Panetta as CIA Director

[jmm99]

Of the named people, I get 3-1 (majority more or less pro) and 1-3 (majority more or less con), in the two sets of links. Another wait and see for post-20 Jan.

[bourbon]

Phil Giraldi on his former agency and the current state in which Panetta will inherit it:

Counter Intelligence: Today’s CIA serves contractors and bureaucrats—not the nation, By Philip Giraldi. The American Conservative, February 23, 2009.

Senior officers, in denial over their own lack of language and cultural skills, frequently maintain that “an op is an op,” implying that recruiting and running spies is the same everywhere—an obvious absurdity. The Agency’s shambolic overseas assignment process means that officers often receive only minimal language training and are expected to learn the local idiom after arriving at a post, presumably through osmosis. Most fail to do so. Frequently chiefs of station cannot converse with the heads of the local intelligence services unless their counterparts happen to speak English. Officers targeting indigenous political parties or government officials often cannot read a newspaper or speak the local language. Attempts in the 1980s to require language qualification as a sine qua non for overseas assignment foundered due the sheer immensity of the problem. In 1995, only three Agency officers could speak Arabic well enough to understand an Arab speaking colloquially. Seven years after 9/11, there are only five such officers.

NYPD has sixty officers fluent in Arabic across a range of dialects. Granted, the standards between NYPD and CIA are very different. Still, only five officers... ouch.

[Uboat509]

Still, only five officers... ouch.

Assuming that it is even true.

SFC W

[George L. Singleton]

Knowing of Georgetown University's involvement in Arabic language training, I doubt the small numbers used here and suggest an understatement has been made.

Too, deep operatives are not known openly or even somewhat covertly to other operatives, as it should be.

A bit too open a discussion for my blood as folks worldwide can read this site. Out.