Obama picks Leon Panetta to head CIA

[thurnundtaxis]

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Two Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA.

Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world. An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public.

Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California.

He served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for the reversing course in the Iraq war.

Panetta currently directs with his wife Sylvia the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay a university he helped establish on the site of the former U.S. Army base, Fort Ord.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_ ... a_director

[JackRiddler]

.

"Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world."

Unlikely.

More likely:

"Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, because whatever his spook credentials are, they were well hidden until now."

.

[thurnundtaxis]

From wikipedia:

"Panetta and his wife founded the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy in December 1998, where they serve as the Institute's directors. The Institute is located at California State University, Monterey Bay. Panetta was instrumental in creating CSU Monterey by converting Fort Ord, where he was chief of operations and planning of the intelligence section when he was in the army, into the university

[ninakat]

Reports: Ex-Clinton aide Panetta to be named CIA director
RAW STORY
Published: Monday January 5, 2009

Three news organizations are reporting that a former aide to President Bill Clinton will be named CIA director by President-elect Barack Obama.

"Two Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA," The Associated Press reports. "Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world. An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public."

The New York Times' Caucus blog notes that Obama criticized the CIA "during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture. 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."

The Times also suggests the "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."

MSNBC's Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie also reported the hiring of Panetta.

[ninakat]

But will Panetta also preside over the CIA within the CIA? Well, duh.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Congress is filled with stealth people from military-intelligence.
So are agencies like the FAA.
This explains how the military government functions with a civilian facade.

GHWBush allegedly had 'no intelligence background' when in January 1976 he became DCI replacing William Colby who had dumped too many of 'the family jewels' to the Church Committee, like Operation Mockingbird media control which Bush pressured Sen. Church to omit from the final report.
It got leaked to Carl Bernstein and became his 1977 article.

Recall where Panetta was the morning of 9/11, in the same room with Cheney hearing an aide repeating "Do the orders still stand?" as a plane headed in to eventually hit the Pentagon.

[ninakat]

Recall where Panetta was the morning of 9/11, in the same room with Cheney hearing an aide repeating "Do the orders still stand?" as a plane headed in to eventually hit the Pentagon.

Really? I didn't know that. But I also can't find a link -- got one Hugh? I did a search over at HistoryCommons.org to no avail -- nothing came up with "Panetta" on the entire site (not just the 9/11 section).

on edit: Mineta or Panetta?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Recall where Panetta was the morning of 9/11, in the same room with Cheney hearing an aide repeating "Do the orders still stand?" as a plane headed in to eventually hit the Pentagon.

Really? I didn't know that. But I also can't find a link -- got one Hugh? I did a search over at HistoryCommons.org to no avail -- nothing came up with "Panetta" on the entire site (not just the 9/11 section).

on edit: Mineta or Panetta?

Quite right. My mistook.

OOOPS. Never mind. Wrong "etta." Maybe it was Odetta...
...too many threads at once...time to sign off a while...

[ninakat]

AOK, Hugh. Over and out.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Recall where Panetta was the morning of 9/11, in the same room with Cheney hearing an aide repeating "Do the orders still stand?" as a plane headed in to eventually hit the Pentagon.

Really? I didn't know that. But I also can't find a link -- got one Hugh? I did a search over at HistoryCommons.org to no avail -- nothing came up with "Panetta" on the entire site (not just the 9/11 section).

on edit: Mineta or Panetta?

Quite right. My mistook.

OOOPS. Never mind. Wrong "etta." Maybe it was Odetta...
...too many threads at once...time to sign off a while...

That was my first thought when I heard that this morning, Panetta wasn't he the guy that testified about the stand down orders.

A split second later I was thinking "No thats Minetta". Just for an instant tho ...

[IanEye]

OOOPS. Never mind. Wrong "etta." Maybe it was Odetta...

Don't go to bed
With no price on your head
No, no, don't do it.

Don't do the crime
If you can't do the time
Yeah, don't do it.

[kurish]

null

[thurnundtaxis]

More:

Obama's Intel Picks Short on Direct Experience

Just emboldened a few phrases that struck me as interesting...

...
A former senior CIA official who advises Obama defended the surprise choice of Panetta, who has no direct intelligence experience beyond a two-year stint in the mid-1960s as a U.S. Army lieutenant. The official said Panetta had been a consumer of CIA intelligence when he was at the White House. He said he was selected for his administrative, management and political skills which will allow him both to control and advocate for the agency.

He said Panetta will rely on the expertise of CIA officers to balance his lack of personal intelligence experience.

Veterans of the CIA were caught off guard by the selection.

"I'm at a loss," said Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's counterterrorism center and 27-year veteran of the agency who now is managing director of Kroll, a security consulting company.

The lack of intelligence experience puts Panetta at "a tremendous disadvantage," Grenier told The Associated Press in an interview.

"Intelligence by its very nature is an esoteric world. And right now the agency is confronted with numerous pressing challenges overseas, and to have no background is a serious deficit. I don't say that he can't succeed. It may that he can compensate for the obvious deficit."

John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, served with Panetta during the Clinton administration. He said Panetta's experience as a former Cabinet member will help elevate the CIA's status inside the White House. The CIA director was once the president's main intelligence adviser. That role shifted in 2004 to the newly created national intelligence director.

Obama "has drawn a former Cabinet-level official to take a sub-Cabinet position, which means for a much more powerful CIA in the constellation of intelligence agencies," Hamre said.

Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California. As White House Chief of Staff during the Clinton administration, he spearheaded the internal effort to find a new CIA chief that led to the selection of John Deutsch in 1995. Deutsch served for 18 months. After he resigned, CIA security officers found classified material on his home computer, a violation of security procedures.

Panetta also served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for reversing course in the war.

With his wife, Sylvia, Panetta directs the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay. The university that he helped establish is on the site of the former U.S. Army base at Fort Ord. Panetta also served for two years on a review board that helped oversee two major reports on the history of sex abuse in U.S. Catholic dioceses.

[geogeo]

Damn--youa ll are way ahead of me. here are quotes I thought were relevant (paging 8bitagent):

"I'm at a loss," said Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's counterterrorism center and 27-year veteran of the agency who now is managing director of Kroll, a security consulting company.

"Intelligence by its very nature is an esoteric world."

I realize that's the casual use of 'esoteric' but still--I love the way they characterize Kroll. It's the friggin heart of it all, THE black ops and intel group for Wall Street, and trail leads straight into 9-11 and etc. 'security consulting' my ass.

the Panetta thing's a set up by the synarch moles inside the Obama admin setting him up for a new al Qaeda attack inside the US this year. That's my bet.

[thurnundtaxis]

Panetta had cut intelligence service spending in 1993 for the Clinton administration, according to the CIA's own website:

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- ... ter_12.htm

...Woolsey also used DOD as an ally in preparing and defending the Intelligence Community’s program and budget. Leon Panetta, the Clinton administration’s first director of OMB, had indicated to Woolsey early in 1993 that OMB was considering providing the DCI with top-line guidance, perhaps with a publicly disclosed figure, and seeking sizable out-year cuts in intelligence spending. Woolsey also faced skeptical audiences in Congress anxious to find an additional “peace dividend” in intelligence spending as well as in the larger defense budget. From Woolsey’s perspective, he had the unenviable task of managing declining intelligence budgets in an era of multiplying intelligence targets (the “poisonous snakes”), and he did not wish to see each intelligence agency develop its own downsizing plan in isolation. Downsizing in fact offered the DCI an opportunity if he could use it as an incentive to advance community integration....