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***scroll for new updates, fresh info on McCarthy***

Fox News has the story.

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Update: NBC identifies the leaker as Mary McCarthy…

In a rare occurrence, the CIA fired an officer who acknowledged giving classified information to a reporter, NBC News learned Friday.

The officer flunked a polygraph exam before being fired on Thursday and is now under investigation by the Justice Department, NBC has learned.

Intelligence sources tell NBC News the accused officer, Mary McCarthy, worked in the CIA’s inspector general’s office and had worked for the National Security Council under the Clinton and and George W. Bush administrations.

The leak pertained to stories on the CIA’s rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting.

Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the firing.

A reader sends this link to letter exchange in the NY Review of Books that notes:

The report of the 9/11 Commission notes that the National Security staff reviewed the intelligence in April 2000 and concluded that the CIA’s assessment of its intelligence on bin Laden and al-Shifa had been valid; the memo to Clinton on this was cosigned by Richard Clarke and Mary McCarthy, the NSC senior director for intelligence programs, who opposed the bombing of al-Shifa in 1998.

NYTimes: “Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.”

Bob Owens has more.

AJ Strata:

I hope this leads to criminal charges for the CIA leaker and identification and charges against any reporter the leaker tried to get to publish this information. We need to know who in the media is willing to trade in our national security for their [P]ulitzers.

Douglas MacKinnon: Pulitzer Prizes for treachery

Scott Johnson: The Pulitzer Prize for treason

Bill Bennett on Pulitzer winners Priest and Risen: “I think what they did is worthy of jail.”