This is WAR! Bush Goes Toe to Toe with the MSM

In case you hadn't figured out the link between the "Bush is the leaker in chief"stories that have polluted the MSM in recent weeks and the rather bizarre Pulitzer awards, this is it.

AP reports:

WASHINGTON -- In a highly unusual move the CIA has fired an employee for leaking classified information to the news media, including details about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe that resulted in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story, officials said Friday.

The Associated Press has learned the officer was a CIA veteran nearing retirement, Mary McCarthy. Reached Friday evening at home, her husband would not confirm her firing.

In McCarthy's 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, according to a former colleague who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is under investigation.

Without identifying McCarthy by name, CIA Director Porter Goss announced the firing in a short message to agency employees circulated Thursday.

Read the whole thing here.

This investigation has been ongoing for several months now and the newsies are certainly aware that it threatens to squelch their favorite pastime, reporting leaks. As the investigation began to close in on their sources the newsies closed ranks and began firing shots across the bow of the administration. The "leaker in chief" stories were a warning that punishing leakers would be met with an enormous firestorm of protest and awarding Pulitzers to journalists under investigation was open defiance. Now the simmering conflict between segments of the MSM and the Bush administration will go nuclear.

The battle lines being drawn.

For the MSM:

Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said on the newspaper's Web site, "We don't know the details of why (the CIA employee) was fired, so I can't comment on that. But as a general principle, obviously I am opposed to criminalizing the dissemination of government information to the press."

For the administration:

"The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission," [CIA Director Porter] Goss told Congress in February, adding that a federal grand jury should be impaneled to determine "who is leaking this information."

...

Justice Department officials declined to comment publicly on the firing and whether the matter had been referred to federal prosecutors for possible criminal charges. One law enforcement official said there were dozens of leak investigations under way.

Here is the first volley from the WaPo, employer of Dana Priest, who reported the CIA leak:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist's lawyer said Friday.

Prosecutors disputed the claim.

The allegations against Rice came as a federal judge granted a defense request to issue subpoenas sought by the defense for Rice and three other government officials in the trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. The two are former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are charged with receiving and disclosing national defense information.

Defense lawyers are asking a judge to dismiss the charges because, among other things, they believe it seeks to criminalize the type of backchannel exchanges between government officials, lobbyists and the press that are part and parcel of how Washington works.

Read it here.

And of course the NYT prints a sympathetic piece that portrays her as the principled victim of an administration witch hunt. [here] God! These folks in the MSM are utterly shameless.

Newsbusters notes that Bob Schieffer is going on the offense, too.

Bob Schieffer didn't withhold his personal opinion from his newscast as he introduced a CBS Evening News story by asserting that “it is no secret that the current administration does not like its people hanging out with news reporters without permission” and he described the firing as “a first -- a dubious first, to be sure.”

The same post notes that Nina Totenberg says that the nefarious practices of the Bush administration justify giving the Pulitzers to leak recipients. And her comments betray an amazing degree of hubris in the journalistic community. She argues that our governmental system is based on "checks and balances" and that the press, not Congress or the courts, is the essental check on executive policy and action. She seems to take all that "fourth estate" stuff seriously.

Read it here.

For decades now the intelligence community has sought to influence policy and to undermine political figures through illegal leaking. In recent years the trickle of leaks has become a flood, largely because the Bush administration has been bent on reforming the dysfunctional intelligence community.

People's careers have been terminated or blocked, favorite programs have been altered or dropped, etc. and disgruntled employees (or ex-employees) have responded by leaking anything they can to damage the administration. The pace of leaks, especially from the CIA, has become a real threat to national security and can no longer be tolerated. McCarthy's firing is just the beginning of a determined effect to bring the rogue CIA establishment to heel.

This is going to be fun -- lots of fun.

Let the games begin.

UPDATE:

From Drudge: McCarthy was "Senior director for intelligence programs," [here]. She was appointed by Sandy Berger. She had an academic background at Yale and supported Kerry in 2004. [here]

Both she and her husband contribute significantly to Democrat campaigns. [here]

Let's see now -- Yale, Clinton, Sandy Burger, Kerry, Democrat donor, leaker to WaPo. Is it fair to say that she was a Democrat mole at the CIA?

Right Wing Nut House speculates that the whole "secret prisons" story was a fabrication -- a sting designed to sniff out leakers. If so that means that Dana Priest won a Pulitzer for a story that was completely false. Just speculation, you understand, but despite determined efforts by European investigators no evidence that these secret prisons ever existed has come to light.

Read it here. [Hey, if the MSM can print unsubstantiated speculation, so can we.]

Gateway Pundit has an extensive roundup of commentary on the matter [here].

And there's this over at NRO's mediablog. Wolf Blitzer was interviewing Bill Bennett and Torie Clarke.

BENNETT: The situation we have now is that Dana Priest has won the Pulitzer Prize. The guy who leaked to her has been fired from the CIA and may be subject to a prosecution. He gets prosecution, fired from the CIA, she gets the Pulitzer Prize. I think there's something a little wrong with that.

Blitzer was horrified:

BLITZER: What Bill is suggesting, as a reporter, is very very dangerous, very slippery...

TORIE CLARKE: You would look good in horizontal stripes.

BLITZER: You used to be the press spokesperson over at the Pentagon. Do you agree with those comments?

CLARKE: I hesitate to disagree with him, because he's so smart, and I appreciate the seriousness with which he treats this, but I've always thought there should be more emphasis in these matters on the people in government who sign papers saying, "I will never reveal classified information. I take these responsibilities seriously," etc., and then they do it. I wish there was more emphasis on that side of the fence.

While I agree more with Clarke than Bennett, I think Blitzer's knee-jerk outrage was a little ridiculous. Take his response to Clarke:

BLITZER: But these reporters for the New York Times and the Washington Post never signed any confidentiality agreements with the government. They're just reporters out there trying to do their job.

Not only did Blitzer miss the point — which, Bennett reminded him, is that "Reporters have to obey the law as well" — he also appeared to be incapable of even considering Bennett's argument with an open mind. I've seen many journalists immediately adopt this defensive stance when they discuss the issue of reporters and leaks, and it doesn't speak well of their ability to cover their own industry in a fair-minded way.

Read it here.

"Y0u would look good in horizontal stripes." Go get 'em, Torie!

And over at the Riehl World View we find a suggestive discussion of the anti-Bush cabal in the intelligence services and the extreme lengths to which they will go to bring the President down.

Thomas Joscelyn has much more on Ms. McCarthy and her relations to Richard Clarke and Clinton's response to terrorism. [here]