Washington Post: Panetta Chosen As CIA Director

Washington Post: Panetta Chosen As CIA Director

Well duh! I'm not sure "stunned" is nearly strong enough a word.

The intelligence community is beside itself...

However, Mr. Panetta is pretty sharp people.

On the flip side, he was chief of staff when President Clinton dropped the ball repeatedly on national security matters...

Not to worry, if President-elect Obama sticks by him he will be confirmed - it just won't be real pretty

Panetta Chosen As CIA Director

Some Question Intelligence Experience

By Anne E. Kornblut and Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, January 6, 2009; A01

President-elect Barack Obama stunned the national intelligence community by selecting Clinton White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta, a longtime Washington insider with little intelligence experience, to serve as the next head of the CIA.

The decision -- which was also met with wariness on Capitol Hill -- reflects a desire to change the intelligence power structure, officials close to the selection said yesterday. Obama has chosen retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair as the director of national intelligence, a job he intends to reinforce as the "lead horse" on intelligence issues, an official close to the selection process said.

Panetta, 70, is widely regarded as a good manager who knows the government bureaucracy well. Panetta, a former eight-term member of Congress who has run a think tank in California for the past decade, has no significant ties to the agency that Obama has criticized for using harsh interrogation methods. Panetta has openly objected to the use of such methods, writing in an essay last year that the United States "must not use torture under any circumstances." Obama had trouble filling the CIA slot in part because other candidates were perceived as tainted for having supported aspects of the Bush administration's interrogation and intelligence programs.

[…]

That would be the “Bush administration's interrogation and intelligence programs” that kept us safe…

Read the rest of the article here: Panetta Chosen As CIA Director

20090106 WaPo Panetta Chosen As CIA Director

Kevin Dayhoff E-mail him at: kdayhoff AT carr DOT org His columns appear in The Tentacle, www.thetentacle.com; The Westminster Eagle /Eldersburg Eagle The Sunday Carroll Eagle - Opinion: http://explorecarroll.com/opinion-talk/ www.kevindayhoff.net http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/ www.westminstermarylandonline.net http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ http://www.youtube.com/user/kevindayhoff http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1040426835 http://picasaweb.google.com/kevindayhoff