'Saving His Sorry Political Ass'

The Leaker-In-Chief has his CIA chief out there polygraphing CIA officers to try and keep us from learning about all his violations of the law and the Constitution. Anything to avoid impeachment. Last week CIA veteran Mary McCarthy was fired for "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence", although exactly what she is alleged to have leaked is in doubt. Originally it was claimed that she was WaPo reporter Dana Priest's source for her story on Bush's illegal, immoral, and shameful secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. Today's WaPo says she denied being Priest's source, and that the CIA agrees: "a senior intelligence official confirmed yesterday that she is not believed to have played a central role in The Post's reporting on the secret prisons." [N.b., if she wasn't Dana Priest's source, why wouldn't the Washington Post, Priest's employer, just tell us that? Or would that be violating some tenet of journamalism?]

The corporate media reports McCarthy's firing as somehow the equivalent of the outing of Valerie Plame. There is no nuance in their reporting. A leak is a leak is a leak, and the subject of the leak or the intent of the leak is not something they analyze.

That is, of course, bullshit. Larry Johnson (former CIA agent himself) has the pithiest take on the difference:

Larry Johnson at TPM Cafe: Between Conscience and Unconscionable

There is a fundamental moral and ethical difference between someone who leaks information in order to serve the public good and someone, like George Bush, who authorizes leaks only for the purpose of saving his sorry political ass.