The CIA fired an officer for allegedly leaking information to the Washington Post after she failed a polygraph test. The paper published a story which “did significant damage to relationships between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies” and revealed the existence of secret prisons in Europe.
Some people have praised Mary McCarthy for leaking the information. Others have condemned her for breaking the law. Former presidential candidate John Kerry does both, which I think is ironic. Truth is the most important journalistic value, and investigative journalism is always going to step on some toes. Stories like the abuse at Abu Ghraib need to be told. It’s just a shame that McCarthy is taking the fall for helping to doing so.
Travis Carter @ Mon, 04/24/2006 - 7:57am
As always, the issue of linking secret government information to the media will be controversial. Was Mary McCarthy doing what she thought was right by releasing information about these secret prisons, or did she have a selfish personal agenda? We may never know. However, I think the more important issue here is that Dana Priest, the journalist at the Washington Post who was in contact with McCarthy, was not brought to court by the CIA and told to reveal her source. Had this happened, it would have been another example of how journalists must be worried everytime they get confidential information from a government source. In reality, this could have been the best case scenario. McCarthy did not abide by the CIA's rules and was fired. Priest did her job as an investigative journalist, but was never put in the position where she had to reveal the identity of her source. The responsibility ended up being placed solely on the source, where it belongs.