"The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency's secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday. "

Later on in the article, it discussed the relationship between this leak and the Valerie Plame leak.

"One veteran said the firing would not be well-received coming so soon after the disclosure of grand jury testimony by Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff that President Bush in 2003 approved the leak of portions of a secret national intelligence estimate on Iraqi weapons.

'"It's a terrible situation when the president approves the leak of a highly classified N.I.E., and people at the agency see management as so disastrous that they feel compelled to talk to the press,' said one former C.I.A. officer with extensive overseas experience.

"Paul R. Pillar, who was the agency's senior analyst for the Middle East until he retired late last year, said: 'Classified information is classified information. It's not to be leaked. It's not to be divulged.' He has recently criticized the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs. "

Pillar is right. Classified information shouldn't be leaked. Why isn't this same standard held for George W. Bush?? I even feel that the information about the secret prisons should have been leaked. What they were doing wasn't right! However, leaking a C.I.A. operatives name to get back at her husband is definately not right. And if Mary McCarthy had to pay for it by being dismissed, shouldn't George W. Bush?