Comments on: CIA VS THE WHITE HOUSE: THE LONE PARTISAN?

By: Patterico’s Pontifications » Keller and Baquet Issue Joint Pronouncement from on High

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 18:55:26 +0000

[...] Remember Mary McCarthy? She blabbed to the Washington Post’s Dana Priest about alleged secret prisons abroad (never found). She turned out to be a major Democrat partisan and financial contributor, but the L.A. Times didn’t ever tell us about that. Instead, the paper told us that she is not an ideologue. [...]

By: Patterico’s Pontifications » Dana Priest on the Framers’ Approval of Her Actions

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 04:05:40 +0000

[...] P.S. The L.A. Times still isn’t reporting anything of the partisan ties of either woman. There are no new stories about Mary McCarthy since their last deceptive bilge, which implied that she is nonpartisan (by repeating quotes asserting that she is not an “ideologue”), while failing to report the evidence that she is indeed very much a Democrat partisan. You still pretty much have to be in tune with the blogosphere to know about McCarthy’s extensive Democrat partisan ties. [...]

By: Patterico’s Pontifications » L.A. Times: Mary McCarthy Not an Ideologue

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 14:14:30 +0000

[...] This is outrageous. The L.A. Times continues to hide from its readers what media critic Howard Kurtz has called “absolutely relevant information” about Mary McCarthy: her web of connections to prominent Democrats, including sizeable monetary contributions. This, despite the fact that the paper considered analogous information, regarding prominent Swift Vet John O’Neill’s contributions to Republicans, to be worth its own story. What’s worse, today’s story positively seeks to portray her as a pure creature of conscience (my emphasis): Former colleagues described her as cautious and respected. “I thought she was a competent, quiet, good intelligence officer,” said Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who worked with McCarthy. “She was certainly someone you had respect for and saw not as an ideologue or someone who would end up putting herself in this position.” [...]

By: wickedpinto

wickedpinto — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 22:05:27 +0000

I saw her interview on CSPAN about her book about the bosnian “occupation” and I realized she was a selfrighteous idiot outsider making judgements about HUGE organizations, based on small experience.

She’s a reporter, which makes her, by definition “ignorant” because her only job is “asking questions” and the answers she fabricates are either the words of others, like the treasonous mary, or arrogant assumptions about situations based on what she has learned second hand from treasonals people like mary.

All “intel” reporters are stupid.

By: Patterico’s Pontifications » LAT Drops the Ball on the Mary McCarthy Leak Story

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:28:48 +0000

[...] What’s missing from the L.A. Times story? Basically, all of the above. There is no mention of McCarthy’s connection to the Democratic Party — a connection that, Rick Moran ably argues, shows her to be far, far more than a standard contributor. There is no mention of Dana Priest’s connection to leftist causes through her husband. And there is no mention of the fact that the leaked information about “secret prisons” has not been substantiated, at all. Nobody has found them. [...]

By: Pro Cynic

Pro Cynic — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:26:52 +0000

The politics of the CIA leak cases

My job has been so crazy lately that I’ve barely been able to keep half-an-eye on the first firing as a result of a leak from the CIA: that of Mary McCarthy, fired for allegedly leaking the existence of a CIA operation where suspected terrorists were i…

By: steve sturm

steve sturm — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:25:27 +0000

Rick: I just posted that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions regarding Mary the Traitor’s contributions to Kerry and the Democrats, as, for all we know, the contributions might have been from her husband/at her husband’s bequest, they might not have been that much money (on a relative scale) depending on how much money her husband pulls in and that she may have been pressured while at the liberal-leaning CSIS to make contributions to ‘like-minded” candidates.

By: tyk

tyk — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:31:35 +0000

I love my left-wing friends and neighbors (living in a big university town, I have plenty of them) and I wish them all the best — except political power. What annoys us middle of the roaders (and right of the roaders) is, I think, the feeling that they and their policies would endanger our lives. But what the hell, they aren’t in power and so can do no harm. Mary McCarthy, however, does not qualify for this neighborly love if, for personal and partisan advantage, she has compromised our elected government’s efforts to protect all of our lives from those who would kill us and, in fact, have killed about 3,000 of us. Unless she is granted immunity for grand jury testimony, my guess is that she’s in a heep of trouble.

By: rightnumberone

rightnumberone — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 16:59:22 +0000

There is almost no way that Priest could NOT have known that her source was a major Democratic Party fundraiser.

This inconvenient fact was PURPOSELY left out of her story. Why? Because it allows the reader to draw an inference regarding the TRUTH of the story. This is a frequent tactic of Post and NY Times reporters.

They love anonymouse sources because it allows them to hide their own partisanship behind a veil of secrecy. The outing of Mary McCarthy is bad news not JUST for McCarthy, but for the press, because it once again proves that they frequently hide the partisan political affiliations of their sources under the cloak of anonimity.

By: Christopher Fotos

Christopher Fotos — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 16:54:21 +0000

At the very least, we are left with a reporter who knew McCarthy had a political ax to grind which means Ms. Priest either didnâ€™t care or chose not to inform the reader and lessen the negative impact of the story.

With apologies for tooting my own horn, I’ve cross-posted a recap at my own blog & Newsbusters of Dana Priest’s position on the motives of anonymous sources at the CIA. In a live chat Nov. 3, the day after her secret prisons story, we have the following exchange:

Washington, D.C.: Cliff Kincaid writing in “Accuracy in Media” says that your story on secret prisons yesterday “reflects the view of a faction in the agency (CIA) that opposes this policy and wants to use The Post to convey its view publicly. Once again, the secret war against the Bush administration is on display for all to see.”

While I don’t expect you to reveal your sources to us — although go ahead if you want to do so — you should at least be able to tell us if there is any truth to the notion that currently serving CIA officers are trying to undermine the Bushies. Are they?

Dana Priest: I’ve always found this view amusing, and rather convenient for the White House, which likes to point to someone else when it’s own policy decisions don’t work out right or fail to achieve the stated goals (like other administrations, I would add) Most CIA people I’ve met probably voted for George Bush. And the CIA is responsible for executing the war on terror and capturing the vast majority of the terrorist suspects around the world. No one from the CIA and no one who used to be in the CIA proposed that I write the article I did. On the contrary.

I’ll add here that we cannot yet know whether Priest was aware of McCarthy’s political contributions. One would think Priest would at least be informed about a top source’s political leanings–or be almost recklessly uncurious about them.