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| Fired CIA agent hailed as hero |
| Monday, April 24, 2006 |
| I was a bit stunned Sunday as I watched the roundtables on NBC, ABC and Fox News. I saw folks comparing CIA leaker Mary McCarthy to the civil disobeyers in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. That's quite a stretch.
McCarthy has been fired from her sensitive CIA post after telling a Washington Post reporter about some (previously) secret prisons we operated in foreign countries to house and interrogate terror suspects. The Post reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for the story.
To be clear, I am very happy that we operate some secret prisons for such purposes. I wish they were still secret. I think it harms the war effort and our national security for someone to disclose the information. (Do you suppose that could be why it was classified?)
McCarthy is not being charged with a crime, but she was fired for violating the oath that she and all CIA folks take - to not disclose classified information.
McCarthy apparently believes the secret prisons are offensive - that they violate American principles. Exactly what American principles they violate, I'm not sure - unless McCarthy believes that we should afford our foreign enemies the same constitutional protections that we promise our citizens. If that's what she believes, she should work for the al Qaeda branch of the ACLU, not the CIA.
Others engaged in the debate seemed to think that McCarthy should not be respected, but could have earned their respect if her civil disobedience had been done openly. George Will was in that group. He said, "She didn't do the honorable thing in that she did it surreptitiously and got caught. You cite the civil rights movement. That was civil disobedience, the adjective modifies the noun for a purpose. Disobedience is civil when it is public and when you invite and take the consequences. She did not."
That's a little too high-minded for me. I believe disobedience should be judged on its merit, not its openness. Secretly disclosing information to the press about administrative misdeeds is admirable civil disobedience. Doing so openly might be more courageous, but a good deed need not invite negative consequences to be a good deed. The trick is to be able to recognize actual misdeeds.
The reason McCarthy is not to be admired is not because of her lack of courage, it is because of her silly distortion of American principles that serve to assist our enemies in their effort to destroy America and the very principles that she pretends to hold so dear.
The Ralph Bristol Show |
posted by Jack Mercer @ 4/24/2006 10:31:00 AM   |
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