Where's the outrage over the new Mc Carthyism?

David Reinhard of the Portland Oregonian is one of my favorite columnist. Today he has a real winner :

If you're part of the America that believes we're in a war and that this war on terror is not one of those metaphorical wars (the war on drugs or obesity), the firing of CIA official Mary McCarthy is a big story. If you're an old-fashioned sort who thinks government workers shouldn't leak classified information to the media in the middle of a war, leaking operational secrets probably seems outrageous, even traitorous. But, if the war on terror is just one story among many or if national security leaks advance your political and professional interests -- well, who cares?

Oh, you have to cover the story, but don't get carried away. Give it short shrift. Don't turn this into an extended carnival of breathless verbiage a la Abu Ghraib or Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson or other stories-of-the-month. Do all you can to rehabilitate the leaker. ("Colleagues Say C.I.A. Analyst Played by Rules" was The New York Times' headline.)

Such kid-gloves treatment comes when you're profiled by papers that have just won Pulitzer prizes by taking it upon themselves to publicize top secret programs and damage U.S. national security in the middle of a war. You're cast as a woman of principle, a dissenter with a "higher loyalty," rather than someone who may have violated her secrecy oath and damaged national security in wartime. But it's deeply offensive. Instead of gussying up McCarthy or brushing off the story, we ought to see a little outrage and an effort to connect the dots? McCarthy has denied she leaked the secret CIA prisons story, but her case is ripe for investigation. The CIA's been conducting its own covert op against the Bush White House for years, with leaks the weapon of choice. Leak probes are notoriously difficult, but now we have a name, and that name is telling.

Yes, there's something about Mary. She was no ordinary career CIA officer. First, she served on the National Security Council staff in the Clinton White House. The man who hired her was Rand Beers, who went on to become John Kerry's foreign policy adviser in 2004. Indeed, she replaced Beers as special assistant to Clinton when he moved to another job. She was hired by Sandy Berger, national security adviser who later pleaded guilty to stealing documents while preparing to testify before the 9/11 Commission. There are still more dots to connect. The New York Times noted McCarthy's $2,000 campaign contribution to John Kerry, but the dollars didn't end there. "JustOneMinute" blogger Tom Maguire looked at the public records and discovered McCarthy had donated $5,000 to the Democratic Party in the key 2004 battleground state of Ohio. Fascinating, no?

All of which may suggest motive. Or maybe not. She may have leaked for the highest of reasons; and her motives, partisan, professional or constitutional, may reflect those of a leaky subculture at the CIA.

In the end, however, her motives don't really matter. Even if she leaked classified material for the highest of reasons -- she believed something was an affront to the Constitution or the wrong weapon in the terror war -- it couldn't make those actions understandable and even noble. She violated her secrecy agreements if not the law.

Ah, but what about President Bush's "leaking" of classified information through "Scooter" Libby? Isn't there a double standard here? We've heard a lot of this chitchat lately. Democrats have given it a go in the Sunday talk show segments on Mary McCarthyism, but this really is a reflection of just how retrograde our polarized debates have become.

When any president decides to declassify classified information -- and presidents have the inherent authority to do so -- the information is no longer classified. In brief, there's a difference between a president declassifying material and unauthorized government workers deciding, on their own and in secret, to declassify top secret programs. Also, Bush declassified material in the National Intelligence Estimate in order to correct the misrepresentations Wilson was making about his trip to Niger -- misrepresentations the declassified NIE material, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the British Butler Commission reports establish. That's why The Washington Post called the Bush-Libby leak "a good leak."

Oh, two more perhaps connectable dots: McCarthy and Wilson were on the National Security Council staff at the same time. For anyone interested