Panetta as CIA Director

[1258dave]

As a general response ..... we tend to forget how messy "winning" can be.
I'm not sure that Geo Washington would have been looking for a manager - he was looking for folks who wanted to win.

Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois
http://www.amazon.com/Year-Hangman-W.../dp/1594160139

[bourbon]

Opinions from the former-Agency crowd:

Panetta Is Not Uncured Italian Bacon, by Philip Giraldi. The American Conservative Blog, January 6th, 2009.

Leon Panetta: An Intel Outsider the CIA Needs, By Robert Baer. Time.com, Jan. 06, 2009

Leon Panetta? Say It Ain't So, By Mike Baker. Foxnews.com, January 07, 2009.

Right man for the job, By Melvin A. Goodman. The Baltimore Sun, January 7, 2009.

00-Huh? Former intel officials react to Panetta CIA pick, by Laura Rozen. Foreign Policy Blog: The Cable, 01/05/2009.

[John T. Fishel]

to be the best possible spin on the subject. Even if it is correct and more than spin, the appointment puts the CIA in a politically stronger position than the DNI - the opposite of what Congress intended with its reorganization of the intel community.

I am not saying that Congress was either right or wrong in what it did - if I had been King, I would have done something different - but Congress had both the authority and the power to change the structure of the intel community in the way it did. This move negates that action - whether as some fear Mr Panetta's job is to dismantle the CIA or, as Ignatius and others suggest, to protect it. My understanding of the intel reforms enacted is that they were to centralize authority for analysis and judgement in the DNI and relegate the CIA to (1) the primary HUMINT collector with some covert action responsibilities and (2) make it one among several all source analytical agencies.

Cheers

JohnT

[jmm99]

You certainly covered the political spectrum. Shows that former agency people are far from being a monolith. Thank you.

[bourbon]

More former-Agency opinion:

Sam Faddis -
CIA Man: Spies' Reaction to Panetta 'Overwhelmingly Negative', By Jeff Stein. CQ Politics: Spytalk, January 7, 2009.

Michael Scheuer and Ray McGovern -
Obama's Picks for Top Intel Jobs Stir Mixed Reactions, PBS Newshour, January 6, 2009.

Gary Berntsen Thinks CIA Needs 'Leadership Not Management', Fox News, January 07, 2009.

Dell Dailey (not former-agency) -
Counterterrorism Chief Praises Panetta, Aviationweek.com, Jan 7, 2009.

Obama Team Debating Whether Kappes Will Join Panetta and Blair for PEBO Intel Announcement, ABC News, January 08, 2009.

[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.