Patterico's Pontifications

4/23/2006

LAT Drops the Ball on the Mary McCarthy Leak Story

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 1:18 pm



The L.A. Times story yesterday on Mary McCarthy, the CIA officer fired for leaking classified information to the press, neglects to mention several important facts — facts that the blogosphere is doing an excellent job of covering, but that Big Media seems to have a heckuva difficult time reporting.

Here is the L.A. Times‘s lede:

The CIA has fired a senior officer for leaking classified information to news organizations, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning stories in the Washington Post that said the agency maintained a secret network of prison facilities overseas for high-ranking terror suspects.

As far as the average reader knows from reading this article, a nonpartisan CIA whistleblower was fired for disclosing important and substantiated information to a nonpartisan reporter, who received the Pulitzer prize as a result. The only true fact there is the awarding of the Pulitzer. Just about everything else a reader would naturally conclude from the article is 100% wrong.

Why are L.A. Times readers being misled? Because the newspaper isn’t reporting what the blogosphere is reporting.

And what is that? Power Line has a nice summary (h/t Sparkle):

IT’S HARD TO KEEP UP…with the revelations coming out about Dana Priest, the Washington Post reporter who published the “secret prisons” story, and Mary McCarthy, the Democratic Party activist and now-fired CIA bureaucrat who leaked the story to Priest.

Sweetness & Light points out that Dana Priest is married to William Goodfellow, the Executive Director of the the Center for International Policy (CIP). At the top of its web site is CIP’s mission statement: “Promoting a foreign policy based on cooperation, demilitarization and human rights.” It appears that CIP’s idea of “demilitarization and human rights” is best exemplified by Cuba.

Sweetness & Light goes on to hightlight connections among CIP, which operates The Iraq Policy Information Program, Joe Wilson, and Dana Priest. This is not just guilt by association: Priest herself participated in an anti-Iraq war program put on by her husband’s group, CIP, along with Joe Wilson and other even more unsavory characters. (Via The Corner).

Then we have Ms. McCarthy, the CIA leaker, who turns out to be a substantial contributor to the Democratic Party. Andy McCarthy notes that the Washington Post has published a sympat[h]etic portrait of McCarthy–who leaked, remember, to the Post, resulting in a story for which the Post won a Pulitzer Prize–which touts McCarthy as unbiased without ever mentioning that she was a Kerry supporter who has given up to $7,700 a year to Democratic candidates!

So we have a Democratic Party activist violating federal law by leaking classified information to an antiwar activist on the payroll of the Washington Post, which publishes the criminal leak and is awarded a prize by the left-wing Pulitzer committee.

Finally, several bloggers are speculating about the possibility that the whole “secret prisons” story might have been a sting operation by the CIA designed to catch a leaker. I don’t think this can be true, based mos[t]ly on public statements that have been made by intelligence officials, but it is a curious fact that there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for the existence of the secret prisons other than Dana Priest’s story. Can it be that this is one secret the CIA has actually been able to keep, but for the leak?

Go to Power Line’s post for the relevant links. Also see Jeff Goldstein, Ace, Michelle Malkin, Flopping Aces, Tom Maguire, Andrew McCarthy, and Rick Moran.

What’s missing from the L.A. Times story? Basically, all of the above. There is no mention of McCarthy’s connection to the Democratic Party — a connection that, Rick Moran ably argues, shows her to be far, far more than a standard contributor. There is no mention of Dana Priest’s connection to leftist causes through her husband. And there is no mention of the fact that the leaked information about “secret prisons” has not been substantiated, at all. Nobody has found them.

Other than that, it’s a great article.

When is the L.A. Times going to report this stuff? Ever?

P.S. I should make this explicit: much of this information came out yesterday or earlier — yet the paper has diddly on McCarthy today. Not one story.

45 Responses to “LAT Drops the Ball on the Mary McCarthy Leak Story”

  1. I’d agree that the LAT did not cover the full story. However, whether she’s a Democratic activist or not, the facts are that the CIA was kidnapping people off the streets, drugging them, throwing them on a plane, flying them to secret prisons, and torturing them. If your superiors are breaking a multitude of laws, it must be reported.

    Shawn (f93734)

  2. What is the evidence of secret prisons, other than Priest’s story? Where are they?

    Patterico (156eed)

  3. I posted that it’s a bit of a fallacy (thanks XRLQ) to equate donating money to Democrats with being an “Democratic Party activist”.

    steve sturm (d3e296)

  4. The first comment is EXACTLY the problem. We now understand that the CIA person who leaked the secret prison story is biased and has no credibility as far as I am concerned.

    So I want some proof. I want some proof from a source who is not out to get this administration. Not from a cabal of lefty activists.

    Rightwingsparkle (934a68)

  5. Sparkle, I forgot to hat-tip you for the Power Line link. Fixed.

    Patterico (156eed)

  6. Has the CIA denied that there are secret prisons?

    Psyberian (dd13d6)

  7. Has anyone found them?

    Patterico (156eed)

  8. At this point even the LAT should admit that readers who want the facts should pay for a 2nd information source after reading their lefty based news. Facts that support the other side are avoided like a needle in the eye over there. I would like to believe there are “secret” prisons. This is a dumb controversy if she is in trouble for leaking secrets of things which don’t exist.

    Wesson (c20d28)

  9. You may be asking a somewhat unfair question Patterico. If anyone has evidence of such secret prisons, wouldn’t they go to jail for speaking a word about it?

    I would think that the CIA would deny the accusation if it wasn’t true.

    I don’t know how reliable this source is, but this was published today:

    Key al-Qaida leaders, including Sept. 11 attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, remain in secret overseas prisons with no indication that they’ll be tried any time soon, if ever. http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/world/14410473.htm

    But they don’t provide a link to their original sources.

    Psyberian (dd13d6)

  10. Wesson said, “This is a dumb controversy if she is in trouble for leaking secrets of things which don’t exist.”

    I wouldn’t be suprised if Scooter Libby just might have a few choice words to say on that peculiar topic.

    Black Jack (7bbb5c)

  11. Shawn (and others),

    If it is mere coincidence that Ms. McCarthy, and separately, her husband, were donating the maximum amount allowed by law not only to Democrats, and specifically John Kerry, then why did Dana Priest remove this information from her story.

    Priest certainly knew McCarthy was a key donor to John Kerry. It’s in the public record for crissakes.

    Why hide it? Why leave this bit of information out of the story? Isn’t it germaine to the allegations (and these are, after all, just allegations).

    I think the answer is pretty obvious. Let’s take a trip into the WayBack Machine and rewrite the lede for this story, including the information we now have:

    “A top CIA official today illegally told The Post that the United States government runs secret prisons around the world. The agent, who is a top donor to John Kerry, and who donated $5,000 to the Ohio Democrats, and whose husband also donated the most allowed by law to Kerry, is The Posts’ only source for the allegations.”

    But of course, such a lede wouldn’t win you the Pulitzer Prize and the $10,000 bucks that comes with it.

    RightNumberOne (11dd90)

  12. My wife finally realized she can live without the Dog Trainer at the door every morning. And she was kind enough to allow me to make the call to CANCEL!

    Made my day, I’d been waiting a long time.

    PC14 (98b75e)

  13. Food for thought… is the entire thing a Porter Goss countespionage operation to catch a mole?

    Probably not, but if so, good on ‘im.

    Chris from Victoria, BC (5d90a2)

  14. That theory has been floated. Best guess is no. But the Dana Priest story has not been substantiated, either — so we don’t know for sure.

    Patterico (156eed)

  15. As much as I hate to say it, Priest’s article seems unusually well sourced. In addition to “intelligence officials” she has “diplomats on three continents” mentioned as sources as well as “four different American officials” confirming the death of a suspect in one of these prisons.

    The fact is, EU has not been able to find evidence of illegal activities that “violate human rights.” It may mean that the CIA was pretty good at covering its tracks.

    Neither has the EU been able to find evidence that any of the suspects were taken on European soil and “renditioned” elsewhere.

    So an argument could be made that the prisons exist or existed at one time. What went on there is unknown.

    As for McCarthy being just a lil old run of the mill Democrat, you just don’t wake up one morning and decide to give $5,000 to the state Democratic Party of Ohio one month before the election. She was obviously solicited for the money. It is probable that this solicitation was made to a group of extremely reliable “Fat Cat” donors who are called upon in an emergency to give money where asked.

    That’s a pretty good definition of partisanship, I think.

    Rick Moran (a90377)

  16. RightNumberOne suggested this lede with the facts we have in hand: “A top CIA official today illegally told The Post that the United States government runs secret prisons around the world. The agent, who is a top donor to John Kerry, and who donated $5,000 to the Ohio Democrats, and whose husband also donated the most allowed by law to Kerry, is The Posts’ only source for the allegations.”

    A single source story with virtually no corraboration, no evidence from any other source, including those overseas. This is why many in the blogosphere are suggesting that this story was an CIA sting operation.

    Paul (c169e9)

  17. “As much as I hate to say it, Priest’s article seems unusually well sourced.”

    ‘Seems’ is the operative word here.

    Like Rightwingsparkle said, “I want some proof from a source who is not out to get this administration. Not from a cabal of lefty activists.”

    Paul (c169e9)

  18. Has anyone else noticed that today’s (Sunday) edition of the Times completely ignores the story? If the leaker had been a Republican we would be reading about this as front page news for at least a week, not just one day.

    Jackie Warner (41f17a)

  19. The Times is too busy putting clotheslines in the backyard and getting ready for their evacuation to Idaho. Moving day soon, Mexico will be here.

    Vermont Neighbor (a9ae2c)

  20. Has the CIA denied that there are secret prisons?

    Would you believe them if they did?

    Jim Treacher (f69e1b)

  21. If the prisons were real, some news agency would have published photos — even if they were just the front of a building or pics of empty rooms claimed to be cells.

    Even the Palestinian film makers of Pallywood could fake up that amount of “evidence” to support such claims.

    Purple Avenger (22bdfb)

  22. “Would you believe them if they did?“ – Jim Treacher

    That’s funny. No, but it is beside the point. If they’re not guilty of it, they should at least deny it. (And to my knowledge they haven’t denied it.) This accusation is badly hurting our stance internationally. It’s too bad that a lot of people here in the States don’t care what any other country thinks (as if we’re omnipotent). That worries me.

    Psyberian (dd13d6)

  23. They haven’t one story? On a CIA officer who has admitted leaking classified information? After following CIA “leaks” (authorized by the President in whom constitutional authority to determine what is and isn’t classified is vested) virtually non-stop for months? When the subject of this recent CIA officer admitted leak is what a Washington Post reporter just received a Pulitzer Prize for? When the story for which that reporter received a Pullitzer Prize for cannot be verified by the EU? When we (my country too, against terrorists) are at war and this leak relates to that? When this CIA officer is tied to Joe Wilson and Natalie Plame? When this CIA officer is a large John F. Kerry financial donor and supporter?

    Will anyone from the LA Times explain to us why you are not biased?

    Chris from Victoria, BC (5d90a2)

  24. Shawn, …the facts are that the CIA was kidnapping people off the streets, drugging them, throwing them on a plane, flying them to secret prisons, and torturing them. If your superiors are breaking a multitude of laws, it must be reported.

    “Facts”? As has been previously noted above the EU has been unable to document these “facts”. The remainder of your assertions are simply unsubstantiated allegations not currently demonstrated to have been true.

    “If your superiors are breaking a multitude of laws …” there are clearly defined channels through which whistle blowers can legally report such violations. Call your local WaPo reporter ain’t one of em. Ms. McCarthy clearly spent enough time in the CIA IG office to know how to legally report such malfeasance of her superiors.

    The only “facts” I see here suggest a partisan employee of the CIA disclosing secrets to a reporter for the purpose of embarassing the country in general and the president in particular. Admittedly, this is my yet to be substantiated assertion … Perhaps we’ll learn more if the DOJ, as it should, takes Ms McCarthy to trial for her clear violation of the law.

    Finally, Shawn, is your assertion absolute, or do you grant exceptions?

    Harry Arthur (b318a5)

  25. Psy, …It’s too bad that a lot of people here in the States don’t care what any other country thinks… generally speaking, you can count me as one of the “lot”.

    Harry Arthur (b318a5)

  26. Why should they deny the story, even if it’s false? Seems like good leverage to me. Thanks to the Maverik Senator McCain, you can’t do anything at all to prisoners to make the uncomfortable or even fearful. But maybe just a faint suggestion here and there to remind them that the evil Americans might, just might send them to some real hellhole is enough to get a few answers out of them.

    As to the rest of the world: sure I’d like it if America were universally loved and admired. But I’m not willing to give up effective methods of war against terrorism to achieve that.

    Doc Rampage (f06a6e)

  27. Psy, one additional note. When dealing with “secrets” it is common practice to “neither confirm nor deny” the validity of substantiating information. It is often possible to discern as much intelligence from a denial as from a confirmation. These spooks are really smart that way, you know.

    Harry Arthur (b318a5)

  28. Doc, personally I’d prefer to be feared than admired. Probably just a personality defect…

    Harry Arthur (b318a5)

  29. #16 As much as I hate to say it, Priest’s article seems unusually well sourced. In addition to “intelligence officials” she has “diplomats on three continents” mentioned as sources as well as “four different American officials” confirming the death of a suspect in one of these prisons.

    Sorry, Rick, but I found this comment just too funny on the face of it. Well sourced. Ha! “Some big guys” and “some other big guys” and “some other really, really big guys” is not my idea of good sourcing.

    No, I don’t really (please god) think journalism is devolved to the point that Priest is just making junk up. But how many times have “senior officials” turned out to be junior officials, or near outsiders? How many times have “sources close to” turned out to be the same tired old tale-tellers we’ve seen in print a thousand times?

    S. Weasel (e16cf7)

  30. If there were prisons or not doesn’t matter. She leaked Top Secret information to the press. She worked in the Inspector General’s office for christ sake, so she knew the procedure to report any wrong doing by the CIA, and if there were or not no longer matters. (Several countries in the EU have completed intensive investigation and found nothing) She is guilty of Treason and should be arrested. tried, convicted, and shot. They’ve already given Socks Berger a pass (he should have been shot by the guards) and one pass every 10 years is enough. I suspect she is just one of a ring of traitors working within the CIA and she can lead them to some of the others.
    Hope everyone has been watching the weekend comedy shows, every station has had a dim-wit or two on and they have all definetly slipped from the realm of sanity. Hate (actually wounded ego’s) will do that to you.

    Scrapiron (a90377)

  31. Ten days ago, Patterico begrudged Hiltzik a background detail on Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor:

    “Nor is everybody happy for the city to suddenly become an epicenter of the national immigration debate. Mansoor was made an honorary member of the Minuteman Project, a group that runs ad hoc civilian border patrols and whose co-founder, James Gilchrist, lives down the road in Aliso Viejo.”

    http://goldenstateblog.latimes.com/goldenstate/2006/04/golden_state_co.html

    This was clearly an instance of the LAT piling on:

    “He [Hiltzik] complains…that the mayor is connected to those evil Minutemen.” – Patterico

    Today, the paper’s Greg Miller is deemed derelict by not including fired CIA agent Mary McCarthy’s prior Democratic candidate contributions.

    How is this not laughably inconsistent?

    Both background elements belonged.

    steve (2552b4)

  32. the facts are that the CIA was kidnapping people off the streets, drugging them, throwing them on a plane, flying them to secret prisons, and torturing them. If your superiors are breaking a multitude of laws, it must be reported.

    As has already been noted, that’s a ridiculous assertion that has been claimed nowhere in these stories. More importantly, though, if the CIA has been doing that, GOOD FOR THEM!! And once they do or don’t get the information they want, they should kill these 7th-Century animals very slowly.

    CraigC (28872d)

  33. Actually, what is happening nowadays that the newspapers are not only a means of making public aware of the reality but more into making news..and so it’s quite obvious that L.A Times is not covering the complete story.

    Nick Carter (9254e1)

  34. steve,

    Context.

    Now I gotta watch the Sopranos.

    Patterico (156eed)

  35. Patterico,

    Hyperbole.

    And glibness.

    steve (2552b4)

  36. steve,

    In context, my point was that the reference to the eeevil Minutemen was part of Hilztik’s characteriztion as racists of those who supported the Costa Mesa program.

    In context, the reference to McCarthy’s unbelievable generosity to Democrats, including Kerry, Bush’s opponent in the last election, explains why she might have wanted to leak information embarrassing to Bush.

    You may see this as laughably inconsistent, and that is your right. I don’t, and plenty of folks here agree with me.

    The point is not that one should never disclose affilations. Often they’re important. But Hiltzik’s motivation was to paint the Costa Mesa program supporters as racists. He was quite clear about that, just as he was quite clear about referring to my “coded racism” because I (gasp!) oppose illegal immigration. Read in context, I thought his reference was a cheap shot.

    Again, you may not see it that way. You may see it as hyperbole and glibness. That is your right. And it is my right to disagree with you strongly.

    Patterico (156eed)

  37. Mansoor’s Minuteman affiliation is not the the “cheap shot” you lament since it — and Mary McCarthy’s “unbelievable” campaign contributions — inform the subjects’ apparent motivations.

    In the first instance, such disclosure is malicious and out-of-bounds. When a lefty is profiled, naturally, composite affiliation becomes de rigueur.

    Any absent “context” advertises your ongoing counterpunching with Hiltzik more than his unremarkable immigration essay.

    At least that’s how I see it.

    steve (2552b4)

  38. Let me try to make it clear: I don’t think a reference to the mayor’s affiliation with the Minutemen is out of bounds. In isolation. It tells you something about the guy and where he’s coming from.

    In the context of Hiltzik’s piece, which was designed to paint the mayor (and any other supporter of the program) as a racist, it was a cheap shot — because his whole deceptive column was a cheap shot.

    Patterico (156eed)

  39. I don’t know who’s at fault — the New York Times or the Denver Post — but the version of the Times story that ran in the Post is free of any negative information on McCarthy. Either the Times left it out of the wire version or the Post edited it out. Comparison here.

    Karl Maher (910b19)

  40. Its not whether the story is true. The secrets are ours–America’s secrets: yours, mine, my children’s; not to be disclosed on the whim of some back-office bureaucrat who sneakily decides that she has a “higher” calling than the oath she agreed to observe (and then is rooted out by a lie detector). Neither Jonathan Pollard (leaked to Israel), Christopher Boyce (leaked spy sattelite secrets to USSR) had that “right” to honor their inner-leaker. Neither does she. Its handcuff time. (caveat: US citizens in those aleged camps, would make this another issue altogether). The LAT’s preening “bias by omission” is why it is and always will be a second-tier publication surviving by dint of its low cost, lack of big-city rival and inertia of its subscribers. Its so pathetic.

    frank brebbin (bb7b00)

  41. L’Affaire McCarthy

    And once again, it needs to be restated that Dana Priest’s series on ‘secret prisons’ that won her a Pulitzer Prize has not been corroborated by anyone. In fact, it appears that they simply do not exist. Either that, or the CIA has done such an amaz…

    A Blog For All (59ce3a)

  42. […] Anyway, my point is, Allah is really plugged in, and he has done a roundup of the revelations about Mary McCarthy (h/t Malkin), which are still pretty much a Blogosphere Exclusive at this point. (For example, the L.A. Times, after running a story about McCarthy that was stunning for what it left out, has failed to do a follow-up to include the details about McCarthy’s (and Dana Priest’s) partisanship. That failure continues to this day. […]

    Patterico’s Pontifications » Allah on McCarthy (421107)

  43. […] UPDATE 6: You will be shocked to know that the L.A. Times’s coverage of the leak investigation is also missing a few relevant facts here and there. […]

    Hot Air » Blog Archive » CIA Leak: A Blog Primer (3ca10e)

  44. […] Yet the L.A. Times has reported not one word of this absolutely relevant information, since their initial article on Saturday. […]

    Patterico’s Pontifications » No Double Standard Here! (421107)


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