CIA fires officer over alleged leak - Yahoo! News

CIA fires officer over alleged leak - Yahoo! News: "Fri Apr 21, 11:00 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
CIA said on Friday that it fired an intelligence officer for leaking classified information that sources said contributed to a Washington Post report about alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.
ADVERTISEMENT

NBC News identified the accused officer as Mary McCarthy, and said she worked in the CIA Inspector General's office before being 'marched out' of the spy agency on Thursday.

CIA spokesman Tom Crispell said the agency could not comment on the NBC report, citing privacy law.

Public records showed McCarthy, a veteran CIA officer, had served as a special assistant to former President
Bill Clinton and
President George W. Bush from 1996 to 2001. She was a senior director for intelligence programs on the White House National Security Council staff and testified to the commission that investigated the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Earlier, the CIA said the dismissal of a CIA officer over a media leak was extremely rare and resulted from a three-month-old in-house investigation aimed at agency operations that had been the subject of recent media leaks.

Sources familiar with the case said the firing stemmed from the Washington Post's reporting about secret CIA prisons for terrorism suspects in November. The coverage sparked an international outcry over U.S. detainee policies and also won a Pulitzer Prize, America's leading journalism award."