The WaPo waltz around the Priest source

Washington Post:

A lawyer representing fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy said yesterday that his client did not leak any classified information and did not disclose to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest the existence of secret CIA-run prisons in Eastern Europe for suspected terrorists.

The statement by Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the Washington office of Hogan & Hartson who said he was speaking for McCarthy, came on the same day that a senior intelligence official said the agency is not asserting that McCarthy was a key source of Priest's award-winning articles last year disclosing the agency's secret prisons.

McCarthy was fired because the CIA concluded that she had undisclosed contacts with journalists, including Priest, in violation of a security agreement. That does not mean she revealed the existence of the prisons to Priest, Cobb said.

Cobb said that McCarthy, who worked in the CIA inspector general's office, "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking," regarding classified information about any secret detention centers in Europe. Having unreported media contacts is not unheard of at the CIA but is a violation of the agency's rules.

In a statement last Friday, the agency said it had fired one of its officers for having unauthorized conversations with journalists in which the person "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence." Intelligence officials subsequently acknowledged that the official was McCarthy and said that Priest is among the journalists with whom she acknowledged sharing information.

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Notice something weird about this story? Guess who knows whether she was a source or not? H'mmm, perhaps Dana Priest? If this were any other story they would go to Priest and ask her to confirm or deny whether McCarthy was the source. They do not even go through the rouse of saying Priest was not available for comment or refused to comment. They act like she is a non person for purposes of this story.

They also are incurious about what story McCarthy did contact Priest about, because no one is denying that there was some contact between the two about some story. Without Priest response to McCarthy's denial there is also no way of knowing whether McCarthy is telling the truth this time. We do know that the lie detecter suggest that she gave false answers before.