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2024 Election Coverage

CIA Leaks May Signal Lowered Morale

Is there a crisis of morale at the CIA? To some observers, news that an employee was fired last week for leaking classified information raises the question.

Mary O. McCarthy was dismissed on Thursday, accused of leaking classified information about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

Robert Siegel talks with former CIA employee Melissa Boyle Mahle about morale and ethics at the agency.

After Mahle left the agency in 2002, she wrote a book called Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11, which was published earlier this year.

McCarthy worked in the Inspector General's office, which insiders say is where CIA employees have gone in the past to air their workplace concerns. Mahle says the McCarthy firing is just a small piece of a broader problem at the CIA.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.