Investigations into reports that US agents shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention centers have produced no evidence of illegal CIA activities, the European Union's antiterrorism coordinator said yesterday.

The investigations also have not turned up any proof of secret renditions of terror suspects on EU territory, Gijs de Vries told a European Parliament committee investigating the allegations.

The European Parliament's probe and a similar one by the continent's leading human rights watchdog are looking into whether US intelligence agents interrogated Al Qaeda suspects at secret prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some on secret flights through Europe.

But so far investigators have not identified any human rights violations, despite more than 50 hours of testimony by human rights activists and individuals who said they were abducted by US intelligence agents, de Vries said.

''We've heard all kinds of allegations, impressions; we've heard also refutations. It's up to your committee to weigh if they are true. It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt," he said. ''There has not been, to my knowledge, evidence that these illegal renditions have taken place."

What, one wonders, will happen to Ms. Priest's Pulitzer if the story was entirely fabricated, and Ms. Priest never bothered to research it, relying only on the leak and the anti-Bush media frenzy that would follow.

From this tidbit, Rick Moran and others, among them Macsmind, conclude that the "Secret Prisons" story may have been part of an internal CIA ruse to uncover leakers within the CIA.

Just One Minute provides a list of her political donations in 2004; McCarthy and her husband contributed $9500 to various democrats, $2000 a piece from husband and wife to Kerry, $5000 to the Ohio DNC and $500 to Barbara Mikulski.

And we all remember the crucial role of Ohio in the previous election, don't we.

Mary McCarthy also has links to Richard Clarke, whom she defended during the 9/11 hearings, as well as JOE WILSON, whom she served together with at the National Security Council under the African portfolio. AJ Strata demurs, thinking that the connection to WIlson so far looks thin.

She was also a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which she joined in August 2001. Fellow members include:

Zbigniew Brzezinski -- Counselor and Trustee, CSIS
General Wesley Clark USA (Ret.), Distinguished Senior Adviser
General Anthony Zinni USMC (Ret.), Distinguished Senior Adviser

The CSIS removed Mary McCarthy's biographical data from the web very shortly after it was cited on the web. It is cached here.

There is a question now as to her relationship with VIPS - Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, who have been notable Bush critics, and some people suspect helped orchestrate the Plame Game. McCarthy was the former boss of Larry Johnson, a prominent member of VIPS, though he claims she was responsible for him leaving that position.

On that point, Macsmind, among others, notes that she worked in the IG's (Inspector General's) office of the CIA, which office "directly worked on the referral to the JD of the Valerie Plame Game." It's been a question for a long time who leaked the IG's referral to the Justice Department to Andrea Mitchell, causing a media frenzy with enough political pressure to set the Plame Game Investigation in motion.

UPDATE: In an absolutely hysterical, "soft light focus" look at Mary McCarthy, the NYTimes digs up all her bestest friends, connections from her time at the CSIS and presents us with their view of her.UPDATE: In an absolutely hysterical, "soft light focus" look at Mary McCarthy, the NYTimes digs up all her bestest friends, connections from her time at the CSIS and presents us with their view of her. NOT INCIDENTALLY, the director of CSIS, William Goodfellow, is the husband of Dana Priest. Oh how incestuous it all is!

CORRECTION: How embarrassing. I'd been working on this correction, then took a break to procrastinate, just as a commenter kindly informed me that my info about Goodfellow was incorrect. He is not an executive director at CSIS, but at CIP, which is the Center for International policy, otherwise known as Fidel Castro's favorite think tank. A commenter at my other blog has more info about CIP here. And Sweetness and Light has more info here.

But back to the NYTimes' expose friendly treatment of McCarthy.

We're talking about a person with great integrity who played by the book and, as far as I know, never deviated from the rules," said Steven Simon, a National Security Council aide in the Clinton administration who worked closely with Ms. McCarthy.

Others said it was possible that Ms. McCarthy, who began attending law school at night several years ago, made a campaign contribution to Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 and had announced her intention to retire from C.I.A., had grown increasingly disenchanted with the often harsh and extra-legal methods adopted by the Bush administration for handling Al Qaeda prisoners and felt she had no alternative except to go to the press.

If in fact Ms. McCarthy was the leaker, Richard J. Kerr, a former C.I.A. deputy director, said, "I have no idea what her motive was, but there is a lot of dissension within the agency and it seems to be a rather unhappy place." Mr. Kerr called Ms. McCarthy "quite a good, substantive person on the issues I dealt with her on.

So she only leaked because she was disenchanted or unhappy, because she is a good person with integrity, that's all right then.

The end of the article can't be missed. Despite the fact that Ms. McCarthy has already admitted talking to reporters, her old pal, Larry Johnson, whose boss she used to be, is incredulous that this could be true. No, he reckons it was an hysterical confession from an innocent woman. The evil Porter Goss and his cabal done her wrong.

Government officials said that after Ms. McCarthy's polygraph examination showed the possibility of deception, the examiner confronted her and she disclosed having conversations with reporters.

But some former C.I.A. employees who know Ms. McCarthy remain unconvinced, arguing that the pressure from Mr. Goss and others in the Bush administration to plug leaks may have led the agency to focus on an employee on the verge of retirement, whose work at the White House during the Clinton administration had long raised suspicions within the current administration.

"It looks to me like Mary is being used as a sacrificial lamb," said Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who worked for Ms. McCarthy in the agency's Latin America section.

What a weird defense! How does this help her? They've constructed a scenario where she only confessed because she couldn't stand the pressure, though she is innocent. Is that the kind of CIA agent we want operating at the top level of government.

Gosh! Perhaps those evil Bushies took her down to Guantanamo and pressured her to confess!

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