David Cloud, author of yesterday’s NYT article, “Colleagues Say C.I.A. Analyst Played by the Rules,” was especially resourceful in finding and quoting every person available to come to Mary McCarthy’s defense.

Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who worked for Ms. McCarthy in the agency’s Latin America section, said, “It looks to me like Mary is being used as a sacrificial lamb.”
[…]
. . . 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 doesn’t seem to matter that Ms. McCarthy has already admitted to talking to reporters. Or that she failed a polygraph test. Or that she has a track record for speaking out. The Bush administration is on a witch hunt, is that it? And speculation about the administration’s nefarious motives is more noteworthy than what the facts plainly show?

The NYT needs to get back to reporting the news and stop assuming that everything the Bush administration does is evil and conspiratorial in nature.

(h/t Instapundit. More at JustOneMinute.)

Sweetness & Light has more, and also notes this article about the veterans group VIPS, to which McCarthy’s defenders belong. Of course, none of this is worth mentioning:

The 25-member group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, composed mostly of former CIA analysts along with a few operational agents, is urging employees inside the intelligence agency to break the law and leak any information they have that could show the Bush administration is engineering the release of evidence to match its penchant for war . . .