Did She Say Too Much?

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The fact that McCarthy met a journalist is not reason enough to fire her if that's the fact and if she didn't leak a real secret about the prisons, for example. I ran into all sorts of journalists, and I usually said I was whatever my cover was. But you were not obligated to write back and say, "I ran into X journalist in Damascus, and we were at a cocktail party, and we are going to get together for lunch." It was not something you had to report. Unauthorized contact with a journalist is a new standard. You cannot be assigned overseas and not run into a U.S. journalist. You're just completely isolating the CIA. You use journalists to get information, to trade at a very low level on what's happening in Hong Kong or whatever. That's the way it used to work. Now the message that's going out to employees at the CIA is "She had unauthorized contact with an American." It used to be that we had to report foreign contacts. But now we're talking about reporting on your contacts with fellow Americans. That's a bit Stalinesque for my taste.

RAY MCGOVERN

former CIA analyst

FORGET WHETHER MCCARTHY was one of the several sources who gave the Washington Post the story about secret CIA-run prisons abroad; some people did. And thanks to those who shared that information, we know that the Bush Administration set up the prisons to hold "suspected terrorists" incommunicado, with no due process or the required notification of the Red Cross, and that some have been subjected to torture as defined by international treaties that the U.S. has signed and thus are the law of the land.

What do you do when the secrecy agreement you were required to sign in order to work for the CIA is at odds with your oath to defend the Constitution of the U.S. and your obligation under international law, articulated at the Nuremberg Tribunal, to do what you reasonably can to prevent crimes like torture and kidnapping? That should be a no-brainer, and I believe we owe a debt of gratitude to those who could see that the Constitution and Nuremberg trump any secrecy oath.

Young people often ask me whether I would recommend that they apply for a job at the CIA. I used to say, Only if you have high degrees of integrity and courage. Now I tell them that when they are asked to sign the secrecy agreement, they should emulate President George W. Bush by adding a signing statement--the same kind of disclaimer the President issues when he signs legislation. Theirs might read, "None of the above shall be construed as impinging on the undersigned's duty under U.S. and international law to do what s/he can reasonably do to prevent war crimes." That it should seem necessary speaks volumes.

RICHARD KERR

a career analyst who once was deputy director of the CIA

OFFICERS OF THE intelligence community or officers of the CIA cannot take it upon themselves to make a judgment that one particular activity is O.K. but another isn't--and then take it upon themselves, if they can't convince people inside, to go to the press and expose it. The duty of an analyst or operator is to weigh in during internal debate or planning on a given topic.