Politics, Government & Public Policy: April 2006 Archives
So one major leaker from the CIA has been outed: Mary O. McCarthy was the source for the CIA-secret-jails story, among apparently many others. She's been fired but apparently may not face criminal charges.
Several former veteran C.I.A. officials said the dismissal of an agency employee over a leak was rare and perhaps unprecedented. One official recalled the firing of a small number of agency contractors, including retirees, for leaking several years ago.
Well that's pretty alarming. The whole point of classifying information is to put some teeth behind the otherwise routine requirement that employees not discuss their work with outsiders. Just about every business or organization has a general understanding of that sort, but since it's so much more important when it comes to national security it's taken to another level. Employees at businesses are fired all the time for disclosing proprietary information, so it's pretty surprising that CIA employees aren't fired for leaking classified information. Hopefully this is the start of a trend.
With the encouragement of the White House and some Republicans in Congress, [CIA Directory Porter J.] Goss has repeatedly spoken out against leaks, saying foreign intelligence officials had asked him whether his agency was incapable of keeping secrets.In February, Mr. Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission." He said it was his hope "that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."
"I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less," he said.
Isn't it humiliating for the United State's premier intelligence agency to be untrusted by the foreign services we have to work with? Leakers like Mary O. McCarthy are traitors who endanger Americans and America's interests, even if they have good intentions... which I doubt. It seems a lot more likely that Mary O. McCarthy's leaked to cause political damage to President Bush than to enhance America's security.
Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.
Wow, that's a surprise.
Quotes later in the article show that there are at least a few sensible people left in the CIA who recognize their duties and take them seriously.
But another official, whose experience was at headquarters, said most employees would approve Mr. Goss's action. "I think for the vast majority of people this will be good for morale," the official said. "People didn't like some of their colleagues deciding for themselves what secrets should be in The Washington Post or The New York Times."Paul R. Pillar, who was the agency's senior analyst for the Middle East until he retired late last year, said: "Classified information is classified information. It's not to be leaked. It's not to be divulged." He has recently criticized the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs.
I hope Mary O. McCarthy does get charged and thrown in prison or executed, but since that's not likely I hope that the blogosphere keeps tabs on her and excoriates whomever is foolish enough to hire her next.
Update 060425:
Mary O. McCarthy has denied leaking information about secret CIA prisons and apparently only admitted to having disclosed some other unspecified classified information to reporter Dana Priest of the Washington Post.
The statement by Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the Washington office of Hogan & Hartson who said he was speaking for McCarthy, came on the same day that a senior intelligence official said the agency is not asserting that McCarthy was a key source of Priest's award-winning articles last year disclosing the agency's secret prisons.McCarthy was fired because the CIA concluded that she had undisclosed contacts with journalists, including Priest, in violation of a security agreement. That does not mean she revealed the existence of the prisons to Priest, Cobb said.
Cobb said that McCarthy, who worked in the CIA inspector general's office, "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking," namely the classified information about any secret detention centers in Europe.
Of course this is McCarthy's lawyer saying this, and keep in mind that the story above is from the Washtington Post, that paper which McCarthy admitted leaking to.
President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, James P. Hoffa, correctly identifies many of the symptoms of the ongoing national health care debacle but is completely wrong about the underlying disease.
Our nation is facing an urgent crisis. Companies, workers and all levels of our government have an equal stake in this fight. Our nation's health care system is broken. America must act now.General Motors Corp. is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and Delphi Corp. is already there, largely because of the amount of money they spend on health care for their employees.
GM spends more on health care for its workers than on steel for its cars. GM estimates that it spends $1,500 in health care costs for every car it produces. It paid out about $5.8 billion for health care in 2005. That competitive disadvantage largely explains why the Big Three automakers have eliminated or announced plans to eliminate nearly 140,000 jobs since 2000. ...
Despite these increases -- and maybe even because of them -- there are now more than 46 million Americans without insurance. That's over 15 percent of the population. In 2000, it was 39 million, and it was 31 million in 1987, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
America is spending more and more on health care to cover fewer and fewer people poorly.
Health care costs are destroying our nation's economic edge. The cards are stacked against American companies as they try to compete with low-cost, low-wage foreign producers.
All of this is true, but Mr. Hoffa's proposed solution would certainly make the situation worse.
The only real solution to this crisis is national health care. Meeting such a basic need should not force government budgets, companies and workers into the red. As the crisis grows, more and more Americans, workers and corporate leaders alike, are calling for government action.
Government action is needed, but what the government needs to do is reform the legal malpractice system to protect health care providers from the lawsuits that consume billions of dollars per year in direct costs (e.g., ridiculous payouts) and indirect costs (e.g., unneeded tests).
Teri Robert has collected an array of facts that will astound you and hopefully convince you that we don't need more regulation of health care, we need more regulation of lawsuits.
- Lawsuit costs passed on to consumers add up to nearly $721 per year for every person in America today. - Because of litigation fears, 79% of doctors said they had ordered more tests than they would based only on professional judgment of what is medically needed. - It takes at least a year to resolve most lawsuits, and delays of three to five years are not uncommon. Unfortunately, injured people with legitimate claims can wait years before their cases go to trial. - An estimated $50 billion per year is spent on unnecessary test procedures designed only to guard doctors and hospitals against malpractice claims. - Almost half of the money spent by physician insurers goes towards defending cases that ultimately are closed without compensation paid to the claimant.
And so forth. Rather than turning over one-fifth of our economy to the federal government as Mr. Hoffa proposes -- which never makes anything cheaper, better, or more efficient -- let's limit these lawsuits in a way to leads to better health care rather than just richer lawyers.
The second step, more controversially, is to slash the government regulation of physicians and medication. Rather than require all practicing physicians to be certified by a government-approved authority, the government should simply require that physicians disclose their credentials and leave the certifications to private organizations (as is done in most professional fields). This would open the door for thousands of lower-cost, lower-skill physicians who would be more than able to treat common maladies like colds and broken bones. You don't need an MD to set a broken arm, so why should you have to pay for one? Because currently the government says so. Medication is similar. Consumers need the government to ensure that drug companies disclose all the potential side-effects of their products, but we don't need the FDA to tell us what we can and can't put in our bodies if we're willing to take known risks.
Representative Cynthia McKinney, a black Democrat from Georgia, says that the investigation into her assault of a Capitol Hill police officer is being blown out of proportion and has refused to apologize.
McKinney was stopped by a Capitol Hill police officer last Wednesday as she tried to go around a security checkpoint in a House office building. Members of Congress are allowed to go around the ubiquitous checkpoints, but the police officer failed to recognize McKinney as a member of Congress and tried to stop her.After calling to McKinney to stop, the officer touched her shoulder or arm. That prompted McKinney to spin around and the strike the officer, though there are conflicting reports as to whether she slapped him, punched him in the chest or struck him with a cell phone.
McKinney was not wearing a special lapel pin given to members of Congress to make them easier to identify. She also has changed her hairstyle since her official House portrait, the picture police would check to identify her. ...
Coz Carson, a spokesman for McKinney, said the requested warrant should be dismissed if "this is a prosecutor who's not a politician."
"Any prosecutor with any sense can look at this thing and understand that it's not something that should be blown out of proportion any further," Carson said.
Something tells me that if a white member of Congress had punched a black police officer, Cynthia McKinney would advocate an entirely different standard of proportionality.
