First off, The Politburo Diktat has an excellent matrix that continues to grow showing the connections to Mary McCarthy:

Click on the picture for full size.

Does it remind you of anything? Maybe the Swift Boat graphic the MSM was drooling over as that story unfolded.

At that time the political connections and contributions were relevant to the story, so says the MSM. But the contributions given to a specific party, from a person who is accused of leaking classified information that has damaged our national security is not considered relevant now. Why? Could it because she gave to the party that is opposite of Bush?

Could the hypocrisy and bias be anymore blatant?

Earlier today the CIA reiterated that they fired McCarthy for precisely the reason given earlier, leaking classified information:

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 while no charges have been brought against her yet it appears Dean and his Deaniacs are setting up a fund to help out the traitor:

Perhaps that’s why the Howard Dean and others at the Democrat National Committee are looking to some of their donors to set up a legal defense fund for McCarthy.

“If Scooter Libby can have a legal defense fund and website, then McCarthy should have one too,” says a DNC staffer. “The DNC wouldn’t set it up, we’d have some of our donors do it on the outside. There are plenty of consultants willing to help on this one, we think.”

Meanwhile, the WSJ has an editorial out today which nails the MSM and the left for their continuing hypocrisy involving leaks:

Fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy went on offense Monday, denying through her lawyer that she has done anything wrong. But the agency is standing by its claim that she was dismissed last week because she “knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence.” It has been reported that one of her media contacts was Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, who just won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the so-called “secret” prisons that the CIA allegedly used to house top level al Qaeda detainees in Eastern Europe.

We’re as curious as anyone to see how Ms. McCarthy’s case unfolds. But this would appear to be only the latest example of the unseemly symbiosis between elements of the press corps and a cabal of partisan bureaucrats at the CIA and elsewhere in the “intelligence community” who have been trying to undermine the Bush Presidency.

The existence of this intelligence insurgency first came to light in a major way with former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote a New York Times op-ed in 2003 questioning the veracity of President Bush’s “16 words” about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa. Someone close to the White House had the audacity to point out that Mr. Wilson was an anti-Bush partisan whose only claim to authority on the matter was the result of wifely nepotism. Mr. Wilson has since been thoroughly discredited, including in a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. But former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Scooter Libby is still being prosecuted as the result of a media-instigated investigation into the “leak” of Valerie Plame’s not-so-secret CIA identity.

[...]There is little doubt that the Washington Post story on alleged prisons in Europe has done enormous damage–at a minimum, to our ability to secure future cooperation in the war on terror from countries that don’t want their assistance to be exposed. Likewise, the New York Times wiretapping expos? may have ruined one of our most effective anti-al Qaeda surveillance programs. Ms. McCarthy denies being the source of these stories. But somebody inside the intelligence community was.

Leaving partisanship aside, this ought to be deeply troubling to anyone who cares about democratic government. The CIA leakers are arrogating to themselves the right to subvert the policy of a twice-elected Administration. Paul Pillar, another former CIA analyst well known for opposing Mr. Bush while he was at Langley, appears to think this is as it should be. He recently wrote in Foreign Affairs that the intelligence community should be treated like the Federal Reserve and have independent political status. In other words, the intelligence community should be a sort of clerisy accountable to no one.

[...]The press is also inventing a preposterous double standard that is supposed to help us all distinguish between bad leaks (the Plame name) and virtuous leaks (whatever Ms. McCarthy might have done). Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie has put himself on record as saying Ms. McCarthy should not “come to harm” for helping citizens hold their government accountable. Of the Plame affair, by contrast, the Post’s editorial page said her exposure may have been an “egregious abuse of the public trust.”

It would appear that the only relevant difference here is whose political ox is being gored, and whether a liberal or conservative journalist was the beneficiary of the leak. That the press sought to hound Robert Novak out of polite society for the Plame disclosure and then rewards Ms. Priest and Mr. Risen with Pulitzers proves the worst that any critic has ever said about media bias.

The press will only pay attention to party affiliation if a Republican is involved. If not, all bets are off.

In From The Cold, whose author is a former spook, believes McCarthy is a bit player in this whole drama:

There are probably some nervous folks around Langley these days. Mary McCarthy may be less the “tip of the iceberg” than another, smaller berg floating in the CIA ocean. And it looks like the “icebreaker” Porter Goss is taking dead aim at the larger berg that provided the bulk of Dana Priest’s story. Full steam ahead.

Which makes sense. You take out the little fish first to reel in the biggie. In all criminal investigations you turn the little guy who gives up the mid-level guy who then in turn gives up the big guys. Go Porter!

Another former intelligence guy turned blogger, Mac from Macsmind is stating that there are 6 others involved:

Actually it get’s down to six, two of which to be the two US Senators ‘of record’ Rockefeller, Durbin, and a bonus ……drumroll please……

Some buzz about Senator Chuck Schumer

(and we wondered why everytime Chuck went to the mike to talk about Plame, hubby Joe was standing nearby – maybe it wasn’t a coincidence).

Others are most likely some other high ranking IC members as well as a network of rogue ex-ops still active on the leak/misinformation game.

The key is McCarthy and how bad she wants that pension. Will she flip? That distinct possibiliy has a lot of people very nervous.

And AJStrata believes the press is going to be forced to admit this coup attempt:

In a bad sign for the left, Human Events seems to be echoing Mac Ranger?s sources an article out today:

Clearly, a culture of contempt for the current occupant of the White House has infected a number of people who work in the agency, some of whom have taken it on themselves to try to undermine the administration by leaking information to the press and unauthorized persons in Democratic circles on Capitol Hill.

Emphasis mine. If Mac is right, and I suspect he is, then we will see more and more reporting confirming the fact, like this. It will creep from the non-mainstream media into outlets like FOX, the Washington Times and NY Post. That will force the antique liberal media to finally report on it. One interesting note on the wording above: ?democrat circles? to me implies staffers were in the loop between the CIA and the Senators and Congressman.

I’m not so sure. The MSM will only go kicking and screaming, and after getting a couple of pulitzers for their stories I can’t see it happening. The left has been very good at shutting their eyes and plugging their ears to stories which can hurt the Democratic party, this one will be no different.

I’ll end this update with Betsy Newmarks post on the ludicrous attempt by the MSM to compare this treasonous leak to some of our Founding Fathers:

Okay, do you see any similarity with a high-level CIA agent, sworn to secrecy, leaking top secret information while we’re at war? Come on. Franklin was an adversary with the British at this point. Now, the real comparison would be to whoever in the British government who leaked the letters to Franklin. But that information is lost to us now. There is no parallel between Franklin and McCarthy.

Then ABC goes on with an even more far-fetched comparison. Somehow Paul Revere’s famous ride to arouse the Minutemen becomes a “leak.”

Not that there was any shortage of horseback riding leakers in the old days. In fact, you might say it was the “midnight ride” of Paul Revere and his unauthorized disclosure of British troop movements back in 1775 that led to the birth of our nation.

Bleh. How dumb is this? As if spying on an enemy army and giving that information to your side’s forces is a “leak.” Do these people have any understanding of logical reasoning at all? Or is it all fair when the need is to give a patriotic patina to breaking the law? If we’re going to close our eyes to such behavior then the message will go out to all our intelligence agents that they too can be a modern Paul Revere and get John Kerry’s praise if they leak to secret information.

UPDATE

Mind In The Qatar has an updated version of his McCarthy Matrix up.

Other’s Blogging:

• Say Anything
• Protein Wisdom
• Sensible Mom
• Group Intel
• Discarded Lies
• Villainous Company
• Sweetness & Light
• Hyscience
• A Blog For All
• Kitty Litter
• The Discerning Texan
• Sister Toldjah
• Ace Of Spades HQ

At that time the political connections and contributions were relevant to the story, so says the MSM. But the contributions given to a specific party, from a person who is accused of leaking classified information that has damaged our national security is not considered relevant now. Why? Could it because she gave to the party that is opposite of Bush?

Could the hypocrisy and bias be anymore blatant?