In another WaPo editorial attempt to defend the indefensible, columnist David Broder makes a startling charge:

The firing of McCarthy, a veteran intelligence officer who had held sensitive administrative posts, came after CIA Director Porter Goss and his White House superiors had ordered an intensive crackdown on leaks to the press.

McCarthy had already initiated steps toward retirement and was apparently only days away from ending her career when she and others were asked to take lie detector tests -- and then she was dismissed.

For the first few days after the action was announced, the agency and the White House let stand the impression that McCarthy had been a source for the stories about secret U.S. detention centers in Europe that won a Pulitzer Prize for The Post's Dana Priest on April 17. But when McCarthy's lawyer said she had no part in that transaction, CIA officials confirmed that was the case -- leaving it unclear exactly what she had done to bring down the punishment.

David Broder is being disingenuous here, and dishonest. He seeks to craft a sentence so that a less-than-thorough reader might infer that the CIA had no evidence that Mary McCarthy leaked information to the press at all (as opposed to the specific Priest story), therefore, "leaving it unclear exactly what she had done to bring down the punishment."

That is a demonstrably false assertion by Broder, and I'm calling him out on it.

Via the NY Times:

The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday defended the firing of Mary O. McCarthy, the veteran officer who was dismissed last week, and challenged her lawyer's statements that Ms. McCarthy never provided classified information to the news mediaÂ…

A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, said: "The officer was terminated for precisely the reasons we have given: unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters. There is no question whatsoever that the officer did both. The officer personally admitted doing both."

And from the very top of the CIA this comes from Director Porter Goss, via ABC News:

In a statement to CIA employees, [CIA Director Porter] Goss said that "a CIA officer has acknowledged having unauthorized discussions with the media, in which the officer knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence, including operational information."

The bold used in both quotes is mine.

Two named CIA officials have stated specifically and vehemently that the CIA officer fired last week (and later identified as Mary McCarthy) was fired for the specific offenses of having improper media contacts and leaking classified information. Furthermore, they change that she admitted to both offenses, and they contend that evidence of such offenses is apparently beyond dispute.

For David Broder to now try to rewrite history by attributing McCarthy's firing as anything other than what it was is dishonest. Broder either needs to apologize to his Washington Post readers for his intentional misdirection, or he must explain how he himself could so easily be fooled. In either event, his credibility is now almost as suspect as that of the disgraced McCarthy.

"Questionable polices" are afoot indeed, and it is time for the spin and misdirection at the Washington Post to stop.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:57 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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I ripped the Washington Post yesterday for a dishonest editorial attacking Porter Goss and the CIA. The Post actually attempted to say it was wrong to fire suspected leaker Mary McCarthy, who may be involved with Dana Priest's Pulitzer Prize-winning article of the CIA prisons, that no one can seem to prove existed.

Well, things just keep getting more interesting with the old "secret prisons" story, and if Dan Riehl is correct, it is a really old secret prisons story, dating back as far as December 26, 2002.

A sample of the potential bombshell from a Riehl World View:

Contrast these two excerpts below published three years apart. The second won a Pulitzer. The first isn't even archived on line.

2002: In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services — notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco — with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means.

2005: A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Notice the quotation marks around rendition above in 2005? A new and extraordinary term? Hardly.

Read it all and draw your own conclusions.

If Dan is correct—and upon reading the case he makes, I have a feeling that he may be—then Dana Priest's Pulitzer Prize was awarded for recycling the content of an article she wrote with Barton Gellman years before.

Perhaps more troubling, it brings up the possibility that Mary McCarthy could have been leaking to the press as far back as 2002.

The plot has indeed thickened.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:32 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Today's Washington Post editorial Bad Targeting was probably left unsigned with the primary goal of protecting the reputation of the wretch assigned to excrete it. You can hardly blame them. If a name were ever assigned to this dunghill of journalistic excuses, the author would forever lose what credibility he or she retains.

The Post sticks with septic certainty to its allegation that the United States has (or had) secret prisons in Europe, even after investigation have found no proof of illegal renditions, and no proof that such prisons ever existed. None.

The Post then has the audacity accuse CIA Director Porter Goss of a "questionable use" his authority, for firing an employee who concealed multiple instances of certainly unethical and possibly illegal acts. "Questionable use?" Brassy words coming from the newspaper that used its bully pulpit to release approximately three hundred articles and editorials on "Plamegate" with many of those calling for Karl Rove's head, with no actual evidence of wrong-doing.

But the most pathetic defense of all that the Post tries to mount is to suggest that Mary McCarthy had multiple illicit contacts with the press out of some sense of patriotism. They would spin this to suggest that Mary McCarthy, who worked in the Inspector General's Office of the Central Intelligence Agency, was unaware of the very real and legal options she would have had under federal whistleblower statutes, specifically the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998. Knowing the intricacies of such laws and the minutia of internal CIA policies regarding the same are among the responsibilities of her office.

If Mary McCarthy thought a real crime was being committed, she had the right—no, the duty—to report it directly to her superiors and/or Congress, and she knew that well. These is no evidence, not one Congressman, not one Senator, who has stepped forward and said that McCarthy attempted to contact them in this matter. Not One.

Instead, Mary McCarthy illicitly and perhaps illegally had contacts with multiple members of the press, including the Post. The Post seeks to uphold the honor of someone who disgraced her position and betrayed her oath as a CIA officer in what turned to be an empty and apparently partisan attack, in hopes of salvaging the reputation of their chamber pot of a Pulitzer.

The Post and McCarthy have failed to shift the blame their indefensible actions, and long may they wallow in their shame.

Note: Grammar mistakes corrected.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:11 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Editor & Publisher is apparently trying some of its own advice, attempting to gin up controversy with the headline, Bush Says He Tried to Avoid War 'To The Max,' Explains How God Shapes His Foreign Policy.

A provocative headline, but a half-truth at best, not that this apparently matters to E&P editor Greg Mitchell, who seems intent on dragging Editor & Publisher into shrieking irrelevance with an overly partisan message.

President Bush did unquestioningly use the phrase "to the max" to describe that he tried his utmost to use diplomacy to solve the crisis with Iraq instead of military means. This is true, as even up until the last minute the United States was willing to consider exile and even immunity for Saddam Hussein and his top officials, only to have just such a deal was rejected by other Arab leaders. While "too the max" is an unfortunately conversational and informal turn of phrase, it is hardly incorrect.

But that is not at the heart of E&P's editorial against the president, his professed Christian faith apparently is:

Bush also explained, in unusually stark terms, how his belief in God influences his foreign policy. "I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true," he said. "One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

"I believe liberty is universal. I believe people want to be free. And I know that democracies do not war with each other."

"Unusually stark terms," you say? By who's estimation?

There is a document that Greg Mitchell could bear reading, written by another group of men who believed in God and liberty, that by E&P standards must be completely unacceptable. It uses such unforgivable language as this:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

God, the "Creator" granting an unalienable right to liberty? What an unforgivable document, this Declaration of Independence that President Bush dares to echo.

I'm certain Editor and Publisher will bravely "explore the ways to confront it," as well.

(h/t: Outside the Beltway)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:03 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I was flipping through the cable channels last night and momentarily came across Keith Olbermann's show, in which he was doing his very best to paint fired CIA leaker Mary O. McCarthy as some sort of a scapegoat fired just before her impending retirement as a warning to others who might dare have the audacity to challenge the Administration. Olbermann, like so many others in the media, seemed willing, even eager to take McCarthy's excuse at face value, even as the media refuses to do anything other than insinuate the very worst about those in the government accused by the media (but not law enforcement) in the Plame and NSA scandals.

Is the media so driven by a partisan desire to be kingmakers these days that it is unable to report events without an inordinate amount of partisan spin?

Apparently.

It be nice for a change to see the media become irate that leaks are so prevalent at the CIA during a war, and that McCarthy got within ten days of escaping the through retirement. Instead, they try to make her a martyr.

Is it any wonder that people increasingly distrust the media?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:27 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, asks the media do what it can to overthrow the Bush Administration. Within legal bounds, of course:

No matter which party they generally favor or political stripes they wear, newspapers and other media outlets need to confront the fact that America faces a crisis almost without equal in recent decades.

Our president, in a time of war, terrorism and nuclear intrigue, will likely remain in office for another 33 months, with crushingly low approval ratings that are still inching lower. Facing a similar problem, voters had a chance to quickly toss Jimmy Carter out of office, and did so. With a similar lengthy period left on his White House lease, Richard Nixon quit, facing impeachment. Neither outcome is at hand this time.

Lacking an impending election, or a real impeachable scandal, what does Mitchell plead?

The alarm should be bi-partisan. Many Republicans fear their president's image as a bumbler will hurt their party for years. The rest may fret about the almost certain paralysis within the administration, or a reversal of certain favorite policies. A Gallup poll this week revealed that 44% of Republicans want some or all troops brought home from Iraq. Do they really believe that their president will do that any time soon, if ever?

Democrats, meanwhile, cross their fingers that Bush doesn't do something really stupid -- i.e. nuke Iran -- while they try to win control of at least one house in Congress by doing nothing yet somehow earning (they hope) the anti-Bush vote.

Meanwhile, a severely weakened president retains, and has shown he is willing to use, all of his commander-in-chief authority, and then some.

What are you asking for, Mr. Mitchell? Are you asking you friends in the professional media to gin up outrage and hysteria, in hopes that in a nation of 300 million... no, you couldn't be.

It seems possible:

I don't have a solution myself now, although all pleas for serious probes, journalistic or official, of the many alleged White House misdeeds should be heeded. But my point here is simply to start the discussion, and urge that the media, first, recognize that the crisis—or, if you want to say, impending crisis -- exists, and begin to explore the ways to confront it.

Start the discussion. Urge the media. Confront Bush. And thenÂ…

Right?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:00 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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A few months ago, I sought a picture of the baby Jesus for a simple post I wanted to put up on Christmas Eve, which eventually came to be this post.

However, an innocuous search for “baby jesus “on Google turned up a disgusting, shocking result.

My post on the subject was mocked by some, and it even earned the coveted Worst Post of the Year: 2005 from Crooks & Liars. Considering the source, I took it all in stride, and held my ground. After all, I was a SEO consultant back in 1997, working search engine results for companies before most of those folks put up their first web pages.

I then forgot about that post and the derisive uproar on the left as other things came into view, until I ran across these posts on The Corner this morning, and it reminded me of the search that I made Christmas Eve. On a lark, I Googled "baby jesus" again:

What's missing from this picture? You guessed it: a certain offensive web site result. In my original post I spent a lot of time arguing:

Google's algorithms are man-made, coded by human programmers, as are any exclusionary protocols. These people ultimately decide if search results are relevant.

Of course, I was wrong... wasn't I?

Therefore this new search result, which has dropped the offensive site from at least the top 50 search results for the words baby jesus, couldn't have been the result of an algorithm change or an exclusionary protocol.

It must be a Good Friday Miracle on Google.

Right?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As allegations of gang rape swirled against Duke University lacrosse players, ESPN and MSNBC were among many news outlets that tried to suggest that alcohol-related misdemeanors were a dark precursor to rape. NPR was one of many media members more than willing to play up the racial angle, exacerbating tension in Durham and elsewhere. Salon was just one news outlet with the apparent intent of stirring up a class struggle. It seems quite a substantial portion of the media had tried and convicted the Duke lacrosse team before the first charge was even filed.

Now that DNA evidence seems to have cleared the lacrosse team of the charges for a forensic perspective, will Ellen Goodman be the spokesperson to apologize on behalf of the media? Goodman wrote four days ago that many bloggers "have only one exercise routine: jumping to conclusions." As she is somehow qualified to judge conclusion jumping in the blogosphere, she is at least equally as qualified to judge her friends in the media when they are obviously guilty of making the exact same mistake for a longer period of time.

Does anyone think she'll have the integrity to do so?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:55 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Please, tell us more about how the mainstream media has more professionalism and credibility than bloggers, will you?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:55 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman writes:

I AM SURE that Jill Carroll and her family are too busy inhaling the sweet spring air of freedom to spend time sniffing out the pollution in the blogosphere. Anyone who spent three months imagining the grimmest fate for this young journalist in the hands of terrorists can't get too upset when a little Internet posse goes after her scalp.

Nevertheless, this is not a good moment for the bustling, energetic Wild West of the new Internet media. Remember when a former CBS executive described bloggers as guys in pajamas writing in their living rooms? Well, it seems that many have only one exercise routine: jumping to conclusions.

It seems Goodman is breaking quite a sweat herself.

Goodman smears large swathes of the blogosphere based upon cherry-picked comments from just two specific bloggers out of more than 33.5 million (as tracked by Technorati), along with commentary from Debbie Schlussel, who while having a blog, also belongs to Goodman's print media as a "frequent New York Post and Jerusalem Post columnist" according to her bio.

Goodman misrepresents the blogosphere, as the vast majority of blogs on both the political left and right did not write about Jill Carroll to "go after her scalp" as Goodman contends. The overwhelimng majority on the left and right defended Carroll, myself included, many urging a wait-and-see approach, strongly suspecting her comments were made under duress. A relative handful did attack Carroll, but these bloggers were hardly representative of the greater whole.

Implying that the blogosphere in general want to attack Carroll is every bit as disingenuous on Goodman's part as is someone else saying that most Boston Globe columnists are dishonest because of the plagiarism of Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith.

Then again, maybe misrepresenting the work of others is the exercise of choice among columnists at the Boston Globe.

A real neat thing about bloggers that Ellen Goodman should know about is that we are notoriously self-correcting when we're wrong.

Let's see if she can meet our standards.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:14 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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This morning, a U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy reported problems after takeoff and crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The plane broke into three large sections, with the nose and tail assembly separating from the fuselage. There are survivors, and perhaps miraculously, there are no confirmed fatalities at this time.

CNN's coverage of the crash provides us with this gem of information about the C-5:

The C-5 can carry 270,000 tons of cargo almost 2,500 miles on one load of fuel. The C-5's wingspan is 28 feet wider than a 747 and the military jet is 16 feet longer than the civilian airliner.

270,000 tons? Wow. That's impressive, especially when considering that the massive Iowa class battleships, at 887 feet, weigh less than 60,000 tons when fully loaded. Is CNN trying to say that a single C-5 can carry four battleships with room left over, or are the much-vaunted multiple layers of editorial oversight in the professional media not all it is cracked up to be?

Here's a hint, CNN: try 270,000 pounds, not 270,000 tons.

I report, you deride.

Correction: Dover is in Delaware, not Maryland. I blame daylight savings time for the error...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:42 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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