's a secret," Kohn said.
In a message distributed to the agency work force Thursday afternoon, CIA Director Porter Goss expressed his deep concern over the "critical damage being suffered" from media leaks and informed his staff of the firing of an unidentified official. "A CIA officer has acknowledged having unauthorized discussions with the media, in which the officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information. I terminated that officer's employment with the CIA," Goss said.
In January, Goss directed the CIA's security office to conduct polygraph examinations on officers involved in certain sensitive intelligence programs. He said criminal reports were also filed with the Justice Department on "the most egregious media leaks that contained classified intelligence and national security information."
The Post's Dana Priest won the Pulitzer Prize for a package of stories that included a report about a covert prison system created by the CIA. Citing multiple sources, the story said there were facilities in eight countries, including a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe. Senior government officials have said the report did significant damage to national security.
McCarthy, 61, was days away from retiring from the government. Had she entered private life, the CIA's options against her would have been more limited. For instance, the agency could put a letter of reprimand in her file, which could restrict her ability to do contract work, or take the more extreme step of asking the Justice Department to prosecute.
The CIA had not formally asked the Justice Department to look into criminal charges against McCarthy, a law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive.
Speaking in Charlotte, N.C., on Monday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau is conducting investigations similar to the one that resulted in McCarthy's firing. "Leaking of classified materials is a concern for those agencies that have classified materials," he said.
Government officials have raised concerns that the case against McCarthy could be hampered by the prominence of polygraph examinations, which typically cannot be used in criminal proceedings. Another question that has arisen is whether McCarthy essentially was forced to make incriminating statements to CIA investigators, and whether these also might not be admissible if she were prosecuted, the law enforcement official said. The government still could seek to charge McCarthy with a crime, but might well have to assemble evidence independent of the polygraph and subsequent interview that led to her firing, the official added.
One well-known defense attorney, Plato Cacheris, said he doubts whether those factors would hinder a prosecution. "She could raise those issues, but whether they'd prevail is another question," Cacheris said.
After starting her government career at the CIA, McCarthy served as an intelligence adviser to the White House's National Security Council from 1996 to 2001. She left shortly after President Bush took office. She and her husband have made political contributions to Democratic candidates, including Sen. John Kerry during the last presidential campaign.
McCarthy then became a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank, and later returned to the CIA. In her final position there, she was assigned to its Office of Inspector General, looking into allegations the CIA was involved in torture at Iraqi prisons. Her statement, through Beers, was first reported by Newsweek magazine on its Web site.
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CIA warns ex-agents over talking to media
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington - Published: April 26 2006 FT COM
The Central Intelligence Agency has warned former employees not to have unapproved contacts with reporters, as part of a mounting campaign by the administration to crack down on officials who leak information on national security issues.
A former official said the CIA recently warned several retired employees who have consulting contracts with the agency that they could lose their pensions by talking to reporters without permission. He added that while the threats might be legally "hollow," they were having a chilling effect on former employees.
The CIA called the allegations "rubbish". Jennifer Millerwise Dyke, spokeswoman for CIA director Porter Goss, said former employees with consulting deals could lose their contracts for violating the CIA secrecy agreement by having unauthorised conversations with reporters. But she stressed that under current law, "termination of a contract does not affect pensions".
The clampdown represents the latest move in what observers describe as the most aggressive government campaign against leaks in years. The Justice Department is investigating the disclosure to the media of secret overseas CIA prisons and a highly classified National Security Agency domestic spying programme authorised by President George W. Bush. Last week, the CIA fired Mary McCarthy, an intelligence officer, for allegedly leaking classified information and having undisclosed contacts with reporters.
Mr Goss has increased the number of "single issue" polygraphs - lie detector tests aimed at ferreting out leaking employees. A second former official said Mr Goss was trying to "scare everybody" by using polygraphs aggressively.
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former CIA general counsel, said Mr Goss was "obviously taking a much more forward-leaning stance than any of us have seen for years". But another former intelligence official said the agency was simply returning to a "more conservative regimen" to remind employees that they work for a secret organisation.
The House intelligence committee has asked John Negroponte, the director for national intelligence who oversees the 16 intelligence agencies, to study whether retirees could lose their pensions for disclosing classified information even when not prosecuted.
The attempt to silence former employees extends beyond those who still have consulting contracts. Larry Johnson, a former CIA official who blogs at www.TPMCafe.com, said he recently received a "threatening" letter reminding him about his confidentiality agreements. Mr Johnson - who has criticised the White House for not aggressively investigating the outing of Valerie Plame, a former covert operative, said it was the first such letter he had received despite regularly commenting in the media on intelligence matters since his retirement in 1989. He said other former employees also received letters. He said the CIA was also "very forceful" in intimidating a retired official who maintains ties to the agency after he signed a letter criticising the administration over the Plame leak.
Mr Gimigliano said CIA staff officers and contractors must sign a secrecy agreement which compelled them to seek prepublication permission for anything they wrote involving the CIA, intelligence matters, and classified material. Mr Gimigliano added: "When a former officer or contractor fails to honour the legally binding agreement ... our Publications Review Board may send the individual a written reminder. That reminder includes the statement that ‘permission to publish will not be denied solely because information may be embarrassing to or critical of the agency’ ... Obviously, such letters contain no threats."
But Mr Johnson and other critics say the campaign is also intended to crack down on politically embarrassing comments from former officials. "They are trying to intimidate the press and trying to intimidate employees," said Mr Johnson. "Anybody who has been critical of the Bush administration is getting letters."
Another former CIA employee who maintains links to the agency said it did not need to be blatant about threats because contractors and retirees who had relationships with agency officials understood that talking to reporters could have repercussions for future work.
"People at the agency are bright enough to see that is going on, they don’t need to be reminded," the former official said.
Stanley Sporkin, former CIA general counsel during the Reagan administration and a retired judge, said it was "ridiculous" that the agency was trying to limit contacts with the media.
He said the only restriction should be that they do not reveal classified information. Something has got to be done to address this. These days it is almost like a witch hunt," said Mr Sporkin.
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