Obama Picks Ever-Solid Centrist Panetta To Head CIA
President Elect Barack Obama has picked what some consider a surprise choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency: Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, former Congressman, critic of torture as a policy — and about as centrist and solid a public official on the scene today:
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.
Indeed, Panetta is on the record as being strongly against the use of torture.`
(UPDATE: Panetta comes under some additional scrutiny — and fire — via this post on Red State.)
MSNBC reported it this way:
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The appointment of Panetta comes as a kind of one-two punch for Obama, as he filled two slots with two appointments that are generally expected to be well-received:
The officials also said that retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who formerly headed the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command, will be tapped as director of national intelligence.
Both Panetta and Blair have long careers:
Panetta, 70, has had a long political career, beginning in 1966 when he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel, R-California.
Panetta was elected to the House of Representatives in 1977, serving California’s 16th (now 17th) Congressional District until Clinton appointed him to head the Office of Budget and Management in 1993. He was chief of staff from 1994 to 1997.
Panetta and his wife, Sylvia, founded and co-direct the Leon and Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy at California State University, which provides study opportunities for students there and at several other schools. He serves on several boards and committees, and lectures internationally on economics.
Panetta has a strong background in economics but little hands-on experience in intelligence. However, he is known as a strong manager with solid organizational skills.
Blair, 61, was a 1968 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and attended Oxford University in Britain as a Rhodes scholar at the same time as Clinton. Blair retired from the Navy in 2002.
He was the CIA’s first associate director of military support and served on the National Security Council.
He has been sharply critical of U.S. policy in terms of strategic long-term planning.
“I am in awe of the sophisticated strategies that American politicians can devise and pursue over many years,” he told a House panel in July. “They involve very public activities — speeches, programs, alliances — but also backroom deals, and stratagems, tactical flexibility but strategic constancy, investment in intellectual and organizational capabilities that will not pay off for years.
PERSONAL NOTE: I dealt with the Panettas some years ago, before founding TMV. I called the Panetta Institute to get some information for a nonpolitical project I was doing for a non-profit group. I talked to Sylvia Panetta, who set aside some time to give me an extensive rock-solid, non-nonsense interview that helped prove answers to some key questions related to programs and universities. Since then, I’ve told people that the Panettas are two highly serious, thoughtful, issue-oriented individuals who were not your typical partisans.
3 Responses to “Obama Picks Ever-Solid Centrist Panetta To Head CIA”
It is very refreshing to see Panetta tapped to head the CIA. It is entirely beside the point that he has “little hands on” experience with bureacratic “Intelligence.” In the interest of being a forthright citizen, one must add that, as far as can be known of the history of the CIA since its inception, intelligence of any sort has been far from the top priorities of that organization. Even its title is almost pure euphemism, given what the CIA's managers and operatives do. Though I have had no official ties to the CIA, I speak from experience. The organization does, more or less well — depending upon how one judges (with what theoretical lenses) — whatever the respective administration asks it to do outside the law. For legal projects, there are plenty of other organizations to do the job. Perhaps Panetta can make sense of what limits we should post upon those outside-the-law activities the agency so fondly cultivates but which also create a growing blowback for the entire USA that undermines our international political, economic, and social capital.
I Met briefly with Mr. Panetta while I was working in the intelligence community and was impressed mostly with his ability to see intelligence as not just a means of monitoring and ultimately defeating enemies but as a broader and more global enterprise in which information could be exchanged in a manner that bred trust between international communities and organizations. Walterjessse is exactly right about what intelligence has come to mean since the inception of the CIA with it's winner take all mentality.
The first comment in the Redstate link refers to Obama as “Obamunist”, which pretty well describes the stage for mush of what comes from that site. I'll reserve judgement on Panetta for now, although his stance against torture and his record of competence certainly give him points.