What Spies Think of Panetta

I thought what spies thought of the Panetta choice was important, so I conducted a poll, albeit a very unscientific one.

The results: "Obama was wise" to choose someone out of the torture loop to run the CIA. The problem: Not everyone in the clandestine service has spent the past six years waterboarding prisoners at Guantanamo.

"The job requires the sort of knowledge of intelligence collection that comes from experience," a veteran CIA operations officer told me. "There's no time that clandestinely acquired intelligence is more important than now."

Some would have preferred Steve Kappes, the Marine Corps officer who joined the CIA in 1981, distinguished himself as an operations officer, and now serves as Deputy Director. Others recognize Kappes lacks the political might of a Panetta to recapture support outside of Langley and extricate the CIA from the mire of the past eight years. However, spies play well by themselves, and they don't necessarily mind mire--when done properly, spying is "a dirty business." Which bring us back to their desire for someone accustomed to getting his uniform dirty.

No surprise there. Spooks are comfortable with spooks. Brush salesmen would probably respond similarly to a vacuum cleaner salesman being brought in to boss them around.

But what about the historical precedents in the intelligence business where experience was not a prerequisite for success in the director's job: John A. McCone and George H. W. Bush?

Answers: "Not good examples." McCone's highly relevant Atomic Energy commission experience was among the primary reasons President Kennedy appointed him. And Bush the First had been the "de facto ambassador to China"--due to American relations with the PRC at the time, there was no official embassy. The point: in that job, you're officially thisclose to clandestine operations. Unofficially, closer. And China is not France, a close ally whose free press does a better job providing "product" than any intelligence service could, or Britain, where, in deference to "cousins" MI6, the Agency's fundamental guiding principal is "stand down."

What about Panetta's résumé listing as White House chief of staff? In that position, you're thisclose to the President's Daily Brief, essentially the CIA's raison d'être.

Answers: The chief of staff experience helps but also, as it happens, accounts for two more perceived strikes against Panetta in Spook City:

1. The CIA's relationship with the White House was so distant at the time that "when a small plane crash-landed on the White House lawn in 1994, the joke was that it was [then-CIA-director] Jim Woolsey just trying to get a meeting with the president."

2. Panetta's legacy as "a strong manager" is tainted by his "arrogance."

As to Woolsey, Panetta already knows his way around, and presumably into, the West Wing. As for arrogance, Niccolo Machiavelli was unavailable for comment for this article, but it's probable he would have said, "We'll take it." Again unlike Woolsey, Panetta reportedly had no difficulty getting Clinton's attention.

Mr. Panetta also was unavailable for comment for this piece. Here's hoping it was because he was busy catching up on case files--or in a meeting with Kappes. And that Barack Obama's intelligence is better than Langley's.

Comments

[some-realtalk]

Hey CIA, you work for the your country, for the American people, so just do your jobs, collect the information like you are supposed to, give it to Presidednt Obama, like you are supposed to, and the country will be safe, and grateful.
CIA members you have a job to do, so do it, keep your country safe, and stop the whining. the CIA is not supposed to be whiners! BUCH UP! and DO YOUR JOBS!!!

[MagisterLudi]

No one knows how the experiment with Penetta will play out.
Of course, an outsider sometimes is a good thing for an inward looking organization ( thin blue line?). But then again politically driven outsider appointments have a way of backfiring. The entire Bush admin. is a case in point.

Real questions to me are:
1. Is Panetta astute and intelligent enough to contol the shop or will he become CIA's piñata ?
2. Will he develop a high level of trust within Obama circle AND intel community?
3. When serious crisis emerges ( and it will) how will he perform
4. Most important: Can he facilitate the production of high quality independent (!) intel?

The answers to these questions will emerge only gradually. But will have a serious impact on United States security.

In matters of national security the discussion should more objectively driven, and not just an unquestioning PR for Prez appointments.
This was a serious problem with Bush admin. Let's not follow in his steps, shall we?

[BlueHorde]

Why has the media grabbed hold of the storyline (meme) that Panetta has little or no intelligence experience?

He does - 40 years ago he was a military intelligence officer - he ran the intelligence unit at Fort Ord.

The story should be that in recent decades he has not been part of the national intelligence establishment - that is he is not among the people 'tainted' with the crimes and failures of recent years.

[blueskybigstar]

Without information our democracy cannot function. The very recent history of the CIA dating back to the sixties is not one to be proud of. On Thom Hartman, he and a writer were talking about recently declassified documents that show the problems of Nixon and his manipulation of events to sabotage peace efforts of his opponent's party in Vietnam in order to affect the elections here and the events surrounding a plane crash of the very people who were prosecuting Nixon. They are implicated in the death of William Casey who was about to testify to congress about how the Iranian hostage crisis was a manipulation to cost Jimmy Carter the election, the extensive amount of drug running and its effects of selling it in minority neighborhoods and laundering, infiltration of police departments in order to sell drugs, the fact that foreign media is reporting about a CIA plane that crashed in October 2007, and so much more that it really becomes a litany. Is it true that JFK tried to close down the CIA? Why was Nixon golfing with well known mafia? Are these people going down without a fight? How much CIA information was lost in its headquarters which was at the World Trade Center? How is it that this administration was able to commit so many crimes without their knowledge, and if they knew about it, why didn't they stop it? Good luck, Panetta.

[blueskybigstar]

It is very early in the morning here, so I did not mention that in the plane there was found 5 tons of cocaine.

http://www.aztlan.net/cia_russian_mafia.htm

[repearwo]

All true, and you did not even mention the Contra funding with Drug Money. One slight hope now is that time has past and the CIA has been diminished in power to a degree.

To blame the CIA however is narrow sighted. In a Democracy we get the Government we choose - either by action or inaction. We have a Drug infested world because we the people look the other way to drugs, if not use them ourselves. Blaming others for our problems is as old as man.

Until we are ready to admit our own "Little Murders" and change the way we act, the "Big Murders" will continue and upon them will be at least one partial fingerprint of each of us.

The mantra for our country right now is a union between Walt Kelly and Gandhi, We have seen the enemy and they is us (as spoken by Pogo) and if you want change, become that change.

It is still we the people when we are unhappy with our government we are unhappy with ourselves.

[kevinw]

Thanks for the load. The two CIA directors that did not have spying experience that did well, they really did have experience, wink wink. Panetta has the same wink wink experience as this group. He was President Clinton's chief of staff. He has worked with the President in reviewing the intelligence briefings and working through the policies that are required to address what can sometimes be scant hints at what is really going on. He also is familiar with the pressures and costs of taking the easy route of letting the intelligence agencies run amok. His skills in administration, congressional and military arenas make him the ideal person to lead an agency that has been sullied by the current administration. It has to be remembered that the intelligence community is not just marred with its torture reputation. The Bush administration blamed the community for every international screw up they committed. The intelligence community did not rebel with the label of incompetence that the Bush/Cheney crew hung around its neck. Even now Bush is using the agency as one of his main excuses on why his administration failed in so many areas was because of the intelligence failure. The community needs someone with Political competence to bring their reputation back.

[totalliberal]

Please pass on to me where the CIA has been successful at anything other than making most of the people in the world hate us by protecting American corporate interests abroad over those of the local populace.

[mamacat]

They helped to overthrew the government of Iran and installed the Shah. What better example of American diplomacy could one ask for? Unless one prefers as an example the thousands killed in Chile, or the thousands killed in Argentina, or the thousands killed in Guatemala, the thousands killed in El Salvador, the Bay of Pigs,....................Gee, I can't imagine why Obama wouldn't want a CIA professional to oversee the CIA professionals.

[Keith Thomson - Huffpost Blogger]

I think the CIA clandestine operations are like baseball umpiring in that you only hear about the bad calls. Recently I reported on one of the good ones¦

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomson/what-the-cia-doesnt-need_b_152173.html

¦and I think there are more that we don't/can't know about. This isn't by any means to say the CIA is Superman pretending to be Clark Kent, but there is reason to believe things are better than public opinion would have it.

[research]

Where the CIA has succeeded, it has been doing information gathering: spying.

Where the CIA has failed EVERY TIME, is in

Covert Actions.

Covert actions are acts of war.
These have backfired into every major crisis since Vietnam. Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Bin Laden, Saddam, Panama, it goes on and on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency#Organizational_history

Perhaps the world is too small to be sneaking around other neighborhoods killing people.

[jsanti7]

mute point really ...a good spy is worth 10 army divisions ... the only question is are we going to do the human intel that makes the first statement true ....its a nasty business to get to the nit of the gritty
the next director only needs to offer his best to understand what

[JimR]

I think you mean "moot" point...

[REXHANDSOM]

Seems to me we should have kept the man on who is now in charge, he has done a 100 % perfect job to this point, and who was ever torturerd, I would like his name. We hhave not been attacked since
9/11...........that would be a dam good reason to keep the current team... Don't you all think so...

[blueskybigstar]

What the CIA needs most of all is absolute transparency. The public and the internet would be much better able to solve the world's problems than they have shown they are able to. If you are not doing anything crooked with the people's business, then why are you hiding?

[Keith Thomson - Huffpost Blogger]

You're right to expect transparency in a democracy, blueskybigstar. The problem with transparency with clandestine operations is the Al Quaedas of the world will have the same access. Also clandestine operations are like surgical operations insofar as the training, skill and experience required. This isn't to say the intelligence community can go without substantial legislative and executive oversight -- as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "If you want a secret respected, see that it's respectable in the first place."

[research]

Torture DOES NOT WORK, TALK DOES:

Check out this video of interrogators discussing torture and torture in media like "24"

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/primetime/index.asp

[ntmessage]

Part I
Unless there is a better reason that Panetta was not specifically a spook (and who knows for sure in today"s world anyhow?), the CIA staffers and down the line players must support Obama"s choice in Panetta unless he actually exhibits serious incompetency in the role. Given the amount of incompetency tolerated over the past seven years, the bar seems quite low for Panetta to succeed.

Right now, he is already spearheading protection specifically supporting our people on the street and within our technology functions from bad policy decisions made by the Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld and the misdirected PNAC cohort who forget that the best intelligence is completely opposite from a shoot now and ask questions later mentality.

There is plenty to do, but being disloyal and unpatriotic to this president is not one of them. The long standing CIA/Oil alliance, and associated lame intelligence programs can be broken by new and more meaningful projects regarding terrorism and global imperatives. Who wants to keep messing with the same old players in the same old parts of the world just for the sake of tradition when we can truly get on with new, more relevant and infinitely more satisfying work? Imagine what the CIA can do regarding Global Warming.

We have had and will continue to have so much blowback from faulty prehistoric and Cro-Magnon policy decisions; that we must adopt even better and smarter methods that synthesize advanced technology and on the street realities.

[ntmessage]

Part II
So who do you think listens more to the value of our spooks work? Cheney and Wolfowitz? IMO Wolfowitz manufactured his own intelligence to agree with preconceived mindsets with catastrophic results. What of the Italian debacle and Cheney? What about Rumsfeld wanting to create his own CIA? We can go on forever.

I am tired of the best and bravest of our nation and world supporters continuing to fight battles that started in the 50s. We must get ahead on technology and on the ground intelligence. Most of all we must respect the work.

If you feel that being thrown under, the bus for 911 and the left turn to Iraq reflects the respect and patriotism worthy of our agents and supporters, then you are part of the problem. Falling on your sword for that was painful. We must redefine what hawk means in today"s reality and ask those whom cut their teeth in the 60s, 70s and 80s to join or get out of the way.

One thing you know for sure is that the CIA and the intelligence organizations have this administrations attention and trust to hear all sides of analysis and value of the work itself.
We will need to take some unpleasant action to minimize the blowback of the recent policy decisions however, in the name of God and our Country we must work with this administration to reclaim our unqualified leadership in the world of the next century.

[Bflobaz]

We need a CIA under civilian control; with a mind-set that it isn't about being a "black-opts, separate government" outside any semblance of Constitutional political oversight. Enough! No more of the CIA smuggling drugs into the country to bankroll its illegal operations and give it a hedge for a rainy day. They didn't invent the concept of torture; but they've done so in the name of "We, the People of the United States..."

[blueskybigstar]

More.

[mytwosense]

I spy a problem, or not. My internet spyware isn't working.

[zizyphus]

I just wonder how Panetta is going to get any good intel from agencies that are corrupted to the core by moles, inept bureaucrats, and drug dealing. There is a revolving door between Wall Street and the CIA, has been for decades. The CIA has so many fake companies set up, no one has any idea what they are really up to. The results of their hidden activities are that we were attacked on 911, are in two wars we can never win, and our economy is in a depression.