Leon Panetta to Be Named C.I.A. Director

[dbackjon]

President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman and White House chief of staff, to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture, Democratic officials said Monday.

Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been buffeted since the Sept. 11 attacks by leadership changes and morale problems.

Given his background, Mr. Panetta is a somewhat unusual choice to lead the C.I.A., an agency that has been unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders, such as Stansfield M. Turner and John M. Deutch. But his selection points up the difficulty Mr. Obama had in finding a C.I.A. director with no connection to controversial counterterrorism programs of the Bush era.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009 ... -director/

[travelinman67]

...sounds like everyone's on the same page with this...

Wrong choice...

Feinstein, Rockefeller, oppose...as do most in the intelligence community.

Not dissing Panetta's rep...very, very bright guy, with global policy background, just saying needs to be someone with intel not poli background and experience...

...damn tootin'.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 4283.story

If confirmed by the Senate, Panetta would be among the few directors in agency history with no experience at one of the nation's spy services.

Largely for that reason, Panetta's selection was met with criticism on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.

"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director," Feinstein said. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."

A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the senator "would have concerns" about a Panetta nomination.

Rockefeller "thinks very highly of Panetta," the aide said. "But he's puzzled by the selection. He has concerns because he has always believed that the director of CIA needs to be someone with significant operational intelligence experience and someone outside the political realm."

But the nomination was praised by others who see Panetta as an outsider who can bring accountability and reform to an agency accused of human rights abuses.

"We need the CIA to collect reliable, actionable intelligence in ways that respect American values and honor the Constitution," said Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), chairman of a House Intelligence Committee oversight panel.

Panetta would join a CIA trying to stay abreast of the demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the pursuit of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The Obama team had struggled to settle on a CIA candidate after passing over former high-ranking agency official John Brennan in November, largely because he was seen as too closely tied to the controversial policies of the Bush administration.

Panetta would not have complete control over the agency. He would report to retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair, who was picked by Obama last month to serve as the director of national intelligence, a position created in 2004 to oversee the operations of the CIA and the 15 other agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community.

Unlike Panetta, Blair has a long track record in national security matters. He held a series of high-level defense posts, including overseeing U.S. military operations in the Pacific. He also served a year at the CIA as the agency's military liaison. How Blair and Panetta work together could be crucial to the operation of the intelligence community under Obama.

[Gil Dobie]

Obama has a better vetting process than McCain

[dbackjon]

I like the choice. I think it will be good to get a fresh voice in the clubby, snobby, eastern elitism that rules the CIA.

[Appaholic]

I like the choice. I think it will be good to get a fresh voice in the clubby, snobby, eastern elitism that rules the CIA.

Are we talking about the CIA or the FCS?

[houndawg]

I like the choice. I think it will be good to get a fresh voice in the clubby, snobby, eastern elitism that rules the CIA.

Are we talking about the CIA or the FCS?

Reps.

I was thinking CIA or CAA.

[houndawg]

I like the choice. I think it will be good to get a fresh voice in the clubby, snobby, eastern elitism that rules the CIA.

Yeah, the same CIA that was caught flat-footed by the collapse of the Soviet empire, and was wrong right down the line about Iraq.

I think it's a potentially excellent "outside-of-the-box" move.

[dbackjon]

The superbly run Obama campaign showed that the Obama people know how to manage an effective organization. Reform of the CIA can begin simply by requiring the CIA to obey existing laws and directives: 1) The CIA must get its clandestine-service officers out of the United States and spying in and on foreign countries. The great majority of CIA employees now live and work within the U.S. 2) Its clandestine operations should move away from embassies because, unlike the old Soviet targets, terrorists and nuclear proliferators do not attend diplomatic cocktail parties. Congress has already funded this move, but the CIA has not complied. 3) Ruthlessly streamline the bloat. Terrorists have flat chains of command and no bureaucratic turfs. The CIA has dozens of byzantine management layers which, octopus-like, loop back upon themselves. Human-source intelligence collection has been effectively strangled. 4) The CIA must strictly account for the handling of taxpayers’ money, as the law already requires. Post-9/11, the CIA has become a place to get rich for contractors and former managers.