The Remarkable Mary McCarthy

OK. So . . . the lot plickens!

Last night, as I watched Jim Lehrer's news show, I listened to Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst who very ably defended Mary McCarthy. It sounded as if McCarthy had already been accused of leaking classified documents, and by McGovern's very defense of her actions, it sounded as if she had already accepted culpability for the leak.

I was impressed with McGovern as a straight shooter who is well informed about the players in this McCarthy drama, namely: former CIA Director George Tenet, CIA Inspector General John Helgersen, former CIA chief counter-terrorism official Cofer Black, current Director Porter Goss and, of course, Mary McCarthy, herself.

The key point that McGovern made last night with Jim Lehrer, echoed this morning in an Alternet article, was summed up with the idea that the American people should be given the chance to know that torture, other indignities, rendition and kidnapping people for the purpose of transporting them secretly to undisclosed prisons, is being done in the name of the American people. That's in the name of you and me, folks.

All that being said, this morning both the New York Times and the Washington Post carried a story, re: Fired CIA Officer Denies Role in Leak in which McCarthy's lawyer Ty Cobb, speaking on Mary's behalf, stoutly maintains that she categorically denies leaking classified information to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Dana Priest, at the Washington Post who broke the CIA prison story. Evidently, although fired from her position with the CIA, McCarthy has not been indicted.

One could easily suspect Karl Rove's sneaky hand in this evilly Machiavellian plot to discredit the 61-year-old McCarthy whose retirement, after a long and honorable career, had already been processed! It was to be effective in ten days! Yet, before it could occur, this scheming contrivance of firing her was enacted by Bush's Bullies.

It is typical Bush regime strategy to blacken the sterling character of honorable citizens. By stealthily focusing the heat on honest brokers, the stench of their own dastardly deeds is camouflaged.

I've never personally met Mary McCarthy. But I'd like to. I'd like to shake her hand and thank her for a job well done. And, like Ray McGovern, thank her for being an "unusually courageous officer willing to take considerable personal risk in order to help democracy work".
The Remarkable Mary McCarthy © 2006 Chaeli Lee Sullivan