The Panetta Pick
Leon Panetta’s served in congress, served in the military, served as Chief of Staff in the White House; he’s served on blue ribbon commissions and worked for politicians of both parties. And Barack Obama wants him to be CIA Director. Some Senate Democrats aren’t happy:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.
“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,” Feinstein said. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”
A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the senator “would have concerns” about a Panetta nomination.
Rockefeller “thinks very highly of Panetta,” the aide said. “But he’s puzzled by the selection. He has concerns because he has always believed that the director of CIA needs to be someone with significant operational intelligence experience and someone outside the political realm.”
Not to be mean about this, but I wish Sens Feinstein and Rockefeller had shown such concern about pushing back against the executive branch on intelligence matters back when, as members of the Intelligence Committee, both decided to back the invasion of Iraq rather than doing their jobs and calling attention to the problems with the intelligence the administration was presenting. Somehow other members of the SSIC like Dick Durbin and Carl Levin managed to figure out what was going on.
On the merits, this idea that the CIA Director needs to be a career intelligence professional seems to have been pulled out of thin air. Porter Goss wasn’t a career intel guy. Neither was George Tenet. Neither was John Deutsch. Neither was James Woolsey. Nor William Webster. Nor George H.W. Bush. Nor several other past directors. Meanwhile, it’s not like Panetta was just pulled out of nowhere — he was White House chief of staff where he had a hand in overseeing the entire federal government. He’s got the administrative chops and he’s held the intelligence clearances.
Meanwhile, the sentiment that Obama is somehow obligated to appoint a current senior intelligence manager to the job seems merely designed to ensure that no senior intelligence officials are held to account for anything that happened during the Bush administration. And if you think there’ve been no serious intel problems during the Bush years, that makes a lot of sense. But if you live on planet earth, that’s crazy. But if you want to go outside the IC to find a Director and still want someone who’s up to the job of running the agency, that’s a difficult person to find. But maybe you could find someone like . . . a former White House Chief of Staff!.
35 Responses to “The Panetta Pick”
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January 6th, 2009 at 8:40 am
It seems that Feinstein and Rockefeller are still in the fantasy world that they represent a swath of Democrats who thought we did a great job with the past 8 years of intelligence, or at least a party that thinks torture and domestic spying are important ways to protect us. Hopefully they’ll realize that neither of them has listened to what a Democrat has to say for 8 years running.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Re Matthew’s comment “On the merits, this idea that the CIA Director needs to be a career intelligence professional seems to have been pulled out of thin air. Porter Goss wasn’t a career intel guy. Neither was George Tenet. Neither was John Deutsch. Neither was James Woolsey. Nor William Webster. Nor George H.W. Bush.”
————–
Er.. your examples are kinda undermining your argument.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:01 am
I agree that Feinstein and Rockefeller did very little in their positions during the past administration to deserve meaningful consultation on this. Flawed intelligence, wiretapping, limp-wristed “oversight,” they should be happy that seniority gives them a spot at all. For Feinstein to go public about her dissatisfaction just reeks of me-first ego and hubris. Thanks, Dianne…when is your seat up again? Go jump.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:11 am
In fairness, Dianne Feinstein did join Senator Bob Graham and Nancy Pelosi in telling the country that the intel was not there to support Bush’s argument that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat.
It was Hillary Clinton and a number of other Democratic Senators who made the political calculation that whoring for the Israel Lobby made the intel argument irrelevant.
Bibi Nathanyahu, Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres were yelling that we needed to take out Hussein.
The biggest donor (($15 Million ) to the Democratic Party at the time , Israeli Billionaire Haim Saban, had the people at his prize think tank
(cough Marty Indyk, Kenneth Pollack cough) telling us that THEY had the INTELLIGENCE and we needed to move RIGHT NOW.
The Ranking Democrat on the House Intel Committee, Jane Harman, boasted that if she needed to know anything, she checked with the “Saban Center”.
So yeah, Senator Feinstein tried to do the right thing but , once she saw that the fix was in, she voted for the war. Which surprised no one — Feinstein rose to Senator because whenever San Francisco billionaire Walter Shorenstein said “shit!”, Dianne squatted and made grunting noises.
And Walter was known for responding to politicans’ requests for money with the question “What have you done for Israel lately?”
January 6th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Of course, the overall calculation that was made was that the Israel Lobby could buy the lives of 4000 US soldiers –fathers, sons, husbands — with a few million in political donations.
Not quite the same as drinking the blood of Christian babies, but kinda getting in the ballpark, no?
January 6th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I’m once again going to make the bland point that Matt manages to cover a lot of ground at amazing speed. I’ve stopped reading most blogs, but this one is still on the shortlist with TPM.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Don,
Feinstein “voting for the war” renders any attempt to prop her up, when she knew better, pretty thin porridge. Being Senator is a tough job — if you can’t stand up for what you know to be correct, especially in matters of war and peace, then you shouldn’t be there.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Tenet was a career intel guy, the others not.
Here’s a wild left-field hunch: Feinstein wants somebody who will keep the skeletons in the closet, because some of them belong to her….
January 6th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Goss was an actual field agent for the CIA.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:30 am
This fetish for having an intelligence professional head the CIA is bizarre. You don’t have soldiers heading the Pentagon, nor doctors heading Health & Human Services. It is, first and foremost, an *administrative* position. Do they really think the DCI is going to be running agents?
January 6th, 2009 at 9:46 am
This fetish for having an intelligence professional head the CIA is bizarre. You don’t have soldiers heading the Pentagon, nor doctors heading Health & Human Services. It is, first and foremost, an *administrative* position. Do they really think the DCI is going to be running agents?
Howard Dean would be great at HHS.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:59 am
This is why I voted for Barack Obama.
This, exactly this. Rule of law, end of torture, constitutional rights, restoring our country’s position in opposition to tyranny and evil.
We have a very short time to turn things around, to walk back what’s gone on over the past eight years, before it will be too late and we are irretrievably on the road to hell.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Re Joe from Lowell’s comment “Goss was an actual field agent for the CIA.”
———–
He was for a few years when he was much younger. In the 1960s. Involved in a operation called “The Bay of Pigs”. Ring any bells?
Look at some of the other members of Porter’s “Operation 40″:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_40
January 6th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Here’s a wild left-field hunch: Feinstein wants somebody who will keep the skeletons in the closet, because some of them belong to her….
That’s a well-grounded hunch. The entire SSCI has covered itself with shit over the past eight years, and anyone who touches the SSCI gets covered with shit.
Pretty much anyone who given access to the Secret Decoder Ring through membership of the intel committees seems to end compromised by the perceived privilege. Or perhaps just enjoys the whole secret-society thing a little too much. I’m sure that deciding how to divvy up the black ops budget gives them all little Tom Clancy starbursts.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Who’s Dianne Feinstein?
January 6th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I would note that the CIA of today is not the CIA of the past. News reports indicate that today’s CIA is largely a shell — focused on the Clandestine Services (Humint spying) rather than the ruler of the Intel Community that it tried to be in the past.
The Department of State’s small analysis section made CIA’s Directorate look like a pack of gibbering fools in the Iraq War intel debate. The DOD under Rumsfeld took over much of the technical recon sat systems. Porter Goss was such a clusterfuck as Director of CIA that his old Yale Buddy Negroponte fired him.
The center of power is now the National Intelligence Agency.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Note that one of Porter Goss’s compadres on Operation 40 was Barry Seal. That ring any bells?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Seal
January 6th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Given Rockefeller’s performance as head of Senate Intelligence, he really should just STFU. He has lost the benefit of having his opinion count for anything.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:27 am
MY wrote: “Not to be mean about this…”
please. are you a teenage girl?
January 6th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Just to drop the name of an interesting, relevant book here but if anybody wants a good read on the CIA I recommend Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner. You get a great understanding of how badly the CIA performed under previou administrations. Its no Heads in the Sand and all but what is?
Yeah, appoint somebody from outside the agency. The CIA won’t like it but they should have thought of that before they engaged in torture and acquiesced to the Bush admin on Iraq Intel demands.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am
A note from a California constituent of both Leon Panetta’s and Diane Feinstein’s. Feinstein has long seen Panetta as a threat to her in-state political ambitions, though I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing that he did anything to support that belief. I covered Panetta as a public radio reporter before and after he left the Clinton admin. There was some local pressure for him to run for governor (a position Feinstein has long coveted) but he never rose to the bait, saying he didn’t have a statewide base. It doesn’t surprise me that Feinstein would resist anything having to do with Panetta.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
We need a professional because American intelligence has been so blindingly effective. Not knowing Castro was going communist, imagining the Bay of Pigs would start a rebellion, overstating Soviet missile and bomber strenghth by levels of magnitude, anything about Viet Nam, failing to foretell the fall of USSR, being shocked by the fall of the Shah in Iran, everything in the last 16 years. The one thing America always does wrong is intelligence, no matter who is in charge. We never develop decent human sources, and we always draw the wrong conclusions from available data. Remember, Saudi Arabia didn’t train Osama’s forces in the ’80s, the CIA did.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Re Don williams
Bibi Nathanyahu, Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres were yelling that we needed to take out Hussein.
Once again Mr. Williams repeats his big lie. These same folks told Lawrence Wilkerson and Danial Kurtzer that the Iraq invasion was not a good idea.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
“Porter Goss wasn’t a career intel guy. Neither was George Tenet. Neither was John Deutsch. Neither was James Woolsey. Nor William Webster. Nor George H.W. Bush.”
But Matt, Porter Goss was a horrible director. Wooolsy turned into a nutbar, and Webster and Deutch’s tenures was were completely undistinguished, with Deutch not even being able to handle his own documents securely. Tenet enabled George W. Bush, plus there was that whole “9/11″ thing.
The only really decent outside director on your list was, ironically, George H. W. Bush.
The last really decent outside CIA director before hime was John McCone. And he was JFK’s replacement for Allen Dulles.
This doesn’t mean Panetta might not do a great job, but it’s hardly a case for outside directors in general. (Inside directors have a whole ‘nother set of problems, to be sure.,)
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