THE GROUP
“It isn’t just the CIA that has problems with former politicals
getting knee-deep into this Administration’s policy and leaking
materials,” says a current Bush Administration aide. “We’re talking
about a situation that we haven’t been able to deal with in a
manner in which we’d want. But this Mary McCarthy
case may help us.”
The aide is referring to the firing last week of a CIA employee
working in the agency’s Office of Inspector General. One of
McCarthy’s jobs was investigating allegations of torture by CIA
employees or contractors at Iraqi prisons. The CIA fired McCarthy
on evidence that she was one of the sources for Washington
Post reporter Dana Priest’s report on
so-called “Black Site” prisons in Europe and elsewhere that housed
captured al Qaeda, Taliban, and some senior Iraqi military and
intelligence individuals.
Unresolved is whether McCarthy also leaked material to the
left-wing organization, Human Rights Watch, which clearly was also
a key source to Priest. (Note this quote in Priest’s
now-Pulitzer Prize winning story: “‘I remember asking: What are we
going to do with these people?’ said a senior CIA officer. ‘I kept
saying, where’s the help? We’ve got to bring in some help. We can’t
be jailers — our job is to find Osama.’” Was this McCarthy?)
McCarthy’s background is just becoming increasingly fleshed out,
including her ties to former National Security Advisor
Sandy “Sox” Berger and the Clinton White House.
McCarthy was appointed Special Assistant to the President and
Senior Director for Intelligence Programs by Berger in 1998. She
replaced Rand Beers.
According to former Kerry campaign staffers, Beers, who served
as a senior adviser to Kerry’s campaign, spoke of having continued
access to CIA and national security data from former colleagues
still in government.
“He said he still had friends willing to help the Kerry campaign
from inside,” says a former staffer. “We always assumed that guys
like Beers and Berger were in touch with these people. I’m not
talking about having secure material leaked to us, but our national
security folks always seemed to be in the know.” The former staffer
said he never recalled mention of any names.
But all of this is now past tense, and the White House, as well
as senior staff at the Departments of Justice, State, and Defense,
are attempting to identify possible leakers among their own career
staffs with access to information that might be helpful to
Democrats or the press.
Of greatest concern is the Department of Justice, the nexus of
many terrorism and national security cases that would involve the
White House, Defense and State Departments, as well as briefings on
Capitol Hill to congressional leadership.
“We know we have people leaking materials. It’s been an ongoing
problem, but until someone has taken the first step, and the
McCarthy case would appear to be the first step, it’s hard to move
against career staff,” says a current Defense Department staffer.
“We have an IG looking at all kinds of things right now. Perhaps
we’ll get some movement.”
GETTING SERIOUS
We probably haven’t heard the last of Rep. Katherine
Harris’s $2,000-plus dinner with former defense contractor
Mitchell Wade. In fact, now that Rep. Alan
Mollohan (D-WV) has resigned from the House Ethics
Committee, there is talk that Harris’s relationship with Wade may
become a full blown ethics investigation. And the request may come
from Republicans.
“We have to get the ethics investigation up and running,” says a
senior House leadership aide. “We have cases like Harris, Mollohan,
as well as some House Democratic leadership issues to look into. We
have to let the American people know that we take these kinds of
charges and situations seriously. The Senate should do the same.
They could easily look at Harry Reid and his
relationship to Jack Abramoff, as well as the
activities of several Senate Republicans, and send a clear message
to the American people.”
