Well, if he has Lee Hamilton’s stamp of approval, that’s okay by me! /s

What difference would intelligence experience make? Everyone knows that the important CIA reports are political. Panetta is perfect for making sure the reports come out the way PEBO wants.

Hey since most of the intel community has been tainted by Bush’s excesses, how about someone with even a little foreign policy experience? Most of Obama’s choices have been very mediocre but this is seems particularly lamebrained.

He’s not my first choice

Sorry Bush has discredited the idea that a good executive can manage any company and that specific expertise is not needed.
I vote for Valerie Palme if the GOP don’t like it we can point out that she was our spy Bush outed her and the penalty for treason during wartime is death.
Does the GOP really want to stand next to Bush on this?

I’m sorry he is leaving California Forward

They raised a bunch of money for budget and revenue raising reform including money for campaigning. I think people should stay with the projects they started and not abandon them just because something else comes along.

The advantage that Panetta might have, says Lee Hamilton, a partner of Panetta’s on the ISG, is his close relationship to PEBO, and that he could supplement his lack of direct experience by placing more seasoned intel hands in top posts. “You have to look at the team. You clearly will want intelligence professionals at the highest levels of the C.I.A.,” he said.

Isn’t this what the MSM said about Bush and his lack of foreign policy experience too bad if you don’t know the game you can’t choose good players to be on your team.

Via Atrios, there’s this from Panetta last March:

More recently, President Bush vetoed a law that would require the CIA and all the intelligence services to abide by the same rules on torture as contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual.

The president says the rules are too restrictive, implying that the use of some forms of torture just could help avoid another Sept. 11.

But all forms of torture have long been prohibited by American law and international treaties respected by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

Our forefathers prohibited “cruel and unusual punishment” because that was how tyrants and despots ruled in the 1700s. They wanted an America that was better than that. Torture is illegal, immoral, dangerous and counterproductive. And yet, the president is using fear to trump the law.

The same rationale is used to justify eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without a warrant. The president has made clear that the failure of the Congress to pass this authority could jeopardize our security. Instead of trying to negotiate a compromise with Congress that would meet both our intelligence and privacy concerns, it is easier to threaten with fear.

Too bad. I had been rooting for Jami Miscik.

OT but i sure hope that come Jan 20 that acronym disappears with no replacement. OBAMA, 5 letters instead of 4, you can do it.

It is an argument that can be used both ways. When people like me criticized Obama’s choices for his team, he said it is not the team, it’s the leader who counts. Hamilton now is using it the opposite way. If Panetta doesn’t know squat, then it’s the team.

Interesting choice for sure.

Lets see what kind of leader Obama is Bush has shown us the danger.

Pluses with Panetta is that he is a civilian and that he has not been part of the privatization of US intelligence. OTOH I don’t know that he will do much to change the trend to privatization.

After over 30 years of being active in the Dem Party in California, I can say that I have never heard anything but respect for Panetta. He has always been known as honest, decent and hard working. He also in personally liked.

You have to look at the team. You clearly will want intelligence professionals at the highest levels of the C.I.A

I was thinking about this and I guess what bothers me about it is that if we have these “intelligence professionals at the highest levels” are actually going to be running the CIA, why not simply choose one of them to be the Director?

Again that’s a plus but given his background and interests why not something more up his alley like Interior or EPA?

Given that a lot of our intelligence concerns revolve around the Middle East, South Asia, and China, it would have been nice to have someone with expertise in one or more of these areas. And I see Panetta’s presence on the Iraq Study Group more of a negative than a plus in this regard.

My longtime friend, the late Mark Dawson, was Panetta’s room-mate in Catholic college in California. They stayed in touch through Mark’s life, as best they could. Mark got me to pay attention to Panetta, back when he was in the U.S. House.

One of the most interesting things about Panetta’s most recent CA activities, in the Monterey area, has been his growing awareness of the vulnerability of the oceans. I’d like to know more detail on his role in the working groups on oceanic activities that have involved the U.S. Navy as part of the team. Re this, from his wikipedia:

Panetta has long been an advocate for the health of the world’s oceans. As a member of Congress from California’s 16th District, he wrote numerous successful acts of Congress to protect the California coast, including legislation creating the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary In 2003, Panetta was named chairman and commissioner of the Pew Oceans Commission, which in 2005 combined with the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy to establish the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative. Panetta now co-chairs the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative with Admiral James D. Watkins, U.S. Navy (Ret.). Panetta continues to pursue his commitment to ocean and marine life issues, serving as a resource for legislators and the media, advocating for ocean reform on behalf of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative as well as other ocean organizations, including the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Don’t know but I don’t for a minute believe that he will be dishonest. It is rare to hear as many good things as
I have heard about him over the years - especially for a politician.

Huh?

that’s all i’ve got. i confess i’m not seeing the thinking behind the nominations that are being made and how the cabinet as a whole is shaping up.

OT MN bd certifies Al Franken
Hope you believe me this time
356 hrs & 16 min

To be serious for a change, I think you don’t need anyone who’s knowledgeable about spookiness to be in charge of the spooks. I’ve read quite a few books on the subject, and they get repetitive quickly. It’s just the specifics of the misdeeds that change.

The best book I ever read was Knightley’s The Second Oldest Profession. Besides being a history of MI6 and CIA, he points out the fatal flaw in all spookiness: it doesn’t work because it’s secret. There are no market forces to discipline it and no amount of management or oversight can police it adequately. So incompetence, failure & cruelty tend to rise. Furthermore, every failure is an excuse for bigger budgets, arguing that the reason they missed it was because they were inadequately funded. And since the evidence is secret, and the CIA uses fear as a weapon, Congress caves in.

Having said all that, and knowing that the CIA won’t be disbanded despite its uselessness, the best person to be in charge of the CIA is someone who will try to manage it vigorously, not someone who buys into it. Don’t know if Panetta is that person.

foothillsmike: thanks! yehawwwww! Go Al!

356 hours! I like your clock it makes the time seem to be flying!

Here’s the thing about Panetta. Based on the delay in selection, the problem with other canditates, the difficulty in finding candidates, his transition working relationship with Obama, and especially his statements from c&l, it looks to me like this is one candidate who thought for himself and came out on the right side of torture and surveillance. He was willing to say so.

He seems to be smart enough to deal with the rest. I don’t see how he can be blamed for the ISG.

I like the idea that he has not been comprmoised by earlier involvement in accepting torture and surveillance. This is huge.

So, this to me seems to be a very good choice. He can be counted on not to have a conflict of interest about torture and surveillance!

*g* I believe you. I was just surprised is all.

I don’t know about the Navy angle but Panetta gives a very good interview here about the state of the world’s oceans.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/widean.....netta/456/

This selection makes me very hopeful about Obama, his priorities, and his sense of what he is up against.

well, i don’t know anything about spooks. but i’ve had some less that positive experience with high level managers who know nothing about the product being manufactured, the manufacturing process, the customers or the competition but were whizzes at business school.

that makes me think it might not be a bad idea for a DCI who has some expertise with the intelligence community or the some of the big issues that the cia will have to be dealing with. even just to manage effectively, let alone vigorously - in a big organization especially people figure out how to work around a new head who’s clueless about the issues, processes, etc.

that said, i’d rather have someone without any relevant experience than someone like hayden.

Yeah. I came across that when doing research a few weeks ago on Jane Lubchenco, Obama’s pick to head NOAA. I’d like to see greater coordination between NOAA, the Navy, the USCG and the CIA on long-term strategy on keeping the oceans from dying. NOAA really needs to be put in a more rational place than Dept of Commerce.

He was in the intelligence section while is was in the army … so he has worked ”on the line” …

There is also a problem of group think. This problem may be particularly prevalent in “intelligence” SOme one fresh has not been sucked in by the paradigm.
355 hrs & 54 min

exactly right about the groupthink … also, at this point, illegal approaches have become a norm so it’s going to take some real energy in the other direction to break up the current culture.

very good point - if all internal dissent has been purged. i’ll be curious to see what someone like ray mcgovern says. if the dissenters at VIPS like this pick, that will be a strong positive to me.

The advantage that Panetta might have, says Lee Hamilton, a partner of Panetta’s on the ISG, is his close relationship to PEBO, and that he could supplement his lack of direct experience by placing more seasoned intel hands in top posts. “You have to look at the team. You clearly will want intelligence professionals at the highest levels of the C.I.A.,” he said.

———————————————————–

I certainly hope with every ounce left in me that Lee Hamilton, the protector of the Bush family on the Iran-Contra committee, doesn’t end up anywhere near the CIA or documents there might continue to disappear.

Where does Lee Hamilton stand on torture?

He was in the intelligence section while is was in the army … so he has worked ”on the line” …

So would this qualify anyone who has ever been in the military to be Secretary of Defense?

OT hate to keep going OT but there is a lot shit going on. Madoff in court again prosecuters asking for bail to be recinded after he attempted to mail about $1 million in jewelry to relatives.

oops 355 hrs & 41 min

Thanks for the link.

Hugh @ 36: no, but it does mean he does have some insight into the business, rather than no intelligence experience at all. That’s all I meant.

So would this qualify anyone who has ever been in the military to be Secretary of Defense?

yes, of course. so long as they were also a former clinton chief of staff, former member of the ISG and a close friend of PEBO.

Wasn’t Cheney a Secretary of Defense??????

… and Cheney’s qualifications were ….. ….. ….. ?

here’s something in panetta’s favor - difi doesn’t sound happy. from spencer:

Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who’s about to take the reins as chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, doesn’t appear to be too happy with Leon Panetta’s prospective appointment to the CIA. Here’s what her office just sent me:

“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 Senator Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the 111th Congress.

“My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”

Given the actions of Cheney over his career, his CV may not be the best ot use as a comparison.

His ability to get multiple deferments!
355 hrs & 31 min

Yes, but we see how all that turned out with Cheney don’t we?

I’m saying that anyone with “relevant” experience is tainted, and that a CIA manager can easily learn the substance from books. Of course, Panetta’ll probably do exactly what he shouldn’t, which is learn from his underlings. If he believes everything they say, he’ll be worse than useless.

It’s very different from managing an effort where something substantive must be known.

This is the dilemma. Panetta is not an intelligence community hack so this would explain Feinstein’s displeasure. She is also something of an ego freak and probably would have been like to have been “consulted” about the choice for CIA. OTOH there is Panetta’s lack of experience in intelligence. I admit I am ambivalent.

thanks, selise: my gut feeling about DiFi’s wanting an ’intelligence professional at this time’ is about having someone equally complicit in crimes as the Committee members themselves, to keep a lid on the entire mess.

Go Leon!

eCAHN @ 48: that’s what I was trying to get at … the ’taint’ is what worries me. if the nominee has a conflict of interest we will never get anywhere on changing these horrors. From what Edward Teller is saying, Panetta seems to be able to think for himself rather than go with the crowd.

i’m all for learning from books. just think some things require more than that: some real life experience to judge the books by or in some cases a kind of apprenticeship that includes practice.

but maybe there’s something you and panetta can do that i can’t and so i don’t understand it?

Panetta appears to have the management experience for running a big entity, he was Director of the OMB. I think that this might be viewed as a “Stansfield Turner” sort of move…and in one sense might result in the elimination or shifting of certain individuals within the agency…and elimination of certain types of covert activities. I doubt he will undertake any big “October Massacre” approach that Turner did, though.

I found an interesting quote by Panetta in regards to the Plame case, though…about the access of people who are ineligible to handle secret information from being granted Security Clearances.

“Leon E. Panetta, a former Army intelligence officer who was White House chief of staff under President Clinton, said the White House was typically populated by staffers who, like Rove, landed there after years of experience in political campaigns, not in military or intelligence positions.

“To be frank,” Panetta said, “I was always a little nervous in the White House about a lot of people who got clearances who were not really fully aware of the impact of dealing with that kind of documentation.”

re ambivalent. agree.

as i wrote above, i’m very curious to see what ray mcgovern (and VIPS) and other cia dissenters have to say.

Not going with the “crowd” would be perfect. If I were Panetta, and I hadn’t already read every negative book about the CIA, that would be the first thing I did. Heh. I’ve read all of them that I’ve come across. I could compile a reading list. Besides, most of them are real-life spy thrillers, so they are page turners. Fun as work.

I thought your argument about secrecy mitigating against good results is an excellent point. It explains a lot about intelligence failures. I once made a list (yes, another one about major intelligence failures). A few I remember off the top of my head:

The Kennedy era missile gap
The Iranian Revolution
The fall of the Soviet Union
Both Pakistan’s and India’s nuclear programs
9/11
WMD in Iraq
Whereabouts of Osama bin Laden

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that we should do away with the CIA because if it couldn’t foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union, essentially its raison d’être, there was no reason to keep it.

Didn’t Cheney serve in Vietnam on Hamburger Hill? Perfectly qualified I’d say. Oh wait that was on “Lynne Hill”.

To slightly overstate my case, I’m saying there’s nothing to learn. CIA agents seem to have been doing the same kind of recruiting and message drops since the CIA was established. I’ve probably read several books, including by agents, and there have been movies. They’re all the same. The tricky part is vetting the source & its info. CIA director doesn’t need to know how to do that.

Then there’s dirty tricks. Any of those I’ve ever read about, you would not want your country doing in your name. And they never accomplished anything productive that I can tell. (I can hear a CIA trickster yelling that only their failures have been made public but not their successes.)

And then there’s gathering information from public sources. You are probably better at that than the average CIA analyst.

cinnamonape @ 53: see, that’s an interesting quote from Panetta that shows a knowledge of the intelligence business and a focus. Early education/training experiences shape the way we view the world in my experience. I really think he is well-rounded and we sure haven’t had that lately. And again, he cares about our values ~ I don’t see how any of this gets fixed without that.

here’s another person i’d like to hear from - daniel ellsberg. he’s written about how people’s judgement get’s twisted by insider “secret” info, which tends to get given far more weight than it deserves (even when public contrary info is available) simply because it’s secret.

But you didn’t notice another consistency in your list of failures, which is that most of them stemmed from political motives. That’s why I snarked in 2 that Panetta was perfect for the job because of the seemlessness that would create between CIA & politics.

And not anticipating the breakup of Soviet Union is a perfect example of the political pressure. Reagan was calling it the evil empire. The average CIA analyst doesn’t need to be told to find evidence of that when the big boss is touting it. They know which side their bread is buttered on. I’m sure there were plenty of CIA analysts who knew the truth. They were either fired or left.

that last sentence was a big clue about how much you were overstating your case. *g*

well, if there’s nothing to be learned, then i’d have to concede. but i don’t know how to tell that without actually being inside myself, or talking with someone on the inside who’s judgement i trust.

Here’s something about Panetta’s willingness to go against the tide and support the Constitution.

In 1969 Panetta was appointed assistant to Robert H. Finch, Secretary of the HEW in the Nixon administration. Soon thereafter he was appointed Director of the Office for Civil Rights. Rather than implementing Nixon’s “Southern strategy”, Panetta chose to enforce the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and equal education laws, despite intense political pressure. Robert Mardian said: “Doesn’t [Panetta] understand Nixon promised the Southern delegates he would stop enforcing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts?”. In subsequently revealed memos Finch and his Assistant Secretary John Veneman refused to fire Panetta, and threatened to resign if forced to do so. Nonetheless in 1970, Panetta resigned and served as Executive Assistant for John Lindsay, the Republican Mayor of New York City. Panetta disclosed these machinations in his book “Bring Us Together: The Nixon Team and the Civil Rights Retreat” (1971).

CNN is showing: ”Feinstein: I WAS NOT INFORMED.”

tee hee.

spencer’s post on difi and panetta is now at the top of the mothership.

http://attackerman.firedoglake.....ndpanetta/

cinnamonape @ 63: me likey at lot! Good thing he’s gonna be on our side. If this is his rep, no wonder DiFi is steamed. I think this means Obama will be acting on this file!

BTW Would a Chief of Staff sit in on Intelligence briefings at the WH? I would assume that Panetta would understand just how critical it is for a President to obtain accurate and complete Intelligence Briefings and Reports. As a civilian he is probably as aware as anyone, even more than members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees…on the benefits and dangers of how these intelligence products are used by the Executive Branch.

that last sentence was a big clue about how much you were overstating your case. *g*

I meant it sincerely, no snark or overstatement meant.

As evidence, I’d like you to compare your record with the CIA’s on matters that you have both looked into. I’ll bet you were closer to the mark than they were when you differed.

Part of it may be methodological. You or someone wrote above that CIA tends to place too much reliance on “secret” information. Why should that be? Shouldn’t secret information be weighed on the same scales as all the other evidence? I’m guessing that’s what you would do. Assess all the evidence, secret or not, by using the same strict criteria.

I like that story!

Leon Panetta was my member of congress for many years, during which time I covered him as a public radio reporter. He’s one of the smartest and most astute people I have met. As Congressman he was fully in touch with the district and with constituent needs, resolving sticky and difficult issues with diplomacy and speed. Since he left the White House he has built a wonderful public policy program at Cal State Monterey Bay. As many have said, he is a terrific manager, as evidenced by his time at OBM and as Clinton’s CoS, where he modeled Obama’s no drama style. If you weren’t paying close attention you might not have noticed what a good job he did handling Bill. I’m sure he and Obama will make sure he has the intelligence professionals he needs in his inner circle so he can use his considerable skills and abilities to get the CIA on track and keep it there.

thanks, JaneWade. That sounds wonderful!

cinnamonape: The Chief of Staff sits in on everything with the President. His role is to take meeting information/decisions and turn it into action. That’s what I know/understand anyway.

Monterey Institute of Buffoonery. Panetta regularly brings in clowns like Bill O’reilly for our edification.

Panetta is no friend of the left.

About DiFi, she has long had concerns that Panetta would run against her for governor, a position she has always wanted. Many people in California have tried to draft him to run so there is no love lost here.

JaneWade: oh, that’s interesting! Thanks! Hmmmmm.

well thanks. but apples and oranges. we don’t have cheney standing over our shoulder and spending lots of money to feed us nonsense.

one of the benefits of being unimportant outsiders is that 1) no one’s life is dependent on us getting it right and 2) no one is going to target us specifically for a propaganda campaign or a political seduction.

And the men tasked with analyzing the Soviet Union who missed that singular historical moment?

Robert Gates and David Cohen. Where are they now?
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense
David Cohen, Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence, NYPD

The Peter (or Pytor) Principle in action

After the farce of the 911 Commission, I would say he has no problem with secrecy, lying to the public, cover ups, government corruption, just for starters.