Fired CIA Spy Gave to Kerry and Democrats

This rather long post by Flopping Aces ties Mary McCarthy, the fired (and soon to be indicted) CIA analyst to:

Richard Clarke, Sandy Berger, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wesley Clark, General Anthony Zinni, and more to come.

Here's very insightful commentary (read the whole thing) from Belmont Club:

Here's the problem as I see it. The leaky and politicized intelligence system has made it difficult to judge the truth value of any proposition. Did the Plame affair damage national security? Did Ms. McCarthy's actions damage national security? Is there someone lying dead in a gutter because somebody talked? The answer to those questions about the intelligence agencies is going to be answered by the intelligence agencies themselves. And so we come full circle to the modern version of the Cretan Paradox: which asserts that when a Cretan says 'all Cretans are liars' all logical roads lead to a contradiction. How then to know the truth about the lies? When intelligence agencies -- and I use that word broadly to encompass the press, which is the civilian intelligence system -- are politicized, then even our knowledge about our knowledge becomes uncertain. We are in a Wilderness of Mirrors indeed.

Here's an interesting observation from Hold the Mayo:

Compare And Contrast

Scenario 1: Government employee gives possibly classified information to a journalist who reprints the information with little or no impact to national security.

Result: Other journalists outraged over the leak demand an investigation to determine its source. This leads to Special Prosecutor investigation resulting in a procedural indictment unrelated to the original subject of the investigation. No charges filed in the investigation of the leak.

Scenario 2: Government employee gives journalist highly classified information regarding on-going anti-terrorist intelligence operation. Journalists print information causing significant national security impact.

Result: Journalists win coveted award.

And ACE OF SPADES makes this fearless forecast:

Here comes what I like to call "The Weekend of Important Distinctions."

Libby leaked something that hurt a Bush critic. Bad leak; one that was completely illegal and improper; he should rot in jail and/or Hell, not necessarily in that order.

McCarthy leaked something that hurt Bush himself. Good leak; one that was necessary for the public to fully understand the dirty and illegal actions the government is taking in its name; the investigation of McCarthy is nothing short of an, um, McCarthyesque witch-hunt, possibly to distract us from the war in Iraq and Bush's flagging popularity.

Everyone will be saying the same fucking thing.

And it's not the DNC talking points. There's no coordination here. The MSM just all think exactly alike, and precisely the same as the DNC's communication squad.

Comments from Strata-sphere:

Two days before the embassy bombings, Clarke’s staff wrote that Bin Ladin “has invested in and almost certainly has access toVX produced at a plant in Sudan.”43 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 that “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.”

Michelle Malkin chimes in.