Council Post April 28th, 2006

For the first time in months, my Council Posting isn’t late. Glory be! On the other hand, my entry, which I thought clever and diverting, didn’t even register on the scale. Fell right off into the Pit of No Votes. Well, no one ever accused me of being a consistently interesting writer…though I wouldn’t object too strenuously if they did.

On the Council side, Right Wing Nut House wisely recycled a post he’d written for The American Thinker. In Defend Dissent: Punish the Leakers, Rick wades in with scimitars in both hands. Dismissing John Kerry, “the celebrity traitor,” he says —

Like a bad penny, we just can’t seem to rid ourselves of the irksome presence of John Kerry.

Ostensibly still a Senator, (although you’d be hard pressed to come up with anything noteworthy the former Presidential candidate has ever done in that august body and did I mention that he once served in Viet Nam?) Kerry pops up like a Jack-in-the-Box every time an issue arises that gives him the opportunity to prove himself to the group of rabid, unbalanced, deranged Bush bashers who now officially make up the base of the Democratic party.

In a speech on Saturday given at historic Faneuil Hall, the Massachusetts Senator helped prove to us all over again how much the Lord really does care about America when He denied this man’s overweening ambition and gargantuan hubris by repudiating his claim to the Presidency…

That was delivered deftly with his left hand. Then leaping on to the table, he took a swipe with his right hand at “Loose Lips” McCarthy:

Mary McCarthy is not some selfless, conscience-ridden bureaucrat who was driven to leak a top secret CIA program out of patriotic devotion. She was, in effect, a mole for the Democratic party ensconced in one of the most sensitive jobs at the Agency. The fact that she and her husband gave nearly $10,000 to John Kerry’s campaign (including a revealing $5,000 donation to the Ohio Democratic party less than a month before the election) should lay to rest the silly notion that McCarthy was anything but Democratic party apparatchik.

Synchronistically, the winner on the non-Council side dealt with the same subject. I will admit, with some salvaged pride, that while my own wee post failed to register on the Watcher’s Richter scale, I did submit this winner: In From The Cold.

Spook 86 (for that is his nic), describes McCarthy’s long, Icarus-like fall from grace. ‘Tis not pretty, but it is predictable. The fascinating thing is that 86 knows how the system works and he lays the body out on the table for the autopsy:

As we noted previously, the career of fired CIA agent Mary McCarthy apparently suffered a major setback with the end of the Clinton Administration. Until that time, Ms. McCarthy had been on the intelligence equivalent of the career fast-track; in barely a decade, she climbed from obscure analyst at CIA Headquarters to the National Intelligence Officer for Warning (NIO), a feat of bureaucratic advancement that it simply stunning. A protégé of legendary CIA officer Charlie Allen (who now runs the intel shop at the Department of Homeland Security), Ms. McCarthy catapulted over hundreds of more senior officers until she reached the apex of her career in the Clinton White House, as Director of Intelligence Programs--hand-picked by none other than National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.

But with the arrival of the Bush team, McCarthy was apparently banished back to Langley, and wound up with a rather mundane posting to boot. According to press accounts, Ms. McCarthy was working in the agency’s Inspector General (IG) directorate at the time she was fired. As a member of the IG staff, McCarthy’s duties included the investigation of complaints by agency staffers, and helped ensure organizational compliance with the rules, regulations and statutory laws that govern intelligence organizations.

While the work of an IG is important, it is not viewed as a plum assignment, nor a job suitable for someone on the fast-track. The agency won’t divulge Ms. McCarthy’s specific duties at the time for her firing, but there is no indication that she was serving as the CIA IG, the highest-ranking official within that directorate. If that’s the case, then McCarthy must been demoted at some time or the other. A National Intelligence Officer (the job she held in the mid-1990s) is the equivalent of a four-star general, with an Senior Executive Service (SES) grade and salary to match. It is quite likely that Ms. McCarthy was still an SES while working in the IG office, but that assignment represented a substantial demotion from her salad days as an NIO, and as a senior staffer for Bill Clinton.

Does Ms. McCarthy not resemble the disgruntled Generals who whined their way through their talking points recently? Shortly they, too, will fall into the Pit of Silence with my uncherished post. Given that they are essentialy cut off at the knees now, it will be an easy fall.

However, we will be seeing more of Ms. McCarthy. Lots more. We will be thoroughly sick of her before the whole thing is done.

So: two winning posts, both dealing with dissent vs. betrayal. Sometimes you do wonder if the Clintonistas can tell the difference.

The rest of the posts are at the Watcher’s. He’ll leave the light on for you.