Mary McCarthy 'categorically denies' being the source

[cal04]

A former colleague says the fired Mary McCarthy ‘categorically denies’ being the source of the leak on agency renditions.
Updated: 5:43 p.m.

A former CIA officer who was sacked last week after allegedly confessing to leaking secrets has denied she was the source of a controversial Washington Post story about alleged CIA secret detention operations in Eastern Europe, a friend of the operative told NEWSWEEK.

The fired official, Mary O. McCarthy, “categorically denies being the source of the leak,” one of McCarthy’s friends and former colleagues, Rand Beers, said Monday after speaking to McCarthy. Beers said he could not elaborate on this denial and McCarthy herself did not respond to a request for comment left by NEWSWEEK on her home answering machine. A national security advisor to Democratic Party candidate John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign, Beers worked as the head of intelligence programs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff and later served as a top deputy on counter-terrorism for President Bush in 2002 and 2003. McCarthy, a career CIA analyst, initially worked as a deputy to Beers on the NSC and later took over Beer’s role as the Clinton NSC’s top intelligence expert.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano re-affirmed on Monday that an agency official had been fired after acknowledging “unauthorized contacts with the media and discussion of classified information” with journalists. Gimigliano and other administration spokespersons said they were prohibited by law from disclosing the identity of the person who was fired. But government officials familiar with the matter confirmed to NEWSWEEK that McCarthy, a 20-year veteran of the CIA’s intelligence—or analytical— branch, was the individual in question.

The officials, who asked for anonymity because they were discussing sensitive information, said that McCarthy had been fired after allegedly confessing during the course of a leak investigation based heavily on polygraph examinations that she had engaged in unauthorized contacts with more than one journalist regarding more than one news story. The only journalist so far identified by government sources as one of the unauthorized persons with whom McCarthy admitted contact is Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, who last week won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing details of a secret airline and prison network that the CIA operates to detain and interrogate high-level Al Qaeda suspects.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12466719/site/newsweek/

[Sensitivity]

1. Trust BushCo to shoot the wrong person. Prob leaked about some other

evil activity.

[saltpoint]

2. Never heard of this woman until last week, but I believe her. n/t

[Old and In the Way]

3. Kind of ironic

"The officials, who asked for anonymity because they were discussing sensitive information, "

I think Ms. McCarthy's real sin was donating to Kerry. I'll bet Karl, thanks to that big 'ol spy network called the NSA, has dossiers on every person in government who donated to Kerry in 2004.

[creeksneakers2]

4. From the sounds of the RW propaganda

on Rash Limbaugh today the Bush administration is gearing up to run purges of career people at the State Department, the CIA, and the Justice Department. Rash says they are all riddled with "subversives". There has already been a purge at the CIA.

It sounds from the article that they didn't have much on Mary McCarthy and trumped up a case.

"A counter-terrorism official acknowledged to NEWSWEEK today that in firing McCarthy, the CIA was not necessarily accusing her of being the principal, original, or sole leaker of any particular story. Intelligence officials privately acknowledge that key news stories about secret agency prison and “rendition” operations have been based, at least in part, upon information available from unclassified sources."