[Infowarrior] - Panetta to Be Named C.I.A. Director

[Richard Forno]

January 5, 2009, 2:30 pm
Panetta to Be Named C.I.A. Director
By Carl Hulse AND Mark Mazzetti

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/panetta-to-be-named-cia-director/?hp

Update | 4:55 p.m. 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.

Yet the choice encountered early opposition on Capitol Hill, with some  
senior Democrats questioning why the president-elect would pick a  
C.I.A. chief without a deep reservoir of intelligence or  
counterterrorism experience.

“My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best- 
served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time,”  
said Senator Dianne Feinstein who, as chairman of the Senate  
Intelligence Committee, would be in charge of Mr. Panetta’s  
confirmation.

Senator Feinstein said that she had not been notified by Mr. Obama’s  
transition team about the selection.

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.

Aides have said Mr. Obama had originally hoped to select a C.I.A. head  
with extensive field experience, especially in combating terrorist  
networks. But his first choice for the job, John O. Brennan, had to  
withdraw his name amidst criticism over his role in the formation of  
the C.I.A’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11  
attacks.

Members of Mr. Obama’s transition also raised concerns about other  
candidates, even some Democratic lawmakers with intelligence  
experience. Representative Jane Harman of California, formerly the  
senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was considered  
for the job, but she was ruled out as a candidate in part because of  
her early support for some Bush administration programs like the  
domestic eavesdropping program.

In disclosing the pick, officials pointed to Mr. Panetta’s sharp  
managerial skills, his strong bipartisan standing on Capitol Hill, his  
significant foreign policy experience in the White House and his  
service on the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel that examined  
the war and made recommendations on United States policy. The  
officials noted that he had a handle on intelligence spending from his  
days as director of the Office and Management and Budget.

Mr. Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of  
Technology, said Mr. Panetta and Dennis Blair, who was selected by Mr.  
Obama to become director of national intelligence, were an “absolutely  
brilliant team,” and called Mr. Panetta a “talented and experienced  
manager of government and a widely respected person with congress.”

He said that given global environment, there are indeed good reasons  
for Mr. Obama to select a C.I.A. veteran to lead the C.I.A. But he  
said that two of the agency’s most successful directors, John McCone  
and George H.W. Bush, had little or no intelligence intelligence  
experience when they took over at C.I.A.

“He will bring a wealth of knowledge of the government to the C.I.A.  
post and an outside perspective that I think might be helpful at this  
juncture in the C.I.A.’s history,” said Lee Hamilton, the former  
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a co-chairman of the  
Iraq Study Group.

As C.I.A. director, Mr. Panetta would report to Mr. Blair, a retired  
admiral. Neither choice has yet been publicly announced. The C.I.A.  
has settled down from years of turmoil after the Sept. 11 attacks and  
fallout from flawed intelligence assessments about Iraq’s weapons of  
mass destruction programs.

At the same time, it faces uncertainly about where it fits in the  
constellation of spy agencies operating under the director of national  
intelligence. In recent months, Michael V. Hayden, the current C.I.A.  
director, has clashed with Mike McConnell, the current director of  
national intelligence, about Mr. McConnell’s efforts to fill top  
intelligence jobs overseas with officers from across the intelligence  
community, not just the C.I.A.

Mr. Panetta, a native of Monterey, Calif., served eight terms in the  
House representing his home region before becoming the chief budget  
adviser to President Bill Clinton in 1993. He then served as Mr.  
Clinton’s chief of staff from July 1994 to January 1997.

Given the focus on the intelligence apparatus in the wake of the  
terror attacks and the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr.  
Obama’s selections in the intelligence field are expected to be  
closely examined.

Mr. Hamilton said that if confirmed, Mr. Panetta will have the  
advantage of moving to the agency headquarters in Langley, Va. with a  
strong relationship to Mr. Obama, which can translate into influence  
within the broader intelligence community. He said Mr. Panetta’s lack  
of hands-on intelligence experience can be supplemented by others.

“You have to look at the team,” he said. “You clearly will want  
intelligence professionals at the highest levels of the C.I.A.,” he  
said.