CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– INTELLIGENCE
Jan. 5, 2009 – 4:40 p.m.
Obama Taps Panetta to Head CIA
By Tim Starks and Adriel Bettelheim, CQ Staff
President-elect Barack Obama has tapped former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta to head the CIA, a Democratic official confirmed Monday, but he may face some resistance on Capitol Hill.
The incoming and outgoing chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee immediately signaled concerns about the pick, primarily because of Panetta’s thin resume on intelligence.
“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,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein , D-Calif., who will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the 111th Congress, in a written statement. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”
An aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV , D-W.Va., who served as chairman of the committee in the 110th Congress, said, “I think, based on press reporting if it proves correct, Sen. Rockefeller has some concerns about his selection. Not because he has any concerns about Panetta, whom he thinks very highly of, but because [Panetta] has no intelligence experience and because he has believed this has always been a position that should be outside of the political realm.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., was unaware of the choice of Panetta, but said he is “one of the finest public servants I’ve ever served with and dealt with since he left the House.”
Some experts have said the CIA’s role has been ambiguous since a 2004 intelligence community overhaul (PL 108-458) that put the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in charge of all the spy agencies. Sources have confirmed that retired Adm. Dennis Blair is Obama’s pick for the DNI job.
Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence panel, declined comment on Panetta’s selection until it becomes official, but added that “Mr. Hoekstra has called for a new direction and change in culture at CIA for some time. Whether it’s Mr. Panetta or someone else, he believes it’s important that the agency move in a new direction.”
Sen. Christopher S. Bond , R-Mo., ranking member of the Senate Intelligence panel said he would reserve judgment, but planned to look “hard” at Panetta’s Intelligence background.
Washington Insider
Panetta served eight full terms as a House member from Monterey County, Calif., before he was selected by President Bill Clinton to head the Office of Management and Budget in 1993. He was appointed White House chief of staff in July 1994 and left for the private sector in 1997.
His selection continues a trend that has seen Obama select seasoned Clinton administration veterans known more for their Washington savvy than their partisan tendencies. But his service high in the ranks of the White House could raise concerns about his political views.
Clinton and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director, began to cut intelligence agency budgets in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War, although counterterror funding rose under Clinton.
In the post-Clinton years, Panetta has served in a variety of private sector and semi-governmental roles. He was a member of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan committee that called on the Bush administration to hand off the combat mission to the Iraqis, bolster diplomatic efforts in the region and pave the way for a drawdown of troops by spring 2008.
Despite his thin resume on intelligence issues, Panetta has written and spoken out on a number of issues pertinent to the work of spies.
And his qualifications for the job were praised by former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., who served with him on the Iraq Study Group and was vice chairman of the 9/11 commission.
“First of all, he’s certainly dealt with a lot of intelligence,” Hamilton said. “In the Iraq Study Group we dealt with it every day. As chief of staff in the White House, you deal with it every day, too. That perspective, that perspective of chief of staff, is a hugely important element of getting intel to the president. The chief of staff knows what the presisdent wants more than any other official. That’s been one of the biggest gaps in the intelligence community, which is filled with very able and very experienced people, but does not always know what the president wants. Leon will be very sensitive to that.”
Hamilton said Panetta would I do need top deputies from the intelligence community. “It’s a complicated, arcane business,” he noted. But he added, “What his strength will be is he brings an outsider’s pespective to the intelligence community.”
Rep. Rush D. Holt , D-N.J., who chairs the Select Intelligence Oversight panel, also supported the Panetta selection.
Some names floated for intelligence jobs in the Obama administration have encountered resistance from liberals who argued the potential choices were too closely aligned with controversial Bush administration stances on interrogation policy and warrantless surveillance.
Panetta, however, is unlikely to draw such criticism. In August, he penned a piece for the Washington Monthly headlined “No Torture. No Exceptions.” It concluded: “We cannot and must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.”
In July 2006, he wrote critically in the Monterey County Herald about the Bush administration’s interpretations of the law in the war on terrorism.
“Under this interpretation, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detentions and warrantless surveillance have been set aside,” Panetta wrote.
Following a stint in the Army from 1963 to 1965, Panetta came to Washington as a legislative assistant to former California GOP Sen. Thomas Henry Kuchel (1953-1969). He was director of the Office of Civil Rights within the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Service) from 1969 to 1970 and also served as executive assistant to the mayor of New York before running for Congress.
Prior to joining the Clinton administration, Panetta was chairman of the House Budget Committee from 1989 to 1993. Beyond his budget expertise, he was known for high-profile efforts to protect California’s coast from offshore oil and gas drilling.
Panetta, the director of the nonpartisan Panetta Institute, also was chairman of the Pew Oceans Commission, an environmental think tank affiliated with the Pew Charitable Trusts, from 2000 to 2003.
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