Questions over Leon Panetta at CIA

Barack Obama’s choice of a director for a revamped and better behaved CIA was never going to please everyone in the intelligence/political community, and already his appointment of Leon Panetta has its critics.

Panetta is a 70-year-old Californian who started a distinguished political career as a Republican, but became a Democratic Congressman after resigning under pressure from President Richard Nixon to stop enforcing Civil Rights legislation. He served as Bill Clinton's chief-of-staff from 1994 to 1997. However, his only previous intelligence experience was during a short stint with the US Army during the early 1960s, and historically the CIA haven’t welcomed outsiders. Under Clinton, Panetta once sought to cut the CIA budget.

Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic Senator for California, who will soon take over as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, immediately signalled her opposition. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge," she said. Senator Jay Rockefeller, the outgoing chairman of the committee, shared Feinstein’s reservations.

Despite these murmurs of discontent from within his party, Obama’s move has been generally well-received. Intelligence analyst David Corn wrote that Panetta is "an even-tempered and highly regarded Washington player - kind of a Mr. Fixit in a nice suit… If Panetta manages to make it to Langley without much fuss, that would indeed signal real change in Washington."

Panetta's appointment does signal a clean break with the Bush years, when the CIA was discredited for its failure to stop the 9/11 attacks, the debacle over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and the continued use of torture as a counter-terrorism tactic. Panetta has denounced waterboarding and wrote this in an editorial for the Washington Monthly last year: "We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground."

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 6, 2009