Former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, a longtime congressional veteran and administrative expert, is designated to head the CIA. If the fortunes of the CIA can be any lower I suppose Panetta can drag us even lower. In Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner convincingly documents the atrocious failures of the CIA, and the length, depth, and outrageous incompetence of CIA.
Also, retired Admiral Dennis Blair is Obama's choice to be director of national intelligence, who is also bereft of first-rate intelligence qualifications.
Obama seems to be playing politics with these appointments since he is communicating his dissatisfaction with the Bush administration policies which included the harsh interrogation of prisoners, waterboarding, and extraordinary renditions-—the secret transfer of prisoners to other governments with a history of torture. Several high-level, but so far unnamed officials feel that warrantless wiretapping will end. We'll see.
Obama overlooked former and current CIA officials who had impressive intelligence credentials. The more qualified individuals worked in intelligence during the Bush administration during the months leading up to 9/11. In fact, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Senate’s incoming Intelligence committee chair, criticized Obama’s choice.
She stated:
“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read. My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."
No kidding, Diane.
Panetta only had direct intelligence experience in a two-year stint in the mid-1960s as a U.S. Army lieutenant. 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.
Deutsch did not want the position although he reluctantly accepted the position after Clinton appointed him. Deutsch attempted reforms of the chaotic CIA although he made Clinton furious when he told Congress that CIA could not unseat Saddam Hussein. The situation led to his sacking (Cf. Weiner, pp. 524-535).
Panetta 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; of course, most of the recommendations were overly dire and pessimistic. How quickly they forget seems to be the watchword here. Who remembers the Iraq Study Group? At the time Democrats were thrilled with its recommendations they seemed to be stating the facts in a straightforward manner. When the recommendations were published in 2006, the Iraqi situation seemed hell bent on deterioration, and Democrats seemed to be mired in the Group's assessment, nonetheless, rather than a slide toward chaos that appeared imminent, the Iraqi government did not collapse and it has actually moved towards a national reconciliation. Nothing succeeds so much in Washington as failure.
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