More on Mary McCarthy, Kerry Partisan in the CIA

[Corlyss_D]

What I want to know is this: if the allegedly professional civil service is going to behave like flunkies in the spoils/patronage system did, why don't we stop kidding ourselves that we have a "professional" civil service and return to the spoils/patronage system so we'll all know exactly what the game is and what the rules are?

MCCARTHY’S POLITICAL DONATIONS [Andy McCarthy]

I substantially agree with Jonah’s point that the extraordinary amount of money at issue here is relevant but not dispositive when it comes to divining Mary McCarthy’s motives. But I do think it’s highly relevant – not just another fact in a firmament of facts.

That’s because McCarthy’s situation cannot be considered in a vacuum. Even with McCarthy considered alone, we are not talking about a single leak – the reporting indicates that she may be a serial leaker, the black-sites story being only the most prominent instance. But the broader context here is an intelligence community that was, quite brazenly, leaking in a manner designed to topple a sitting president. A big question here -- maybe not for purposes of guilt under the espionage act, but for the more important policy issue of a politicized CIA -- is whether she was part of a campaign that was grossly inappropriate for the intelligence community to engage in.

Remember Michael Scheuer, aka “Anonymous.” It is simply dumbfounding that, as an intelligence officer heading up the bin Laden team (i.e., the unit targeting the number one, active national security problem facing the country) he was permitted by the CIA to write books about what he was doing. He has indicated, though, that it was fine with the agency as long as he was slamming the Bush administration.

Valerie Plame Wilson thought the whole Bush administration notion that Saddam was trying to arm up with nukes was crazy. She maneuvered to have, not an objective analyst, but her husband – with no WMD expertise but an enemy of the president’s policy – sent to Niger, whence he returned and wrote a highly partisan, misleading and damaging op-ed in the NYTimes about the Bush administration’s case for toppling Saddam … which op-ed he was permitted by the self-same CIA to write notwithstanding that his trip was (and should have been) classified.

All the while, there has been a steady drumbeat from the former intelligence officers – who anonymously fill Seymour Hersh books when they are not venting their spleens on the record – attacking every aspect of the administration’s handling of the war on terror.

This has all been steady since 9/11. But it was especially frenetic in the run-up to the 2004 election (and the flavor of it ran throughout the 9/11 Commission hearings and, to a somewhat more muted extent, in the Commission’s final report). The transparent purpose of it was to get Senator Kerry elected.

Now we find that an intelligence officer who was leaking information very damaging to Bush was a Kerry backer to a degree that was extraordinary for a single person on a government salary, and, even more extraordinarily, gave $5K of her own money to Democrats in the key swing state (Ohio) that, in the end, did actually decide the election.

From where I sit, that’s pretty damn relevant.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/06_04_ ... asp#095696

[Corlyss_D]

April 24, 2006
2006: What About the Senate?
By Jay Cost

The recent election talk from our pundit class has been about the chances of a Democratic takeover of the House. Many expect this. I am open to this possibility; however, as I have written in the past, I think the data favors a Republican retention. I am also open to, and would be interested to read, a thorough argument that supports a Democratic takeover. Many pundits draw this conclusion, but I have yet to read the support necessary for it. In other words, my real objection is not so much to the conclusions of pundits, but to how they have drawn the conclusions. On the path to a declaration for the Democrats, they all stumble.

The biggest type of stumbling block is the systematic underestimation of evidence that cuts against their arguments. At best, many facts of importance, like 2004's 98.8% incumbent retention rate or 2006's incredibly low 4.6% incumbent retirement rate, are mentioned only to be unceremoniously dismissed. This is the sign of poor argumentation. It is not enough to proffer one's case by rallying the supporting facts. One must also handle the opposing facts.

One of these ignored items has to do with the Senate. It is, according to most, out of the Democrats' grasp. I strongly agree with this estimation. For the Democrats to take the Senate, they would have to defeat incumbents in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, Missouri, and Rhode Island; win the open seat in Tennessee; and hold seats against strong challengers in Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey and Washington. This amounts to a sweep of all 10 of National Journal's 10 most vulnerable races. Most would thus admit that the Senate is not on the table; those who make no such admission usually grow silent when asked to explain why they refuse.

The consensus on the Senate is actually a major problem for the consensus on the House. Historically speaking, the House only switches when the Senate switches. In other words, the improbability of a Democratic capture of the Senate is a sign that a capture of the House is improbable. Consider the following.

The 17th Amendment, which mandates the direct election of senators, took effect prior to the 1914 election. Since then, the Senate has changed hands 10 times due to the biannual congressional election. The House of Representatives, on the other hand, has only changed hands 6 times due to the biannual congressional election. (N.B. A 7th switch occurred in the middle of the 72nd Congress. The 1930 elections left the GOP with a slim majority. However, 14 representatives-elect died before the 72nd Congress convened, and the Democrats won enough of the subsequent special elections to take the House. This capture was "ratified" in the 1932 elections, which would have delivered Congress to the Democrats even if this tragedy had not occurred. So, let us henceforth identify 1932 as the 7th time that the House has switched since 1918.)

Furthermore, of these 7 times the House has switched, the Senate has also switched. Not only does the Senate switch more frequently, it always switches with the House. A switch in the Senate, therefore, seems to be a necessary, but insufficient, condition for a switch in the House. Conversely, a switch in the House is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for a switch in the Senate. In other words, when the House has switched, the Senate has always followed; however, when the Senate has switched, the House has not necessarily followed. Thus, historically speaking, two scenarios are possible: the Senate alone changes or both the House and the Senate change.

Is this simply historical coincidence, or is a causal logic driving the correlation? A pattern that holds over 46 observations without exception is probably not random. Most important, however, is that this sort of pattern coheres with what we already know about Senate and House elections: namely, House elections are much less susceptible to national trends than Senate elections. This is the case for several reasons.

First, senators lack the ability to draw district lines to minimize opposing partisans. Second, Senate challengers tend to be more qualified and better funded than House challenges. Third, these challengers can use campaign resources more efficiently. Many House challengers cannot efficiently spend money on television advertisements because it is wasted on voters in other districts; however, with Senate elections, there are efficient ad markets. Fourth, senators are less able to cultivate close relationships with constituents - they lack the requisite geographical proximity. Fifth, senators are much more visible to the public; whereas House members can operate in the Capitol without much scrutiny, constituents tend to be more aware of their senators' activities.

Thus, Senate elections are contests where the partisan division is more equal, the average voter has a more balanced view of the candidates, and has more information about the issues in the race. Like House races, they tend to be referenda on incumbents; Senate incumbents are simply less favored. It is thus no surprise that senators' reelection rate is consistently lower than representatives'. It also no surprise that control of the Senate is more susceptible to change. If individual senators face enhanced competition, so does their partisan caucus.

Why, then, does the Senate always switch with the House? National political moods do not usually translate into changes in party control in the House. The reason for this is that individual members of the House are fairly invulnerable to that mood. However, they are not perfectly invulnerable. If the mood is sufficiently strong or sufficiently directed against one party, the House incumbency advantage is not enough. Since the House incumbency advantage is greater than the Senate advantage - we should expect the Senate to switch when the House switches. If the mood is strong enough to change the House, it will be strong enough to change the Senate. On the flip side, we can expect relatively milder political moods to change the more competitive Senate, but not the House.

This implies yet another point, always unmentioned among pundits inclined toward a Democratic takeover of the House. Contrary to the original intention of the Framers, the House is more insulated from the public than the President or the Senate. This is not because the House has altered its relationship with the public. It is because other branches have evolved while the House has remained the same. By original design, the Senate and the President were intended to be largely non-democratic institutions. However, by 1828 the President had become a fully democratic officer. The Senate became directly democratic in 1914. Elections for both evolved into kinds of referenda on the state of the union (in presidential elections, the contests are indeed referenda; in Senate elections, they are more like effective ones, thanks to the reduced incumbency advantage). This never happened with House elections. The House's relationship with the public has thus not changed much since the founding. It has never been a national assembly like the House of Commons. It has always been the meeting place of the representatives of different parts of the nation. It is democratic, but it remains democratic in the way that the Framers envisioned democracy in America.

Of course, one might respond, this argument could just as easily predict that both the House and the Senate will flip this year. The error that pundits are making, according to this line, is not with the House but with the Senate. Both are vulnerable. I do not find this compelling. One of the reasons pundits are so prone to write off the Senate is that they know more about the individual elections (this, by the way, is in keeping with senators' reduced incumbency advantage - individual senators are better known). They have a better sense of the electoral landscape, and therefore can appreciate that a net of six is prohibitively difficult. However, pundits know less of the specifics of House contests; thus, the House seems more promising. They cannot name the seats the GOP would have to lose to lose the House. If they could, they would find themselves naming many members most think are secure. A switch of the House still seems plausible, in other words, only because details are lacking.

History indicates that when the House switches, the Senate switches, too. Our knowledge of congressional elections implies that this is not coincidence. Accordingly, we can conclude that the safety of the GOP Senate strongly implies the safety of the GOP House. Further, we can issue a challenge to pundits who think the Democrats will take the House. They have an additional burden of proof: they must either indicate that the Senate will switch or why 2006 will be the first exception to a 92-year rule.
Jay Cost, creator of the Horse Race Blog, is a doctoral candidate of political science at the University of Chicago. He can be reached at jay@realclearpolitics.com

© 2000-2006 RealClearPolitics.com All Rights Reserved
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... enate.html at April 25, 2006 - 12:52:36 AM CDT

[Corlyss_D]

April 25, 2006, 12:21 p.m.
If Mary McCarthy is Guilty, Will She Be Punished?
There’s a real chance the answer is no.

A bill set to go to the floor in the House tomorrow could make it easier for the nation’s intelligence agencies to punish leakers without relying on the criminal justice system to prosecute them.

The Intelligence Authorization Act of 2007, a far-reaching measure that outlines the intelligence community’s top priorities, contains a section ordering the Director of National Intelligence to study “the feasibility of revoking the pensions of personnel in the intelligence community who commit unauthorized disclosures of classified information.”

Although the bill was drafted long before the CIA’s dismissal of analyst Mary McCarthy, lawmakers say the McCarthy case adds urgency to the issue of punishing leakers. Specifically, some members of Congress are concerned that, even if McCarthy is guilty of leaking classified information, the government will have no effective way to punish her.

Last week, the CIA fired an officer — identified by others as McCarthy — who had, according to a CIA statement, admitted to “unauthorized discussions with the media in which the officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information.” McCarthy denies the allegation; her lawyer, Ty Cobb, tells National Review Online flatly that, “She did not leak any classified information.”

The obvious way for the government to pursue the case would be for the Justice Department to prosecute. But it is not clear whether the Department, which has spent two and a half years probing the leak of CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity, will undertake such an investigation. CIA officials notified the Department of the McCarthy situation back in January, but there is speculation that, since the firing of McCarthy rested in large part on her failure of a CIA-administered polygraph test — evidence that would not be admissible in court — the Justice Department might ultimately decide not to take action against her.

The other way in which McCarthy, a longtime government employee, might be punished would be for her pension to be revoked. But it appears that will not happen either, at least in the absence of any criminal prosecution.

The CIA refuses to comment on McCarthy, but the Washington Post reported today that a senior intelligence official “confirmed that McCarthy was preparing to retire and said she will retain her government pension despite the agency’s decision.”

If the Justice Department does not prosecute, and if McCarthy’s pension is unaffected, and if her firing means that she left her job just days before she planned to go anyway — in that case, McCarthy, if she is indeed guilty, will likely escape any serious punishment.

“People retire, so the threat of being fired is not that big,” says Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry, who has studied the issue as a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “But if you have an administrative penalty that threatens their pension, maybe that will get their attention.”

The House Intelligence Committee’s action stems in part from a letter written to both the House and Senate intelligence committees by Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on November 4, 2005, two days after the Washington Post published the CIA “secret prisons” story for which McCarthy was allegedly a source. “We request that you immediately initiate a joint investigation into the possible release of classified information to the media alleging that the United States government may be detaining and interrogating terrorists at undisclosed locations abroad,” the letter said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee did not take action on the request, but the House committee, under chairman Pete Hoekstra, did. It does not appear that the committee investigated the actual leak in the secret prisons matter, but rather looked for ways in which intelligence agencies could more effectively deal with leakers. In doing so, they studied what Thornberry calls “administrative remedies that are easier to apply than criminal penalties.”

“One of the suggestions that has been made to us is, you could have a contractural provision that says you are not going to release classified information as part of your employment contract,” Thornberry continues. In that case, in dealing with a leaker, intelligence agencies would have “more of an administrative, contractural case to prove, rather than a beyond-reasonable-doubt criminal standard.”

The intelligence bill orders the Director of National Intelligence to have a report on the issue ready within 90 days of the law’s passage.

— Byron York NR White House correspondent

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200604251221.asp

[Lilith]

"A bill set to go to the floor in the House tomorrow could make it easier for the nation’s intelligence agencies to punish leakers without relying on the criminal justice system to prosecute them."

Does this include a President like Bush who authorizes leaks of classified info? One can only hope...............................

[Ralph]

"A bill set to go to the floor in the House tomorrow could make it easier for the nation’s intelligence agencies to punish leakers without relying on the criminal justice system to prosecute them."

Does this include a President like Bush who authorizes leaks of classified info? One can only hope...............................

[Corlyss_D]

"A bill set to go to the floor in the House tomorrow could make it easier for the nation’s intelligence agencies to punish leakers without relying on the criminal justice system to prosecute them."

Does this include a President like Bush who authorizes leaks of classified info? One can only hope...............................

You can't possibly be as dumb as this question/comment makes you sound.

[pizza]

The Weekly Standard

The New McCarthyism
A look at the CIA leaker's independent streak and the al-Shifa intelligence.
by Thomas Joscelyn
04/25/2006 12:00:00 PM


THE MEDIA has been quick to lionize Mary McCarthy, the recently fired 61-year-old CIA analyst who allegedly leaked classified information to the Washington Post's Dana Priest. According to several recent accounts, it is not clear what information McCarthy was accused of leaking. But on Sunday, the New York Times ran a tribute to McCarthy.In it we learn from a gaggle of former intelligence officials that McCarthy is a woman of "great integrity," and "quite a good, substantive person." Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst who told us not to worry about the threat of terrorism two years before 9/11, even tells us that she is a "sacrificial lamb."

Adulation from fellow colleagues aside, the lynchpin of the Times piece is that McCarthy has an "independent streak." She is no partisan, the Times wants you to know, and she has questioned the use of intelligence by both Democratic and Republican administrations. To demonstrate this independence, the Times piece leads with the claim that McCarthy bucked the Clinton administration in August 1998 when she objected to the destruction of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant suspected of doubling as a front for al Qaeda's WMD efforts. The plant, named Al-Shifa, was one of two retaliatory targets chosen by the Clinton administration in the aftermath of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

But in recounting the story of al-Shifa and Mary McCarthy's role in evaluating the intelligence surrounding the facility, the Times leaves out nearly every salient fact--including evidence that the Clinton administration used to tie Saddam's Iraq to al Qaeda.

IT IS TRUE that McCarthy at first objected to the strike on al-Shifa. This was made clear in the 9-11 Commission's report (p. 117):

Two days before the embassy bombings, Clarke's staff wrote that Bin Ladin "has invested in and almost certainly has access to VX produced at a plant in Sudan." Senior State Department officials believed that they had received a similar verdict independently, though they and Clarke's staff were probably relying on the same report. Mary McCarthy, the NSC senior director responsible for intelligence programs, initially cautioned Berger that the "bottom line" was "we will need much better intelligence on this facility before we seriously consider any options." She added that the link between Bin Ladin and al Shifa was "rather uncertain at this point." Berger has told us that he thought about what might happen if the decision went against hitting al Shifa, and nerve gas was used in a New York subway two weeks later. [Emphasis Added]

The Times left out, however, that McCarthy had changed her tune by April 2000. As Daniel Benjamin, a fellow NSC staffer, wrote in 2004:

The report of the 9/11 Commission notes that the National Security staff reviewed the intelligence in April 2000 and concluded that the CIA's assessment of its intelligence on bin Laden and al-Shifa had been valid; the memo to Clinton on this was cosigned by Richard Clarke and Mary McCarthy, the NSC senior director for intelligence programs, who opposed the bombing of al-Shifa in 1998. The report also notes that in their testimony before the commission, Al Gore, Sandy Berger, George Tenet, and Richard Clarke all stood by the decision to bomb al-Shifa. [Emphasis Added]

IN ITS LIONIZATION of McCarthy, the Times did not report that she had changed her mind on al-Shifa and fallen in line with her fellow NSC staffers. Nor, did the Times report that every top Clinton administration official who was involved in the decision to strike al -Shifa stands by that decision today. Instead, the Times reports, "Clinton administration officials conceded that the hardest evidence used to justify striking the plant was a single soil sample that seemed to indicate the presence of a chemical used in making VX gas."

But, the intelligence surrounding al-Shifa was not limited to a single soil sample. Instead, the Clinton administration relied on multiple threads of intelligence, all of which pointed to Iraqi collaboration with al Qaeda in Sudan.

First, al-Shifa was not the only suspected facility in Sudan. It was merely the easiest target. As John Gannon, a former deputy director of the CIA, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD, "The consistent stream of intelligence at that time said it wasn't just al-Shifa. There were three different structures in the Sudan. There was the hiring of Iraqis. There was no question that the Iraqis were there. Some of the Clinton people seem to forget that they did make the Iraqi connection."

Second, because the attack on al-Shifa was somewhat controversial, President Clinton authorized the intelligence community to discuss this evidence with the press shortly after the strike. At the time, the Associated Press laid out this evidence in detail: The al-Shifa plant was closely tied to the Sudanese government and to Sudan's "weapons development infrastructure"; bin Laden maintained close ties to the Sudanese government even after his expulsion; "bin Laden had worked with Sudan in testing and developing chemical weapons and was known to be seeking chemical weapons capability for the fundamentalist Islamic groups he financed"; Iraq was a customer of the plant (under a U.N. Oil-for-food contract, by the way) and, thus, had a pretext for sending "Iraqi officials who were linked to that country's chemical weapons program" to Khartoum and "help start up the plant."

But most important, we learned that "telephone intercepts collected by the National Security Agency included contacts between senior Shifa officials and Emad Al Ani, known as the father of Iraq's chemical weapons program."

SO THE STRONGEST PIECE OF EVIDENCE in the Clinton administration's hands was not "a single soil sample."

As noted previously, every former top Clinton administration still defends the decision to strike al-Shifa. Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen defended the decision in his testimony before the 9-11 Commission. Apparently referencing the NSA intercepts, Cohen testified,

There was a good reason for this confidence [in the intelligence surrounding al-Shifa] including multiple, reinforcing elements of information ranging from links that the organization that built the facility had both with bin Laden and with the leadership of the Iraqi chemical weapons program . . .

Richard Clarke defended the intelligence linking Iraqi scientists to al Qaeda in the months following the strike. The 9-11 Commission's report adds that Clarke "for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons." McCarthy's fellow NSC staffers Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon give an impassioned defense of the strike on al-Shifa in their book The Age of Sacred Terror. Not to mention that the CIA reported to Congress that Iraq was working on chemical and possibly biological weapons programs in Sudan every year from 1998 through 2002. The language used in 1999 was typical:

In the WMD arena, Sudan has been developing the capability to produce chemical weapons for many years. In this pursuit, it has obtained help from entities in other countries, principally Iraq. Given its history in developing CW and its close relationship with Iraq, Sudan may be interested in a BW program as well.

WHERE DOES ALL OF THAT LEAVE US? In a rather bizarre circle of logic. McCarthy's former colleagues Clarke, Benjamin, and Simon argue that: (a) the decision to strike al-Shifa was justified because (b) the intelligence connecting Iraqi chemical weapons experts to al Qaeda's chemical weapons efforts was sound, but (c) this doesn't mean that Iraq and al Qaeda had a significant relationship because (d) somehow this collaboration occurred without either party realizing that it was working with the other

All of which is to say that Mary McCarthy's cohorts on the National Security Council's staff have played games with the intelligence surrounding al-Shifa, Sudan, Iraq, and al Qaeda for years. Maybe they've all got "independent streaks."

Thomas Joscelyn is an economist and writer living in New York.

© Copyright 2006, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... 5uivdz.asp

[Lilith]

"You can't possibly be as dumb as this question/comment makes you sound" - Corlyss
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm sure you made a mistake here Corlyss. I know you meant to say that Bush can't possibly be as dumb as he sounds, didn't you?

[Brendan]

All I can say is she (Ms. McCarthy) seemed very pleasant when we went fishing. Apparently she's an old collegue/friend of my "uncle" Charlie Allen, so when my parents get back from holidays I'll have to grill dad for any background he may have the media do not.

[Corlyss_D]

All I can say is she (Ms. McCarthy) seemed very pleasant when we went fishing. Apparently she's an old collegue/friend of my "uncle" Charlie Allen, so when my parents get back from holidays I'll have to grill dad for any background he may have the media do not.

That's that small internet world again!

You must report your findings here first, before you tell the media.