A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate staff in a secure room of the Capitol last June, promised repeatedly that the agency did not violate or seek to violate an international treaty that bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, during interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and elsewhere.

But another CIA officer — the agency’s deputy inspector general, who for the previous year had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan — was startled to hear what she considered an outright falsehood, according to people familiar with her account. It came during the discussion of legislation that would constrain the CIA’s interrogations. ~The Washington Post

As I had noted once or twice before, I guessed that Mary McCarthy’s (alleged) leak of information about the CIA’s secret prisons had to have been motivated by concerns that these prisons were off-the-books torture chambers or at least dangerously prone to becoming such. As it turns out, that hunch may have been right on the money.

Assuming, of course, that she actually was the one who leaked, which she claims is false. But then I would claim it was false if I were in her shoes. Even if she was blowing the whistle on illegal activities, that fact would not save her from being prosecuted for leaking confidential information. If she is, in fact, not guilty, that means that she was probably targeted because she could be pigeonholed as a Kerry supporter who betrayed her oath to sabotage an administration she opposed, which would mean that her prosecution could very well be arbitrary and politically motivated itself.