Crowds cheer Queen Elizabeth II on her 80th

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Updated 4/21/2006 11:28 AM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this  



The queen takes part in her traditional walk in the town to celebrate her 80th birthday.



  

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Britain's Queen Elizabeth II during the State Opening of Parliament in London in April 1966.



WINDSOR, England (AP) — Cheering crowds, red-jacketed bandsmen in bearskin hats and ceremonial gunfire saluted Queen Elizabeth II on her 80th birthday Friday, but clouds denied the monarch her wish for sunshine.
Wearing a cerise coat and matching feathered hat, the queen appeared promptly after noon through the Henry VIII gate at Windsor Castle.

Prince Philip, her husband of 58 years, briefly trailed behind but then moved off to greet other sections of the crowd, estimated by police to number 20,000.

BIRTHDAY WISHES: U.K. media sends wishes — and lasers

Friday's events included a 21-gun salute at Windsor, a 41-gun salute at Hyde Park in London and a formal dinner at Kew Palace. But for monarchists and celebrity spotters, the day's big event was the chance to greet the queen outside the imposing castle founded by William the Conqueror.

Crowds began building on the street hours before, and children in blue school blazers waved white flags with the red cross of St. George, the patron saint of England.

The queen smiled broadly as she accepted one bouquet after another handed across the barricades during her 45-minute promenade.

\"She's always the same. She never changes, does she?\" marveled John Tyler, 69, a retired military man who came with his wife Iris. \"She's got older, but she's always been a person of the people. She's the queen of the people. Try and find another in the world like her. You won't, will you?\"

\"She has never been involved in a scandal, she has carried out her duties superbly, we love her to bits and hope that she reigns for at least another 20 years,\" said Colin Edwards, 65, of Wales, who said he had been a bystander at 113 royal events since 1982.

\"She's fantastic,\" said Mary Wintle, 71, who also came from Wales to cheer the monarch.

\"Did you see Margaret Thatcher yesterday?\" Wintle asked.

Former Prime Minister Thatcher, in a birthday tribute on ITV News on Thursday, said the queen had been an inspiration.

\"Her guidance and advice are always most acute, and as prime minister I was privileged to benefit from both enormously,\" said Thatcher, also 80, who led the government from 1979-1990.

On a visit to the British Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday, the queen was asked what she wanted for her birthday.

\"A nice sunshiny day — that would be nice,\" she said.

On Friday evening, the celebrations were moving to Kew Palace in London where the queen's eldest son and heir, Prince Charles, was host for a dinner. Fireworks were planned, as well as an orchestra to play selections from Handel's \"Water Music,\" written for King George I in 1717.

Appearing at the reopening of the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Scotland on Friday, Charles spoke informally about his mother, saying, \"On this special 80th birthday of my mama I am most grateful to you for your kind wishes, which I shall certainly pass on this evening at dinner.\"

The queen has received more than 20,000 cards and 17,000 e-mails wishing her a happy birthday, Buckingham Palace said.

\"I have been very touched by what you have written and would like to express my gratitude to you all for making this day such a special one for me,\" the queen said in a message released Friday.

The birthday has revived speculation about whether the monarch would ever contemplate retiring and handing the throne to Charles. But Countess Mountbatten, a close friend of the queen, said that is unlikely.

\"She regards the job as a job for life,\" the countess told BBC radio.

A giant Royal Standard flag few over Windsor Castle to herald the day.

A Royal Standard is flown when the queen is in residence in one of the official palaces, but the one used Friday was an especially large banner, 38 feet long and 19 feet wide.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Posted 4/21/2006 8:45 AM ET

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C.I.A. Fires Senior Officer Over Leaks
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By DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 22, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 21 — 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.


Video: David Johnston The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under President Bill Clinton and into the Bush administration.

At the time of her dismissal, Ms. McCarthy was working in the agency's inspector general's office, after a stint at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an organization in Washington that examines global security issues.

The dismissal of Ms. McCarthy provided fresh evidence of the Bush administration's determined efforts to stanch leaks of classified information. The Justice Department has separately opened preliminary investigations into the disclosure of information to The Post, for its articles about secret prisons, as well as to The New York Times, for articles last fall that disclosed the existence of a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants supervised by the National Security Agency. Those articles were also recognized this week with a Pulitzer Prize.

Several former veteran C.I.A. officials said the dismissal of an agency employee over a leak was rare and perhaps unprecedented. One official recalled the firing of a small number of agency contractors, including retirees, for leaking several years ago.

The dismissal was announced Thursday at the C.I.A. in an e-mail message sent by Porter J. Goss, the agency's director, who has made the effort to stop unauthorized disclosure of secrets a priority. News of the dismissal was first reported Friday by MSNBC.

Ms. McCarthy's departure followed an internal investigation by the C.I.A.'s Security Center, as part of an intensified effort that began in January to scrutinize employees who had access to particularly classified information. She was given a polygraph examination, confronted about answers given to the polygraph examiner and confessed, the government officials said. On Thursday, she was stripped of her security clearance and escorted out of C.I.A. headquarters. Ms. McCarthy did not reply Friday evening to messages left by e-mail and telephone.

"A C.I.A. officer has been fired for unauthorized contact with the media and for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," said a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. "This is a violation of the secrecy agreement that is the condition of employment with C.I.A. The officer has acknowledged the contact and the disclosures."

Mr. Gimigliano said the Privacy Act prohibited him from identifying the employee.

Intelligence officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said that the dismissal resulted from "a pattern of conduct" and not from a single leak, but that the case involved in part information about secret C.I.A. detention centers that was given to The Washington Post.

Ms. McCarthy's departure was another unsettling jolt for the C.I.A., battered in recent years over faulty prewar intelligence in Iraq, waves of senior echelon departures after the appointment of Mr. Goss as director and the diminished standing of the agency under the reorganization of the country's intelligence agencies.

The C.I.A.'s inquiry focused in part on identifying Ms. McCarthy's role in supplying information for a Nov. 2, 2005, article in The Post by Dana Priest, a national security reporter. The article reported that the intelligence agency was sending terror suspects to clandestine detention centers in several countries, including sites in Eastern Europe.

Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, said on its Web site that he could not comment on the firing because he did not know the details. "As a general principle," he said, "obviously I am opposed to criminalizing the dissemination of government information to the press."

Eric C. Grant, a spokesman for the newspaper, would not address whether any C.I.A. employee was a source for the secret prison articles, but said, "No Post reporter has been subpoenaed or talked to investigators in connection with this matter."

The disclosures about the prisons provoked an outcry among European allies and set off protests among Democrats in Congress. The leak prompted the C.I.A. to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department. Lawyers at the Justice Department were notified of Ms. McCarthy's dismissal, but no new referral was issued, law enforcement officials said. They said that they would review the case, but that her termination could mean she would be spared criminal prosecution.

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In January, current and former government officials said, Mr. Goss ordered polygraphs for intelligence officers who knew about certain "compartmented" programs, including the secret detention centers for terrorist suspects. Polygraphs are routinely given to agency employees at least every five years, but special polygraphs can be ordered when a security breach is suspected.

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Video: David Johnston The results of such exams are regarded as important indicators of deception among some intelligence officials. But they are not admissible as evidence in court — and the C.I.A.'s reliance on the polygraph in Ms. McCarthy's case could make it more difficult for the government to prosecute her.

"This was a very aggressive internal investigation," said one former C.I.A. officer with more than 20 years' experience. "Goss was determined to find the source of the secret-jails story."

With the encouragement of the White House and some Republicans in Congress, Mr. Goss has repeatedly spoken out against leaks, saying foreign intelligence officials had asked him whether his agency was incapable of keeping secrets.

In February, Mr. Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission." He said it was his hope "that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."

"I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less," he said.

Ms. McCarthy has been a well-known figure in intelligence circles. She began her career at the agency as an analyst and then was a manager in the intelligence directorate, working at the African and Latin America desks, according to a biography by the strategic studies center. With an advanced degree from the University of Minnesota, she has taught, written a book on the Gold Coast and was director of the social science data archive at Yale University.

Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, the Democratic nominee.

Republican lawmakers praised the C.I.A. effort. Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, "I am pleased that the Central Intelligence Agency has identified the source of certain unauthorized disclosures, and I hope that the agency, and the community as a whole, will continue to vigorously investigate other outstanding leak cases."

Several former intelligence officials — who were granted anonymity after requesting it for what they said were obvious reasons under the circumstances — were divided over the likely effect of the dismissal on morale. 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.

But another official, whose experience was at headquarters, said most employees would approve Mr. Goss's action. "I think for the vast majority of people this will be good for morale," the official said. "eople didn't like some of their colleagues deciding for themselves what secrets should be in The Washington Post or The New York Times."

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.

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Revolution postponed
Apr 20th 2006
Why the monarchy is stronger today than ten years ago


FOR most of its history, Britain's monarchy has attracted a healthy amount of criticism and satire. Kings have repeatedly been lampooned as lazy, ineffectual, greedy, vain or stupid. When King George IV, who was thought to possess most of these vices, died in 1830, the Times reckoned that “there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king.” Yet Queen Elizabeth II, who celebrates her birthday on April 21st, attracts almost no hostility from mainstream politicians or the press, despite being born into a job that is subsidised, extravagant and seems largely pointless. To mark the event, the BBC even broadcast a laudatory documentary showing a hardworking queen busily representing the nation to itself, which is what monarchists argue the institution is for.

AFP

And what do you do, Ma'am?Compare the fortunes of the monarchy with those of another established institution with an ambient role, the Church of England, and it becomes clear that the royal family is doing rather well. It has recovered from a Princess Diana-fuelled dip in the late-1990s: polls show that more people now think the monarchy will be around in ten years time. Yet attendance at Church of England services has continued to decline. Why is the queen prospering while the Church (outside its cathedrals and evangelical movement) languishes?

One reason is that the monarchy thrives on indifference, while the Church is hurt by it. That might sound odd, given that evidence of interest in the royal family is everywhere: over a million people turned out in London for the queen's golden jubilee; dreary books about royals easily outsell ones about elected politicians; and the young royal princes fill the newspapers. But this fascination does not run very deep. According to one poll, only 10% of people aged between 16 and 24 think the monarchy is important to their lives. But because the royal family is the monopoly provider of a something trivial, it hardly seems worth opposing. The Church, by contrast, offers a vital service to its 1.7m members—spiritual succour—and operates in a competitive confessional market where dissatisfied Christians can shop around. Indifference is thus a threat.


A second reason is that the queen's avoidance of controversy (she never expresses political views) and of the press has reinforced the institution she embodies. She never gives interviews, modelling her media strategy on that of her mother, who gave an interview in 1923 but apparently did not enjoy the experience and kept quiet for the rest of her life. (This was probably wise: Cecil Beaton's diaries describe her as “a marshmallow made on a welding machine”.) One executive of a tabloid newspaper argues that this has enhanced the queen's mystique, comparing her with other celebrities who risk irritating their audience through over-exposure. The Church, on the other hand, cannot avoid damaging controversies even when it wants to, as the divisive row over ordaining gay priests reveals.

Third, the monarchy has benefited from a decline in party allegiance and a dilution of ideology in British politics that has not similarly helped the Church. Vigorous anti-monarchism was associated with the hard left, and has atrophied with it. Britain has only one sizeable anti-monarchy club these days—Republic, which has a thousand members—yet when the Prince of Wales had marital problems in the 1870s, 84 were founded.

Vernon Bogdanor, of Oxford University, argues that the decline of party allegiance has also increased the appeal of a non-partisan head of state. The same is not true for the Church. While the Conservative Party had 2.5m members (as it did at its peak), the notion that the Church was the Tory party at prayer did not imply empty pews. Now the Conservatives have only around 250,000 members, it does. Game, set and match to the Windsors.

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