NBC names the CIA official fired for leaking classified information on its “black sites” network of secret prisons: Mary McCarthy.
(Ed. Note: An earlier version of this story credited AP with breaking McCarthy’s identity.)
A senior intelligence analyst, McCarthy had been assigned to the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General to look into allegations of torture by the CIA in Iraq.
I hope that if McCarthy was the leaker, we will hear more from her in the coming days. Here’s why: CIA folks leak like sieves concerning internal agency politics, but it’s nearly impossible to get them to talk about field operations — for good reason. People who work on IG investigations are just as tight-lipped — especially concerning wrongdoing. After all, they aren’t helpless bystanders — they’re in a position to do something about it.
So what would motivate a person in her position to leak?
I don’t know — that’s what I want to hear from McCarthy herself. But I have my suspicions: the CIA’s IG office has been known to be a kind of truth-laundering operation — slow-walking probes into serious agency wrongdoing, while simultaneously going on crusades against operatives who have fallen from favor with CIA senior officials. Could the office have been planning to bury proof it discovered of CIA involvement with torture and illegal detention sites? I hope McCarthy comes forward to explain her actions.
Over at TPMCafe, Larry Johnson — himself former CIA — weighs in with more insight on the matter.
