Obama picks Leon Panetta to head CIA

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Postby ninakat » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:31 pm

Here ya go studs and studettes, these are the true colors many of us expected. Fuck Panetta.

Panetta: ‘Reality’ of 9/11 excuses Bush scandals
By Stephen C. Webster

Published: August 2, 2009

CIA director and Democratic appointee Leon Panetta, in an article published Sunday, said Democrats must recognize the “reality” of 9/11 is what drove the conduct of George W. Bush administration in the months following September 11, 2001, which somehow justifies not looking into suspected crimes.

He added, in an apparent warning to the House Intelligence Committee, that that “focusing on the past” could hurt the CIA’s core mission amid a climate of recriminations over its practices.

“I’ve become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action,” Panetta opined in the online edition of The Washington Post.

“In our democracy, effective congressional oversight of intelligence is important, but it depends as much on consensus as it does on secrecy,” he continued. “We need broad agreement between the executive and legislative branches on what our intelligence organizations do and why. For much of our history, we have had that. Over the past eight years, on specific issues — including the detention and interrogation of terrorists — the consensus deteriorated. That contributed to an atmosphere of declining trust, growing frustration and more frequent leaks of properly classified information.”

Several paragraphs later, he appears to offer a blanket excuse for torture, CIA black sites, kidnapping, indefinite detention, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and warrantless spying, among a litany of other notable scandals.

He says: “The time has come for both Democrats and Republicans to take a deep breath and recognize the reality of what happened after Sept. 11, 2001. The question is not the sincerity or the patriotism of those who were dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11. The country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could. Judgments were made. Some of them were wrong. But that should not taint those public servants who did their duty pursuant to the legal guidance provided. The last election made clear that the public wanted to move in a new direction.”

Panetta, a California democrat who was once a staunch critic of the CIA’s interrogation programs, continued to press for an end to the inquiries.

“Intelligence can be a valuable weapon, but it is not one we should use on each other. As the president has said, this is not a time for retribution,” he added.

Panetta added the agency has ended controversial interrogation and detention practices authorized by the administration of president George W. Bush. “Yet my agency continues to pay a price for enduring disputes over policies that no longer exist,” he wrote. “Those conflicts fuel a climate of suspicion and partisanship on Capitol Hill that our intelligence officers — and our country — would be better off without.”

Panetta further cited the uproar following a briefing he gave last month to congress on his decision to cancel a classified anti-terrorist program.

New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh was the first to reveal the existence of the program, a so-called a special “assassination squad” that reported to the Office of the Vice President and was supposedly aimed at alleged terror leaders in foreign countries. It was authorized by the Bush administration after the September 11, 2001 attacks, though official sources claim it never became fully operational.

“After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state,” Hersh told a crowd at a public discussion of “America’s Constitutional Crisis,” held at the University of Minnesota.

“It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,” he explained. “They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it.”

Hersh continued: “It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.”

Rather than setting a precedent for closer cooperation with Congress, Panetta argued in his editorial that his Congressional briefing “sparked a fresh round of recriminations about the past.”

“Debates over who knew what when — or what happened seven years ago — miss a larger, more important point: We are a nation at war in a dangerous world, and good intelligence is vital to us all. That is where our focus should be.”

Democratic Congressman Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, has accused the agency of having “deliberately lied” to his panel and said they will undertake an investigation of the intelligence agency.

With AFP.
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:35 pm

Gawd, ninakat, don't hold out on us, m'kay? Pipe up, brother!

Panetta is a classic example, along with GHWBush, of Congress being laced with spooks running what was previously considered "our" damn government.

You know that P-man didn't get installed as DCI with 'no experience' anymore than Mr. 11/22/63 Dallas GHWB.
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Postby ninakat » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:51 pm

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:You know that P-man didn't get installed as DCI with 'no experience' anymore than Mr. 11/22/63 Dallas GHWB.


Indeed. But my leftie friend who is 9/11 aware voted for Obama and was thrilled when Panetta became DCI. Paraphrasing my friend "Now all our troubles are over. No more concerns about false-flag events, martial law, or detention centers." I kid you not. We're fucked. And I just read the Chris Hedges article. We're double-fucked.
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Postby Nordic » Mon Aug 03, 2009 3:09 am

I saw that article today and my disgust was palpable.

Panetta. Ugh.

Gotta love the media. Weren't they actually starting to talk about torture and justice not too long ago, and now all they talk about is "birthers" and Gates' arrest and shit like that?

They're amazing, really, how they can keep out-sleazing themselves.
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Postby ninakat » Tue Aug 04, 2009 4:45 pm

Chris Floyd gets it, at least.

Obama Sends a Signal to the Few Remaining Suckers Who Believe in the Rule of Law
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 03 August 2009 22:29

For anyone still harboring a few scraps of vestigial hope that the change of administration effected by the 2008 election would restore even a thin, weak, straggly lineament thin of the rule of law in the United States, the recent opinion piece by Barack Obama's hand-picked CIA chief, the doleful Establishment water-toter Leon Panetta, will tell you all you need to know.

In the friendly confines of the authoritarian newsletter known as the Washington Post -- Panetta, the weak reed appointed precisely because of his weakness and reedness by Obama, who then surrounded the little puppet with some of the most complicit torture mavens of the Bush Regime to really run the CIA show -- delivered himself of one of the most cringe-worthy performances by a high public official since the ritual abasements of Stalin's 1930s show trials. In this case, however, Panetta was not making a ludicrous, outrageous confession of false crimes he never committed; instead, he was making a ludicrous, outrageous defense of real crimes committed by Obama's predecessors -- and in the process justifying his boss's craven (if entirely predictable) failure to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, as he swore to do in front of so many swooning millions just a few months ago, and prosecute the top Bushists for their manifest (not to mention openly confessed) high crimes.

In the piece, Panetta followed the Dick Cheney party line that the Obama Administration has adopted whole cloth. Anyone fooled by the stilted kabuki theater staged in the past few months -- i.e., a purported "great conflict" between Obama and Cheney over torture and other Terror War issues -- has, as they say, rocks in the head. For Obama has pushed the Cheney line at every turn -- in speeches, in policy decisions and in court actions. And what is that line? In brief, that Bush and Cheney were noble public servants whose every possible excess can be excused by their zealous love and concern for the American people. That's the broad overview; getting down to brass tacks, the Cheney line is that any act of the Bush Administration that on the surface appears to be a flagrant violation of settled U.S. law was in fact perfectly justified by legal memos written, to order, by White House lawyers.

This is the sum total of the arguments advanced by Cheney and various other Bush apologists in recent months. Can anyone deny that these are the precise positions also taken by the Obama Administration? Well, if it wasn't specific enough for you before, Panetta has made it crystal clear. He writes:

    The time has come for both Democrats and Republicans to take a deep breath and recognize the reality of what happened after Sept. 11, 2001. The question is not the sincerity or the patriotism of those who were dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11. The country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could. Judgments were made. Some of them were wrong. But that should not taint those public servants who did their duty pursuant to the legal guidance provided.
The only minor point of disagreement between Cheney and Obama on this point can be found in Panetta's milksop concession the "some" of the "judgments" made by the Bush Administration were "wrong." But this is simply the usual factional quibbling seen around any imperial court. The core argument is the same: the attacks on September 11 justified any and all reactions in response, however illegal, heinous, murderous and atrocious.

(I would just like to interject a personal note here. I am an American citizen, and I was not "frightened" after the September 11 attacks. Nor was I "frightened" by the London attacks on July 7, 2005, even though I was in London that day. I have never been so "frightened" of terrorist attacks -- not even in the first minutes and hours after September 11 -- that I was willing to jettison the U.S. constitution, not to mention all rational judgment and common and moral sense, and let the government do "whatever it takes" to protect me. I have always deeply resented this constant imputation of base cowardice to the entire American people by American leaders year after year. I have no doubt whatsoever that the coddled, well-wadded sons of bitches who feed at public trough in Washington are themselves base cowards of the highest order; but Jesus Herbert Walker Christ, I do get tired of them projecting their own wiggly fears onto me.)

Look, it's very simple. The American republic ended for good a long time ago, more than a decade before I was born. Its last vestiges were wiped out with the creation of the National Security State signed into being by President Harry S Truman in 1947, and strengthened in a series of directives in the subsequent months. Such as the secret National Security Council directive NSC 10/2, signed in June 1948, which, as James Douglass notes, gave the newly created American security apparat the power to carry out "propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures, subversion against hostile states including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerillas and refugee liberation groups." It also directed that these covert ops were to be "so planned and executed that any US government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons, and that if uncovered the US government can plausibly deny responsibility for them."

In other words, Panetta's CIA -- and the plethora of other secret agencies and armies that have sprung up in the blood-drenched muck of the National Security State -- is specifically empowered to break the law and lie about it.

So what are we to make of Panetta's rationalization of Obama's cowardice in confronting the crimes of his predecessor, when he says:

    ...the Obama administration made policy changes in intelligence that ended some controversial practices... Yet my agency continues to pay a price for enduring disputes over policies that no longer exist.
Let's leave aside the glaringly obvious fact that an alleged cessation of a crime in no way mitigates or absolves its past commission. Or to put it another way: if a serial killer stops killing people, he is still culpable for the murders he committed before he "reformed." Yet we are constantly told that the government could fall and the world could end if anyone in power acknowledges this simple, self-evident fact.

But as I said, put that aside for the moment, and consider this: When the head of an agency that was created and empowered specifically to break the law and tell lies about it tells us that his agency no longer breaks the law -- are we supposed to believe him? Should such a person from such an agency be given the benefit of the doubt? Or should not our first, rational, logical, and fully justified-by-history reaction be: "This guy is lying, and I will continue to assume that he is lying -- since that is his job -- until he proves, conclusively, otherwise."

This operation of reason and logic is given the pejorative term "cynicism" these days, especially among those of "progressive" hue, some of whom are still painfully contorting themselves in order to "give Obama a chance." We also hear sometimes that, like John Kennedy, Obama must move carefully against powerful, entrenched interests in the military-industrial-security complex. But there is no indication that Obama is in the least interested in moving "against" this complex; on the contrary, there are relentless, manifold indications that he eagerly embraces the National Security State and the militarist empire for which it stands, and seeks to extend its power. The op-ed by Panetta is yet another chunk in this mountain of evidence. For again, does anyone out there seriously believe that Panetta would be green-lighted to publish such a piece if it did not reflect the views of Barack Obama?

So you want to know what Obama thinks? He thinks, like Cheney, that you are a sniveling little coward who was glad to sign over your liberties to an authoritarian regime. He thinks, like Cheney, that any crime -- torture, murder, aggressive war -- can be countenanced if the Leader and his minions order it to be done. He thinks, like Cheney, that the decades-old National Security State must be protected -- at all costs -- from any vestige or ghostly revenant of the vanished Republic and its laws.

That is what Barack Obama believes. That is what his policies imply. And that is what his shallow mouthpiece, Leon Panetta, has just told you, openly, brazenly, to your face.
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Re: Obama picks Leon Panetta to head CIA

Postby MinM » Wed Jun 05, 2013 1:41 pm

Panetta wanted Pitino to play him in ZD30
Image
Oh wait ... Pacino!
Image
There’s a funny passage from the DOD Inspector General on Leon Panetta’s blabbing about the Osama bin Laden raid that was leaked to POGO.

It describes CIA’s apparent helplessness from protecting CIA Headquarters from being breached by outsiders, even while many of our nation’s most elite warriors were present.

In a description of how a Hollywood Executive (possibly Kathryn Bigelow) managed to attend a celebration of the successful Osama bin Laden raid, the report explains,

On June 24, 2011, the CIA held an awards ceremony in a tent located on the grounds of the CIA headquarters. Two to four days prior to this awards ceremony, a CIA [Public Affairs Officer] contacted a DoD PAO to notify the DoD PAO that one of the Hollywood executives may attend the event. According to the DoD PAO, the CIA PAO attempted to prevent this from happening. The DoD PAO did not inform his Chain of Command or the special operators who were going to attend this ceremony about the possibility that a Hollywood executive might also attend. The DoD PAO said he did not forward this information because he hoped the CIA PaO would be able to ensure the Hollywood executive would be refused access. The DoD PAO’s current Deputy Commanding General told us he knew of those DoD PAO actions and did not fault the DoD PAO for not getting the information to the command group.

According to the DoD PAO, the day of the event, the CIA PAO contacted the DoD PAO to state that efforts failed and the “Chief of Staff” directed that the Hollywood executive be given access to the event.

It seems that Leon Panetta’s Chief of Staff, Jeremy Bash, and CIA’s Public Affairs Officer disputed who let the crafty Hollywood executive breach the nation’s premier spy agency. But breach Langley he or she did.

Mind you, all this went down a month before Pentagon Press Secretary George Little revealed that Panetta wanted Al Pacino to play him in Zero Dark 30.

Mr. Little: “I hope they get Pacino to play [Secretary Panetta]. That’s what he wants, no joke!”...

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/05/al ... dquarters/

So, as it turns out, Panetta leaked the Top Secret / Classified stuff for nothing. No Pitino, no Pacino, and barely any play in ZD30 at all (iirc).

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Re: Obama picks Leon Panetta to head CIA

Postby MinM » Tue Oct 07, 2014 11:50 pm

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