Outrage

This morning I awoke to an article in the New York Times about the head of the CIA firing an agent for being a ‘leaker.’ The article stated, “The dismissal of Ms. McCarthy provided fresh evidence of the Bush administration's determined efforts to stanch leaks of classified information.” I wanted to puke. I don’t know what made me angrier: the government for its claims or the New York Times for repeating them.

The agent was fired for leaking information to a journalist regarding the existence of the “agency's secret overseas prisons for terror suspects.” This disclosure outraged the Bush administration almost as much as I’ve been outraged by members of the current administration’s role in the Valerie Plame case. Funny, no one’s been fired there.

So in other words, the administration isn’t seeking revenge against leakers, it’s seeking revenge against its critics. When the leakers are on its side, well, the more the merrier. I’m not the first to note this obvious behavior, but for a supposedly reputable paper to write about this issue with the tone it took made me ill. Talk about selective perception.

What do you do with outrage? How can anyone maintain any sense of fair play with the Bush administration in power? I’m not saying that CIA agents who disagree with policies have permission to take matters into their own hands, but there should be a legitimate method for disclosing troubling – and possibly illegal – activities. As a country comprised of what’s beginning to feel like powerless citizens, how do we go up against an administration that sees itself, in the worst case, as above the law, and in general, not bound by the spirit of the principles I thought founded this country? Secret prisons? Unauthorized wiretapping of U.S. citizens? We deserve to be the laughing stock of the world due to the hypocrisy with which the Bush clan is running things. And when our journalists parrot the administration, we’re really in trouble.