Obama picks Leon Panetta to head CIA

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

University of Fort Ord = "UFO." heh. Monterey is a spook zone, for sure.
Language training for all kinds of alphabeters.

Looks like ole Leon has been a chief in the US's special forces and counterterrorist training programs where CIA and Pentagon overlap.

I remember when that lawyer was suicided off the ninth floor of the hotel near Ord. He had a radio show, too. Suddenly cancelled. Ratings plummeted.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2008/2008-08-13-095.asp


"Both exploded and unexploded ordnance litters the ground at Fort Ord. (Photo courtesy EPA)"

Army Privatizes $100 Million Fort Ord Explosives Cleanup

MONTEREY, California, August 13, 2008 (ENS) - The largest privatized cleanup of a Superfund site in the nation is about to happen at Fort Ord, a former U.S. Army base on Monterey Bay that was closed in 1994.
......
Once utilized as a field artillery target range, the base site now is slated for residential and commercial uses and for expansion of the California State University at Monterey Bay.
.....
Outside the privatization parcel, the Army will continue to conduct ordnance cleanup on the 8,000 acre impact range before it is transferred to the Bureau of Land Management for a habitat reserve that will have limited public access.

Other portions of the base have already been transferred into other uses.

[§ê¢rꆧ]

[url=http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=23965]Leon Panetta on NNDB mapper



Check out the NNDB relationship map[/url]

Leon Panetta

Leon PanettaAKA Leon Edward Panetta

Born: 28-Jun-1938
Birthplace: Monterey, CA

Gender: Male
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Government
Party Affiliation: Democratic

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff, 1994-96

Military service: US Army (1963-65, 1st Lt., Vietnam)

Wife: Sylvia Marie Varni (three sons)

High School: Monterey Union High School (1956)
University: BA, University of Santa Clara (1960, magna cum laude)
Law School: JD, Santa Clara Law School (1963)

White House Chief of Staff (17-Jul-1994 to 1996 under Bill Clinton)
US Director, Office of Management and Budget (1993-94)
US Congressman, California 17th (1993, resigned)
US Congressman, California 16th (1977-93)
Bread for the World Board of Directors
Bretton Woods Committee
Campaign for American Leadership in the Middle East
Caring Institute Board of Trustees (Honorary)
Center for National Policy Former Chairman
Close Up Foundation Board of Directors
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Co-Chairman
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
Gore 2000
Hillary Clinton for President
Junior Statesmen Foundation Board of Trustees
Partnership for Public Service Board of Governors
Member of the Board of New York Stock Exchange 1997
Member of the Board of Zenith National Insurance
Iraq Study Group

I thought it was interesting that he was involved with Hilary Clinton for President. Also the Bretton Woods Committee, A "bipartisan, non-profit group organized to build public understanding of international financial and development issues and the role of the Bretton Woods institutions -- the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the regional development banks -- in the global economy."

Reminds me of M. Ruppert and Catherine Fitts' statement that THE CIA IS WALL STREET.

[ninakat]

Hugh and §ê¢rꆧ, wow. Thanks. And to think I used to admire Panetta as one of the "good guys" in DC in the 90s, when I was still a zombie that is.

PSY-OPS SIDENOTE: You know, the striking thing about Bill Clinton, Panetta, and Obama on the left is that they're all very slick. And I don't say that from a right-wing perspective, I say that from a post-9/11 red-pill perspective where, if anything, Obama could end up being worse than Bush or McCain (I know, I know, let's wait until he gets in office, blah, blah) but, hear me out, the reason I say that is because democracy and hope and change didn't just *appear* on the stage with Obama. The election stealing and voting shenanigans are still with us, the Democratic Party has shown its true colors since the mid-terms (unwilling to impeach, still pro-war and pro-business). My point is that Obama is more likely to be the perfect con-man rather than a hopeful change-agent who will start moving us away from empire-building and facism. But he appears to be so totally co-opted by the Powers That Be, that I truly believe he's playing the game like an actor, a very slick one in his case -- more hypnotic and engaging and believeable than even Slick Willy. Panetta is similar with his kindly manor, so he's the perfect fit for the new look of this new administration. And what a perfect CIA front man -- slick, believable, trustworthy, familiar, reassuring. (Just don't mention any of those skeletons in his closet that the good people of RI are uncovering.)

Another brilliant move by the Powers That Be, and their latest puppet installment, President-Elect Barack Obama.

Yes, collectively, the United States is being had. Once again.

[ninakat]

Gee, Biden says Obama made a mistake!?

Biden: Obama Made Mistake Not Consulting Feinstein

[Joe Hillshoist]

Hugh and §ê¢rꆧ, wow. Thanks. And to think I used to admire Panetta as one of the "good guys" in DC in the 90s, when I was still a zombie that is.

PSY-OPS SIDENOTE: You know, the striking thing about Bill Clinton, Panetta, and Obama on the left is that they're all very slick. And I don't say that from a right-wing perspective, I say that from a post-9/11 red-pill perspective where, if anything, Obama could end up being worse than Bush or McCain (I know, I know, let's wait until he gets in office, blah, blah) but, hear me out, the reason I say that is because democracy and hope and change didn't just *appear* on the stage with Obama. The election stealing and voting shenanigans are still with us, the Democratic Party has shown its true colors since the mid-terms (unwilling to impeach, still pro-war and pro-business). My point is that Obama is more likely to be the perfect con-man rather than a hopeful change-agent who will start moving us away from empire-building and facism. But he appears to be so totally co-opted by the Powers That Be, that I truly believe he's playing the game like an actor, a very slick one in his case -- more hypnotic and engaging and believeable than even Slick Willy. Panetta is similar with his kindly manor, so he's the perfect fit for the new look of this new administration. And what a perfect CIA front man -- slick, believable, trustworthy, familiar, reassuring. (Just don't mention any of those skeletons in his closet that the good people of RI are uncovering.)

Another brilliant move by the Powers That Be, and their latest puppet installment, President-Elect Barack Obama.

Yes, collectively, the United States is being had. Once again.

And in that sense Obama doesn't have to be in on it either, just young hungry and ambitious and doing what his advisors advise. His thing works, spectacularly, so why would he question it.

I'm not saying this is the case, cos I find I find it implausible, but it could be, and would suit the people pulling the strings. (I spose the same thing could also have been said for Dubya.)

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

The facade of innocence regarding CIA is being put forward to make a break with the animosity incurred by the last mal-administration.
"Under New Management. We have the sense to hide our crimes from you."

This was done in 1977 when Admiral Stansfield Turner was made DCI, too, a big show of 'outsider cleaning house.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stansfield_Turner

12th Director of Central Intelligence
In office
March 9, 1977 – January 20, 1981

President - Jimmy Carter
Preceded by George H. W. Bush
Succeeded by William J. Casey

.....

Turner eliminated over 800 operational positions in what was called the Halloween Massacre. This organizational direction is notable because William Casey was seen to have a completely opposite approach, focusing much of his attention on HUMINT. Turner gave notable testimony to Congress revealing much of the extent of the MKULTRA program, which the CIA ran from the early 1950s to late 1960s. Reform and simplification of the intelligence community's multilayered secrecy system was one of Turner's significant initiatives, but produced no results by the time he left office.

[JackRiddler]

.

In fact, Turner's move was probably the decisive step in the consolidation and subsequent dominance of what Trento calls "the Rogue CIA" and what I sometimes refer to as "the Bush mob," also the Enterprise model (privatized CIA) or extended Iran/Contra brotherhood.

Those 800 were fired, but they were not exposed. In an atmosphere of reaction and resentment with regard to the recent cultural rebellions and exposures of CIA crime, and with the late 1970s alliance of neoliberal ideologists and the cultural right wing ramping up to take open power in the imminent "Reagan Revolution," firing the men who were presumably responsible for a long series of assassinations, massacres and coups like "the Bay of Pigs thing," Chile in 1973 and the six-nation Condor atrocity initiative just prior to Carter's election amounted to an invitation and challenge to them, to collectively enter the private sector and reorganize to seize power. As their figurehead they chose Bush, who had just acted as their champion while in office at Langley, and with the October Surprise operation they stormed back into Washington as the hidden rider on the Reagan horse. (Reagan was shot six weeks after his inauguration.) This was a metastasis of the long-running trend at CIA, which always prided itself on keeping its work hidden and deniable thanks to proprietaries and false-front corporations and contractors for dirty work, and where the operators had always rewarded themselves with side business. Now, however, the bulk of the former covert operations wing had been thrown straight into a new center in the private sector, operating with the same cover as before, understanding themselves as the permanent secret government and with their people or friends in the key positions in official government, but without need to report to the government at all; and with sufficient anger and feelings of betrayal to justify anything they chose to do. (Watch out, America haters and crypto-commies and hippie feminist druggie academics and Soviet-loving liberal reformers, it's payback time!)

The Iran-Contra revelations of the "Enterprise" exposed a small portion of the resulting new culture and metastasized structure of covert power. I believe a mere list of these 800 would turn up a lot of familiar names and tell us much about the history of the last three decades, and no doubt blaze trails to Afghanistan, 9/11 and Iraq. Of course, there's no need to overdo it as something completely new, and of course most of the systemic realities and pressures of capitalist development and of a state in perpetual low-intensity crisis would have been similar, without Turner's move, which only catalyzed the particular mob who took over the upper-middle levels of a cryptocracy. This was the same generation that was forged in "the Bay of Pigs thing," but now in the post-Sixties, post-Nixon, post-Carter reaction, a time of consolidation and triumphalism.

.

[chiggerbit]

And we all know what happened to Turner's wife.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ekturner02.htm

[pepsified thinker]

Add this to the list of why Monterey is a 'place of interest'--

Not sure, but I think it's the site for the T.E.D. Conference every year.

...also not sure, but I think some of you posting on this thread have commented elsewhere on T.E.D. as a 'spook'-fest (so I don't claim that as an original insight).

In any case, wherever it was I heard that, it seemed kinda 'dead on' right even before all the other Monterey-related/based intel associations were mentioned.

[JackRiddler]

And we all know what happened to Turner's wife.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ekturner02.htm

I didn't know about that.

The memories are very long with these people.

.

[thurnundtaxis]

Mike Ruppert on Panetta

PANETTA AT CIA? – RUN FOR THE HILLS!
IRAN-CONTRA II… ON STEROIDS

Omigod! Has Barack lost his mind?

I have individual research files, accumulated over a decade, on maybe 300 of the government's top movers and shakers for the past 30 years. The first thing I did after hearing Panetta's name for Director of Central Intelligence was sit down and catch my breath. Then I went through my 6 Gigs of research files and searched out everything I could on him.

What I found was that (IMO) Leon Panetta is a pretty decent guy. He has taken the right stands on many important issues from the drug war, to torture, to Iraq. The biggest "offense" I could find was his direct role in the pardon of Marc Rich. (Rich is/was a heavy and very dirty intelligence/black op player.) Look, everybody at that level has skeletons and that history isn't even worth discussing now. It's what I didn't find that so worries me.

I was looking for anything that suggested Leon Panetta might have had clandestine experience or even some remote exposure to Agency operations. That's what scares me to death. George H.W. Bush was billed as an outsider when appointed as DCI in Jan., 1976. However, there's a mountain of excellent research that establishes that "Poppy" Bush had been a covert player and CIA hand his whole life. One tiny example is that he owned a company called Zapata Oil in the 50s and 60s. The code name for the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1962 was "Operation Zapata". Paper records throughout Bush I's life link him to the CIA. CIA's headquarters is named after him fer crying out loud.

Let's think of a couple of other "outsiders" who went into CIA. James Schlesinger was an abysmal failure, short-tenured, and a major nerd. Then there was John Deutch… need I say more?

The one prior CIA director which reminds me of Panetta, however, is Admiral Stansfield Turner who was appointed by Jimmy Carter and confirmed in March 1977. And if it turns out the same way there is going to be some serious bloodshed, an evaporation of civil liberties and a ten-fold expansion of covert operations… "off the books". (It eliminates all those messy oversight problems. Saves money on hearings and things like that.)

Turner arrived at CIA as a retired Navy Admiral who had been outside the intel community. His mandate was to clean house and get rid of all those dirty-rotten scoundrels who had committed assassinations, overthrown governments and operated outside the law. The Church and Pike committees had released mountains of incriminating data from the 50s, 60s and 70s. What did Turner do? He fired all those clandestine service people right away.

What did they do?

Well they took all of their knowhow, the black budgets that were off-the-books, their ability to smuggle stupefying amounts of drugs and guns and they started a parallel or "shadow" government that Congress didn't touch until Iran-Contra was a full blown scandal and tens of thousands of Central Americans had been murdered by death squads and American surrogates. (I miss Warren Zevon.)

Names like Shackley, Clines, Wilson, Singlaub, Poindexter, Clarridge, Abrams, Armitage, Negroponte and many more came to public light. Who can forget the most visible off-the-books crook Oliver North? I interviewed Shackley. I helped get Edwin Wilson out of prison when the CIA cut him loose and denied he was working in the Agency's behalf. These are the people who ruined my career at LAPD by smuggling drugs. Poindexter, Armitage, Negroponte and Abrams all came back into official power under Bush/Cheney.

The bottom line is that you cannot put someone in as DCI who doesn't know how black ops work, tell him/her to clean house and expect to generate anything except a massive off-the-books, bloody and very dangerous parallel covert capacity that the DCI will be helpless to prevent.

In the years since 9-11 U.S. intelligence capabilities have mushroomed. The use of proprietary software with "back doors" (PROMIS) has exploded and the degree of outsourcing of intelligence functions to corporations has exploded. So what can anyone expect of the legions of Bush-Cheney-era spooks who will now be unemployed to do? The term "rogue" may be about to acquire a whole new definition.

It is unfathomable to me that Barack Obama's staff, Senator Feinstein (who I am not a great fan off) and all of congress have forgotten or are unaware of the bloody and criminal legacy of Iran-Contra. Why are they apparently setting things up for it all to happen again? We will all wait with baited breath to see if these questions come up in the confirmation hearings for Mr. Panetta and his designated boss as DNI, retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair (also a relative outsider). If the Iran-Contra question is not answered then we might have the best signal yet that the Obama administration has ulterior or malevolent agendas. The current economic collapse, however, is happening so fast that this lingering and very important question may be moot. It took from January 1977 through roughly 1980 for the off-the-books covert capacity to establish itself in way that resulted in coups, deaths squads and the usurping of the U.S. government. In 1979 domestic U.S. cocaine consumption was around 50 metric tons per annum. By 1988 it reached 600 metric tons.

I see only three possible explanations:

1. Obama and company have no clue of Iran-Contra history.
2. They do know the history and are intending to recreate it on a fast
track. In other words, the U.S. is preparing for a no-holds-barred
fight to keep things together.
3. They do know the history and have a plan to prevent it from happening again.

[Perelandra]

Of course, Ruppert is always fearful, but still. I wonder which of the three it is.

Interestingly, I heard an interview the other day (posted about in Family thread), in which the subject said the basically the same thing. Something like, Obama is going to have a lot of trouble with the CIA.

[thurnundtaxis]

wonder which of the three it is.

I'm going with door number 2!

[ninakat]

wonder which of the three it is.

I'm going with door number 2!

Ditto. And I couldn't help but laugh at how Ruppert starts out:

"Omigod! Has Barack lost his mind?"

This, after many people, myself included, thought Ruppert had lost his mind with his "Yes we can" cheerleading after the Obama (s)election. I stopped reading him after that. Still, this was interesting. Thanks thurnundtaxis.

[thurnundtaxis]

Ninakat, you should read the whole article at the blogsite, if you haven't already. I just quoted his excerpt on Panetta.

Other topics include:

-- Obama's Speech on the Economy and Signals of What's Coming
-- Economic Collapse Accelerating
-- Is the Economic Collapse a Controlled Global Demolition?

His past "Obamoptimism" aside, Ruppert's doom-meter still reads as right-on-the-money.