CIA's Mary McCarthy: Whistleblower or Leaker?

Who's Sorry Now?

According to RedState, folks are apologizing for Mary McCarthy...we think not.

Whistleblower, leaker...it's like libs and righties....each side is convinced that they're right. Our observation is this: What's going on in the name of American Democracy is slightly off kilter...we have to rub our eyes sometimes to see if we still live in America.

Example: The "heckler" incident...the woman was charged Friday in federal court with "willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening and harassing a foreign official." She shouted in Chinese and in English: "President Bush, stop him from killing" and "President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong." Is that a threat? Really? Hmmmm....so if you say something similar you'll be charged with a Federal crime. Wow.

Back to the CIA whistleblower/leaker issue: So....RedState says this: "...I beg to differ. I can think of at least one alternative: Don't leak classified information. We do not, after all, have any serious way to quantify what is a good leak and what is a bad one (except that some people appear to think that a good leak is one that harms Republicans), so perhaps it is a good idea to not leak when something is marked "CLASSIFIED." Yes, I know, there will be those who protest and say that with this rule in place, no one will ever learn anything about the evil that lurks in the heart of some government officials. "

And NYT says this: "On Thursday, the C.I.A. fired Ms. McCarthy, 61, accusing her of leaking information to reporters about overseas prisons operated by the agency in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks. But despite Ms. McCarthy's independent streak, some colleagues who worked with her at the White House and other offices during her intelligence career say they cannot imagine her as a leaker of classified information.
As a senior National Security Council aide for intelligence from 1996 to 2001, she was responsible for guarding some of the nation's most important secrets.
"We're talking about a person with great integrity who played by the book and, as far as I know, never deviated from the rules," said Steven Simon, a security council aide in the Clinton administration who worked closely with Ms. McCarthy."

We're thinking there's a back-story here. "...Here's some revealing info from someone who used to work for Mary in the CIA, Larry Johnson: am struck by the irony that Mary McCarthy may have been fired for blowing the whistle and ensuring that the truth about an abuse was told to the American people. There is something potentially honorable in that action; particularly when you consider that George Bush authorized Scooter Libby to leak misleading information for the purpose of deceiving the American people about the grounds for going to war in Iraq. "