A Case of Patriotic Whistle-blowing

Do you remember in 2002, when Time magazine named Cynthia Cooper, Sherron Watkins, and Coleen Rowley as "Whistleblowers of the Year." Without the efforts of these brave women, the lies and cover-ups of Enron, the large-scale fraud of WorldCom, and the massive incompetence at the FBI, that allowed to the 9/11 attacks to occur, would never have seen the light of day. By exposing these dealings, each woman set off massive government investigation, leading to criminal convictions as well as to institutional reform. Their recognition by Time was well deserved.

Now add Mary McCarthy to that list.

McCarthy, you see, was the career CIA offical who failed to pass a lie-detector test (don't they learn how to pass those things at the CIA?) and was revealed to be the source that led to the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning articles detailing secret CIA prisons in foreign lands that suspected terrorists were sent to be possibly tortured. I say "possibly" because nobody really knows, for sure, what happens at these secret prisons run by the CIA, but that seems the most likely scenario. So little information has been released to the American public about the CIA-run prison complex, that's hard to say for sure what's been going on there.

But it must be bad. And it must've been something that the administration wanted to keep secret, because as soon as the story broke last November, the administration and Congressional Republicans ordered an investigation. Not into the prisons where the CIA was doing God-knows-what in our name, but in the fact that the story was broke due to a 'leak' in the first place.

In his new column, Dave nitpicks the case of Mary McCarthy. I find it of interest that he needs three paragraphs, by which time he all ready pre-empts the Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson and Abu Ghraib scandals, to delineate what McCarthy was the leaker of. Instead, he spends much hand-wringing in attempting to explain why we should be upset at McCarthy's leaking. You see, in Dave's mind, if we are to be inflamed at the outing of an undercover CIA agent by the administration, we should be just as incensed when the CIA leaks undercover nefarious global torture centers carried out by the administration.

I know, I know. Such is the tortured logic in David Reinhard's mind, but that is the argument he attempts to make, thanks to the help, of course, of GOP talking points.

I had an argument with a friend about the case of Judy Miller. He maintained that Miller didn't need to give up the sources she had who outed Valerie Plame (who was since revealed that it was Karl Rove), liking her position to being a whistle-blower. I maintained that Miller never was a whistle-blower, but that she had served as a puppet and an instrument by the administration to discredit an ambassador who blew China-sized holes in their case for war in Iraq and outed Plame, who worked as intelligence gatherer on the issues of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. With her pro-war stories in the New York Times in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq and her stint in jail instead of co-operating with the Fitzgerald investigation Miller was complicit in threatening the security of our country. There is simply no way she should be lauded by the press as having any sort of ethical backbone. And she definitely was not a whistle-blower.

As it turned out, the revelation of Plame's identity was carried out at the bequest of President Bush, the same President Bush who had said, "This is a large administration, and there's a lot of senior officials." When he wasn't playing semantics with the press, Bush and Cheney orchestrated the smear campaign, selectively leaking information which they hoped would 'discredit' Wilson's claims, and allow the rush to war to be continued, unabated. Well, Reinhard explains that:

When any president decides to declassify classified information -- and presidents have the inherent authority to do so -- the information is no longer classified. In brief, there's a difference between a president declassifying material and unauthorized government workers deciding, on their own and in secret, to declassify top secret programs.

Got that? Again with the tortured logic. It appears that he's trying to make the case that there ws nothing ever wrong with these leak, which raises a number of questions: why did Bush play such semantic games with the press? Why is Libby even facing criminal charges? Why has Rove been in front of a grand jury five times? If the leak was okey-dokey because the president allowed and 'declassified' it, why did he do nothing and let Judy Miller rot in jail? There is a running trend of how the Bush administration treats the women who have helped them- similar to their recent treatment of Katherine Harris, former Florida Secretary of State who has gotten the shaft by both Dubya and Jeb in her Senate campaign, they turn their back to them at their moment of need. Ladies, word of warning for you if you're thinking of helping out theRepublican Party: be prepared to feel as used as a two-dollar whore.

But, back to McCarthy. Dave likens her leaking to treason, and in proof that she's not a 'typical' CIA agent he offers the following evidence: she gave money to Democrats. Horrors! Can you believe it? Yes, it's true! She gave $2,000 to John Kerry, and another $5,000 to the Democratic party of Ohio in 2004. Somebody check her wallet- she's obviosuly a card-carrying member of al Qaida!

Here's a clue to you, Dave. Some people actually become 'public servants' because they wish to, oh, I don't know, serve the public. In McCarthy's case, she obviously felt that the public needed to know the information regarding the secret CIA prison/torture complex. Maybe it was a moment of clarity, but she must've felt that the American public deserved a right to know what was going on in their name. Obviously, Dave comes from the standpoint that what that the public doesn't know can't hurt them.

Which is why I salute Mary McCarthy as the patriot she is.