Fired CIA Officer Likely Won't Face Charges Over Leak
WASHINGTON — Despite the CIA's goal of cracking down on leaks of classified information, the government may forgo criminal charges against a senior agency officer fired last week for disclosing operational secrets, according to current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The officials cited a number of obstacles to pursuing the case, including that the employee was fired in part over polygraph results that would not be admissible as evidence and that she was accused of leaking secrets the government would be reluctant to air in court.
The strength of the CIA's evidence against the fired employee, Mary O. McCarthy, also has come under scrutiny. McCarthy's attorney, Ty Cobb, said that contrary to the CIA's statement last week, she did not disclose classified information or confess to doing so to agency investigators.
Asked about the possibility of prosecution, Cobb said: "I don't think there's any basis at all here for further action. We deny that she leaked classified information and deny that she had access to the information attributed to her."
The CIA announced the firing Friday, saying that a senior employee -- subsequently identified by other intelligence officials as McCarthy -- had admitted to unauthorized contacts with the media and to disclosures of classified information.
In particular, McCarthy was accused of contacts with a reporter for the Washington Post who won a Pulitzer Prize this month for stories about secret CIA prison facilities overseas for terrorism suspects.
A spokesman for the CIA, Paul Gimigliano, said Tuesday that the agency "stands by the statements it has made on this issue from the start."
McCarthy had been a CIA employee for two decades, starting as an Africa analyst and later moving into senior positions on the National Security Council staff at the White House and, most recently, in the CIA's inspector general's office.
Cobb said that McCarthy, 61, was fired 10 days before she was scheduled to retire.
Former colleagues described her as cautious and respected. "I thought she was a competent, quiet, good intelligence officer," said Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who worked with McCarthy. "She was certainly someone you had respect for and saw not as an ideologue or someone who would end up putting herself in this position."
McCarthy recently earned a law degree from Georgetown University, Cobb said, and intended to practice family law after her retirement from the CIA.
