WASHINGTON — The CIA has fired a senior officer for leaking classified information to news organizations, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning stories in the Washington Post that said the agency maintained a secret network of prison facilities overseas for high-ranking terror suspects.
The termination, announced Friday, marks the latest in a series of high-profile crackdowns on spy agency and Bush administration officials accused of unauthorized disclosures of classified information.
The CIA would not disclose the identity of the fired officer, citing Privacy Act protections. But current and former intelligence officials identified her as Mary O. McCarthy, a former White House aide who until this week held a senior position in the CIA's inspector general's office.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano would say only that an unnamed individual had admitted to having contacts with the press and discussing classified information. "That is a violation of the secrecy agreement that everyone signs as a condition of employment with the CIA," Gimigliano said.
U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not at liberty to discuss the case, said McCarthy's admission came after she failed a polygraph test conducted as part of several ongoing CIA investigations into leaks. She was fired Thursday and escorted from the agency's campus in Langley, Va., the officials said.
The officials said that McCarthy could face criminal prosecution, and that the Justice Department had been apprised of developments in the internal CIA probes. One U.S. official indicated that she had engaged in a "pattern of contacts" with more than one reporter.
McCarthy has held a series of high-level positions in the intelligence community during a career spanning two decades, according to a short biography posted on the website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank where she was a visiting fellow in 2001 before returning to intelligence work.
According to the biography, McCarthy served as senior director for intelligence programs at the White House's National Security Council under President Clinton and, until July 2001, for President Bush.
Previously, she held positions with the National Intelligence Council, which formerly was based at the CIA and is responsible for producing assessments on major national security issues.
