The CIA fired a senior employee, Mary McCarthy, on Thursday for leaking classified information to the Washington Post. A federal criminal investigation has also been opened on the case. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said that she was “fired for having unauthorized contacts with the media and disclosing classified information to reporters, including details about intelligence operations. ‘The officer has acknowledged unauthorized discussions with the media and the unauthorized sharing of classified information,’ Gimigliano said.”

According to NBC:

The leak pertained to stories on the CIA’s rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting.

Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well.

…

The Washington Post report caused an international uproar, and government officials have said it did significant damage to relationships between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies.

CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate in February that leaks to the media had damaged national security. Subsequently, Goss ordered an internal investigation on leaks involving classified security data.

Washington Post reporter Dana Priest recently won a Pulitzer for her articles on the CIA and the war on terror.

Free Republic has noted that McCarthy is a Visiting Fellow under the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The CSIS and its members have been prominent in criticizing President Bush and the war in Iraq. The CSIS removed McCarthy’s biography from its website but not before Freeper “I got the rope” snapped a picture of it!

What’s more, Freepers have discovered that McCarthy has donated extensively to Democrats. According to the FEC, she has donated $7,700 to John Kerry and other Democrats and Democrat organizations since 2002. Her husband, Michael McCarthy, has donated $2,500.

Oh, and by the way, McCarthy was appointed to the National Security Council by none other than Sandy Berger, President Clinton’s former National Security Adviser who plead guilty last year to taking highly classified information from the National Archives that was critical of the Clinton administration’s policy on terrorism. According to news sources, McCarthy and Berger worked closely together.

Democrats whine when we question their patriotism but it’s obvious that Mary McCarthy was doing everything she could to undermine our war on terror. She has committed treason and should the maximum punishment. Ace of Spades has this to say about her:

She was not some minor flunky. She was a major officer at the CIA, holding a very high position in the National Intelligence Council, and all the while a strong political partisan.

She was one of the top apparatchik in the CIA’s liberal-wing’s war against the Bush Administration.

When Bush was warned away from divulging any information that would support the case for war in Iraq, this little partisan bitch was one of the people warning him he couldn’t say anything in his own defense. And when he would give a CIA-approved narrow statement about Iraq, it was nasty little partisan hacks like her immediately leaking to the press that everything the President just said was a lie.

Except it wasn’t a lie. It was the CIA consensus position on an issue. It’s just that Kerry-supporting’ Mary disagreed with it.

And why did the 9/11 Commission, despite powerful evidence, conclude with the fudged-up language that there was no “operational” partnership between Saddam and Al Qaeda? Because high CIA officials like McCarthy told the Democratic staffers she had their back and would leak like a sieve against any conclusion that allowed for some degree of cooperation between the two.

Here are the documents on the McCarthy family’s donations to Democrats.