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The issue of professional liability insurance for federal managers hit the mainstream media again Sunday, with a New York Times story about CIA officers who are turning to Wright & Company for policies to cover their legal costs in the event they get hauled into federal court or become ensnared in a congressional investigation.

As the story notes, FBI agents, Secret Service officers, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees also have purchased the insurance. They're not the only ones. In the late 1990s, professional liability insurance became popular at the IRS after reform legislation provided a new avenue for agency employees to file complaints against their supervisors.

Exactly who should get the insurance has long been open to question. The Justice Department typically represents federal employees in proceedings resulting from actions taken in the course of their job duties, but some managers see the benefit of having personal representation, too.

In a 1998 report, the Office of Personnel Management found that in the previous five years, only 14 federal employees had been found personally liable in lawsuits brought against them in relation to their government duties. And in only one reported case did an employee actually have to pay damages. The Justice Department reported that it had received about 7,000 requests for representation from federal employees in the same period, and had rejected 150 of those requests, or 2 percent.

The insurance costs about $300 a year, and the government pays half the premium for supervisors and certain other employees.

This week's New Yorker includes an exhaustive profile (not available online) of Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence. Among the thoughts the intelligence community's overseer shared with the magazine's Lawrence Wright:

• On coordinating the efforts of the various intelligence agencies: "I grew up in this community. I served it as a consultant. I'm passionate about it. So this job gives me the opportunity to make a contribution, even to the consternation of the bureaucracies, because I am going to force them to cooperate."


• On his political affiliation: "I'm not a Republican or a Democrat. My worry is good government." And: "I always vote, and I've voted for both parties."


• On the movie The Bourne Ultimatum, in which CIA agents sit at banks of massive computer monitors and have instant access to data and security camera feeds around the world: "Yeah, we can't do that. That's all horse pucky."

Last week the Office of Management and Budget crowed about meeting a deadline to create a publicly accessible Web site to provide data on federal contracts, grants, and loans. The fine print of that announcement noted that the data would cover about 90 percent of federal spending.

So what's in the other 10 percent? That's what we're starting to learn. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists reports that several defense intelligence agencies have successfully made the case that they should not have to report even unclassified contracting actions to the database due to "operational security isues."

Defense News, Aftergood notes, uncovered a memo from Shay D. Assad, director of Defense procurement and acquisition policy, granting the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and Counterintelligence Field Activity a waiver from reporting requirements, at least for fiscal 2007 and 2008.

"I appreciate your concerns that reporting these actions to the publicly accessible website could provide unacceptable risk of insight to your individual missions and budgets," Assad wrote.

But as Aftergood notes, contracting data from these agencies for previous years will be available on OMB's USAspending.gov site. It's also been available online via other sources for years. So it's a little odd that this information suddenly represents a security risk.

(Hat tip: Government Inc.)

In a speech Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said he has "very deep respect for journalists and for their profession." But then he devoted a healthy chunk of his address to critiquing media coverage of the agency.

"Just as they report on the terrorists, it’s the job of journalists to report on the how the war against terrorism is being fought," Hayden said. "And when their spotlight is cast on intelligence activities, sound judgment and a thorough understanding of all the equities at play are critically important. Revelations of sources and methods -- and an impulse to drag anything CIA does to the darkest corner of the room -- can make it very difficult for us to do our vital work."

"Journalists, on their own, simply don’t have all the facts needed to make the call on whether [intelligence] information can be released without harm," Hayden said. But then he went on to set up something of a Catch-22. The agency, he said, often can't give them that information, either.

"When the media claims an oversight role on our clandestine operations, it does so in an arena where we cannot clarify, explain, or defend our actions without doing further damage to our sources and methods."

The agency's true overseers, Hayden said, are in Congress, which has "full access to our operations and takes our security requirements into account."

For what it's worth, here's my two cents on this issue: I think Hayden has a point that more than a few journalists have a knee-jerk tendency to drag what the CIA or other federal agencies do to the "darkest corner of the room." But let's be honest: The agency has played a role in fostering such cynicism through its own performance historically. And I don't think that journalists should cede their role in overseeing what the CIA does to Congress or anyone else. Because it's simply not unheard of that the people's representatives on Capitol Hill would be complicit in an effort to keep vital information about the agency from the public without valid reason.

Obviously, this is an area that cries out for responsible journalism -- and the agency can help in that effort by doing everything in its power to work with journalists to explain why certain activities must be kept under wraps.

Among the "family jewels" -- documents detailing illegal and scandalous activities by the CIA -- set for release next week, are papers detailing a 1969 program to infiltrate antiwar groups in the United States and monitor their activities. Under the program, 10,000 American names were collected. Why did the agency not only gather but hang onto all of this data? Here's former CIA Director William Colby's explanation, as reported in the Washington Post: "the tendency of bureaucrats to retain paper whether they needed it or acted on it or not."