By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

Ross Feinstein ought to get a Purple Heart for all the flak he’s taken as press agent for Mike McConnell, the serial mis-stater who runs American intelligence.

If this were World War II, Feinstein would be saving Pvt. Ryan. In the “war on terror,” however, his mission is to save McConnell from a penchant for saying things he has to take back later.

Last week, for example, McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had “good information that when the U.S. embassy and the British embassy and others were attacked, a decision was taken by the government of Serbia actually to pull the police back and allow them to be attacked, burn the embassy and conduct the violence they conducted.”

Well, maybe not, as it turned out. It fell to Feinstein to caution reporters that “(t)here was no final conclusion or determination on this.”

But imagine the mortification Feinstein must have felt when he had to admit to Walter Pincus of The Washington Post that McConnell’s provocative assertion was “based on what we knew from eyewitness accounts” reported in a Belgrade newspaper.

A newspaper.

“I’m not going to say it was the only thing,” Feinstein bravely added, that the combined elements of the $44 billion-a-year U.S. intelligence behemoth came up with.

One would hope not. But did McConnell ever think to ask one of his minions the question that editors ask reporters everyday — “How do we know this?” — before unloading it on the Hill?

Not exactly a slam-dunk.

Then there was last September, when Feinstein had to clean up a mess McConnell left at the Senate Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee. The spy boss had asserted that warrantless wiretaps by U.S. intelligence helped “facilitate” the arrest of three suspected terrorists in Germany.

The department’s official statement later: “(I)nformation contributing to the recent arrests [in Germany] was not collected under authorities provided by the ‘Protect America Act’.”

More recently he’s asserted vaguely that intelligence was “lost” because the legislation had not been renewed. He’s said he regretted the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s finding that Tehran had suspended its nuclear bomb program.

And so on.

Last week senior White House officials had to fend off questions about McConnell’s truthiness on wiretapping and Iran.

“McConnell, himself, over the past two months has had to retract some statements about the Germany threat and others,” a reporter said during the not-for-attribution session. “Do you worry that when you make these statements, that the administration’s credibility — saying that we’ve lost intelligence, that we are in a more vulnerable position — that some people just may not believe you?”

Feinstein declined to comment.

Home Alone

In an administration whose signature style is making things up, flak-catchers at all the frontline agencies have been assigned missions impossible: maintaining some integrity while protecting their bosses.

But the men and women who handle media inquiries at the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and State Department are in large measure veterans, in some cases people who have seen real bullets fired in anger, up close and impersonal. What’s a snarky reporter to them?

So it’s all the more astounding that Feinstein, 25, who in 2004 was vice president of the Union College student union in Schenectady, N.Y., has been left pretty much in charge of the fort while McConnell hops from one gaffe to the next.

It may be less an honor, though, than a demonstration of the difficulties the uber-spook agency has had in recruiting and retaining chief spokesmen.

The DNI has already had four press secretaries since it was birthed in 2004.

One left after only three months. Another, John “Pat” Philbin, was all but measuring the curtains when news broke that he had faked a press conference while at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

So the current vacancy has pretty much left Feinstein, treasurer of the college ski club only a few years ago, in charge.

Most reporters think he’s done a pretty good job, all things considered, especially in comparison to some of his more dour counterparts at other national security agencies.

“Smart,” “entertaining,” “fast to return calls” — and, of course, “young.”

“He is a kid,” said one, pleading anonymity because he has to deal with Feinstein, “smart but way too inexperienced to be doing what he is.“

“The press shop at DNI,” he added, “has not had adult supervision since Chad Koulton left last year.”

Path to Power

In the summer of 2004, Feinstein had an internship with Rep. Nita M. Lowey , a New York Democrat who represents the Westchester County area where he grew up.

“It’s been a great experience and unbelievable networking that has taken place,” he told the Union College paper. “It’s hard work, though.”

In the fall he campaigned for Bush. After graduation the following summer he snagged a job with John D. Negroponte , then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. When Bush chose Negroponte to be the DNI’s first chief, he brought Feinstein along with him.

Four years later, he’s one of the press section’s few survivors. Even Negroponte left as soon as he could to be Condoleeza Rice’s deputy.

And Feinstein has his admirers, including one far more experienced government flak.

“He had to take the reins when Pat Philbin self-destructed,” said the recently departed official. “Did a great job. He should have gotten the permanent nod but was too young, so they are going for a ‘seasoned’ pro.”

As if Feinstein wasn’t already, young as he is.

“He’s pretty good about returning your calls even after you write that McConnell’s a liar,” said one journalistic wag, “That counts for something with me.”

Yeah, it makes him a pro.

BACKCHANNEL CHATTER

Mombo Italiano: Journalist, author and CNN terrorism expert Peter Bergen has scored the first interview with the shadowy Abu Omar, the al Qaeda suspect at the center of a major flap involving more than two dozen CIA operatives in Italy.

In the new Mother Jones magazine, available March 2, Omar tells Bergen how he was kidnapped (i.e., “extreme rendition”) off a Milan street in 2003 and delivered into the hands of Egyptian torturers. A Milan prosecutor intends to launch a trial in absentia of 26 Americans, 25 of them alleged CIA operatives, later this month. Bergen sprinkles his piece with a number of new details gleaned from law enforcement officials, including prosecutor Armando Spataro, whom I interviewed in Milan last November.

Cold Comfort: Penguin, publisher of “Comrade J,”, which recounts the espionage exploits of top former Russian spy Sergei Tretyakov in Ottawa and New York, has halted sales of the book in Canada. Odd: There have been no lawsuits or threats of lawsuits, against the book, written by veteran intelligence writer and Washington Post reporter Pete Earley. Nor have there been any arrests of about a half dozen Canadians Tretyakov says were his spies.

Penguin has a printing plant in Canada, where the bar to libel suits is far lower than it is in the United States.

“While I cannot independently substantiate Tretyakov’s accusations,” Earley told me by e-mail last week, “I can tell you that my contacts in the FBI have told me repeatedly that Tretyakov is reliable, his information has proven accurate, and that what he says in the book is only the tip of what he has revealed.”

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.