Panetta to CIA, by Michael Ledeen
The Corner/NRO, Jan 05, 2009, 05:23 PM
In the very early days of the Bush administration, Karl Rove asked a Washington policy wonk what personnel changes he'd recommend to newly arrived George W. The wonk said "there is one matter of life and death: he must replace Tenet at CIA and put in one of his own people, someone he absolutely trusts." Rove said "well, good luck with that one." Obama knows better, and he's putting Leon Panetta in Langley.
I always liked Panetta. He served in the Army and is openly proud of it. He seems to be a good lawyer (oxymoronic though it may seem). He's a good manager. And he's going to watch Obama's back at a place that's full of stilettos and a track record for attempted presidential assassination second to none. But Italians know all about political assassination; you may remember Julius Caesar. Or Aldo Moro. The self-proclaimed cognoscenti will deride his lack of "spycraft," and he's never worked in the intel bureaucracy or, for that matter, in foreign policy or national security. But he's been chief of staff, which involved all that stuff.
I think it's a smart move.
Monday, January 5, 2009
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Feinstein/Panetta: Senatorial Prerogative, "Intelligence Professionalism," and Political Leadership of the CIA, by RJ Eskow
ReplyDeleteHuffington Post, January 6, 2009 | 01:13 PM (EST)
Complete article w/references @http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/feinsteinpanetta-senatori_b_155627.html
There are lessons to be learned from Sen. Dianne Feinstein's reaction to the nomination of Leon Panetta as CIA head. One is that powerful Democratic Senators can be no less sensitive or arbitrary than their GOP counterparts. Another is that the phrase "intelligence professional" can be used like a mantra without being properly defined for the public. Nevertheless, the appointment of a "politician" to run the CIA is not inherently wrong. It can be a good or bad thing -- depending on how it's done, and by whom.
Senatorial Prerogative: "I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director," Sen. Feinstein said. "I know nothing about this, other than what I've read." While that appears to have been an oversight on the Obama team's part, it's surprising that she made such a public issue of what is little more than a breach of DC protocol. It might have been wiser to communicate her sense of wounded pride privately. Now, voters in California and elsewhere will be left wondering whether any future resistance to the Panetta nomination comes from high-minded concern or merely a politician's ego.
Sen. Feinstein's statement goes on to say: "My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."
This reaction is particularly telling when looking back at the nominations she didn't oppose. She voted for Gen. Michael Hayden's confirmation as National Director of Intelligence, for example, despite the fact that intelligence agencies had conducted spying operations on Quakers and other peaceful antiwar groups in the US during his watch. (Data on these groups was stored in a Defense Department database, as documented by NBC News.)
Nor was "professionalism" an appropriate defense for Hayden. He sponsored a technology initiative called Trailblazer, which never worked and went millions of dollars over budget. A failure this costly and spectacular would have been a career-ender for any executive in the private sector, but Sen. Feinstein still voted to confirm him.
She also voted to confirm Porter Goss, who - like Mr. Panetta - was a career politician tapped to serve the Bush Administration. Goss had also made highly inflammatory and deprecating remarks about Democrats and other Americans who differed with him on policy. Feinstein expressed "concerns" and said the nomination was "troubling," but voted for him just the same. Goss was a former CIA officer, however, which gets us to the issue of ...
Intelligence "Professionalism": Although Goss was a highly political choice, his CIA experiences leads us to the question of what it means to be an intelligence "professional." Panetta's opponents are telling us that's a prerequisite for the job. If you're confused about what that means, you're not alone. Nor are quotes like this one from Prof. Amy Zegart of UCLA likely to help: "It's a puzzling choice and a high-risk choice ... The best way to change intelligence policies from the Bush administration responsibly is to pick someone intimately familiar with them. This is intelligence, not tax or transportation policy. You can't hit the ground running by reading briefing books and asking smart questions."
There are two problems with this argument. First, neither Prof. Zegart nor anyone else has explained why intelligence issues are qualitatively more difficult to understand that tax or transportation policy, both of which are complex and have more than their shared of trained professionals. Secondly, Mr. Panetta is not a newcomer to intelligence issues. As Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff, he ensured that the President reviewed all critical intelligence every morning. He is an experienced consumer of intelligence, which is an excellent qualification for the position.
None of this is intended to denigrate the experience and talent within our intelligence services. There are many skilled people in these organizations, working without recognition under difficult circumstances. But, pace Prof. Zegart, there are many skilled people working in tax policy too. That doesn't mean that being led by a politician is bad. The right politician can, in fact, give the professionals the support they need to do their work successfully.
Political Leadership: That leads us to the question of whether a "politician" should lead an intelligence agency. The CIA's morale has been crushed and its ranks have been decimated by the political leadership and influence of Porter Goss, Dick Cheney, and others over the last eight years (without enough objection from Sen. Feinstein). Career officers have been force into retirement for holding unpopular views about Iraq, neoconservative ideologues have been dictating report content, and leaders like George Tenet have curried favor with their bosses at the expense of the organization they were entrusted to run.
That's not the kind of "political leadership" Leon Panetta promises to provide. He will not endorse or support torture, "extraordinary rendition," or any of the other extralegal techniques the CIA has carried out over the last few years. But he will encourage the professionals to do what they do best: Gather and interpret intelligence honestly and effectively, without having to bend to the ideological demands of their political overseers. And hopefully, agents will also be able to carry out "black ops" (to the extent they're approved) without worrying about being indicted someday. Panetta's reputation and his relationship with the President will help him usher in a new day for the CIA, restoring its respect at home and its effectiveness abroad.
Panetta opponents warn us that insiders will run circles around him. They're forgetting about the man to whom Mr. Panetta will report. Retired Admiral Dennis Blair has been a director of the Joint Chiefs, a leading defense analyst, and the first associate CIA director for military support. Admiral Blair and Mr. Panetta can successfully restore the CIA's reputation, reconfigure its mission, and give it the tools it needs to meet its 21st Century mission.
Hopefully Dianne Feinstein, who has sadly been on the wrong side of intelligence policy too many times over the last eight years, will come to understand the wisdom of this appointment.
Statement to Employees by Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Mike Hayden
ReplyDeleteCIA, January 9, 2009
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/transition-at-cia.html
In statements before and after the election, I made it clear that I serve at the pleasure of the President. Those were not empty words. Every Chief Executive has the right to name his own team. Today, the incoming administration will formally announce its nominees for CIA Director and Director of National Intelligence.
President-elect Obama has chosen Leon Panetta to succeed me here at the Agency. With a powerful record of leadership in two branches of government, he has a well-deserved reputation for insight, wisdom, and decency. If confirmed by the Senate, he will learn from you about the CIA as it is now, starting with the decisive contributions you make each day to the strength and security of our country.
Deputy Director Steve Kappes and I have met with Mr. Panetta, and we came away deeply impressed with his candor and clear commitment to the welfare of the men and women of CIA. It was apparent to us that he is eager to immerse himself in the details of intelligence and espionage.
To facilitate a smooth transition, the President-elect has asked me to stay on until the confirmation process for a new Director is complete, and I have agreed. We have not been able to talk about these moves until now as they were not official. But CIA has worked closely with the Obama team. The discussions throughout have been positive and productive.
I came to this Agency in May 2006 with very high expectations. You exceeded them. You have kept a clear focus on the mission that drew all of us here. In Steve and the rest of the CIA leadership, I have had colleagues devoted to creating conditions for your success. There have been many triumphs that I have been proud to convey to the President and, where possible, to the public at large.
That starts with a string of victories over al-Qa’ida, a deadly, adaptive foe. From Asia to the Middle East, CIA has also been at the forefront in counterproliferation. Our analytic support to American fighting forces in Iraq helped open the way to the tribal engagement that proved to be a turning point in the war. There are plenty of others as well, which have changed the world for the better from behind the scenes. In short, no matter what the operational, technical, or analytic question, the answer typically includes CIA.
That is testament to your skill and courage, and it is something of which all of us can be proud. To be sure, there is more to be done. We continue to welcome and train large numbers of new officers. The talent and experience they bring enrich CIA, offering a diversity of perspectives and a uniform commitment to service. We also continue to shift our weight in the field. Analytically, that means placing even more experts overseas. Operationally, it means an even greater use of nontraditional collection platforms.
This is an organization on a strong path forward. Even as we meet the immediate demands of an unprecedented operational and analytic tempo, we are, through our people and infrastructure, investing for the future. CIA is a remarkable agency. We are America’s espionage service. Our analysts do their work free of departmental influence. Our technical effort is second to none in creativity, flexibility, and delivering solutions. Our support personnel give us agility across the globe. And, when our government needs the advantage that covert action provides, it comes here.
By virtue of all those things—expertise, function, and history—CIA is central to American intelligence. It is a quiet, priceless servant of the United States. I have been privileged to see you, with superior knowledge and exceptional valor, defend the American people in accord with their laws and values. There will be opportunities in the days ahead for Jeanine and me to express our appreciation to you. We have been honored to be part of CIA.
Mike Hayden
Let's Give the CIA Its Due. By CHARLES MCCARRY
ReplyDeleteTerrorists haven't been 'lucky' here since 9/11.
WSJ, Jan 10, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123154867657669993.html
Richard M. Helms, the first director of Central Intelligence to rise from the ranks, was fond of saying that the CIA had been founded to make sure that there would never be another Pearl Harbor. Underlying this mission impossible was the wishful supposition that an America that knew everything could prevent anything. The CIA's job was to keep an eye -- a jaundiced eye -- on the whole world, friend and foe, weak countries and strong ones alike, as a means of preventing catastrophic surprises.
For more than 50 years, on the whole, the magic worked. And then, on Sept. 11, 2001, another Pearl Harbor happened. The CIA was not spared when blame was handed out. An intelligence failure had occurred and the result was the loss of 3,000 lives, billions in destroyed property, and incalculable damage to the American psyche.
In terms of the original illusion concerning an all-knowing intelligence service, the agency was fundamentally at fault. In reality, it is not likely that any system then in existence could have identified the terrorists (19 obscure youths out of a 2001 world population of 6.1 billion) and forestalled their crimes in the absence of a colossal stroke of luck. On 9/11, it was the terrorists, not their victims, who had all the luck.
When it comes to the assignment of blame, the CIA has by and large been a luckless organization. Although it made its share of mistakes (the Guatemala coup) and had its share of misfortunes (the loss of a U-2 over Russia), it did great things in early days. Then came the Bay of Pigs, the secret war on Cuba, the bungled attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, the "unforeseen" assassination of our ally President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. These and other messy outcomes -- most if not all of which sprang from the enthusiasms of presidents and their advisers -- have been played out against a leitmotif of distaste for the whole idea of having a secret intelligence service as part of the U.S. government.
As anyone who reads the newspaper or goes to the movies or watches television or attends politically correct dinner parties knows, a booming paranoia industry has grown up around the agency and the federal government in general. When, during the counterculture, the picture began to emerge of the CIA as an outpost of the Dark Side, insiders were shocked by the absurdity of the charge. In those days, the agency was composed of wall-to-wall, knee-jerk liberals -- "nice boys who went to Yale and wouldn't hurt a fly," in the words of the only CCNY alumnus I ever encountered there. (For the record, I never met an assassin. Or a Republican, for that matter.)
All but a handful of the people I knew half a century ago, when for about a decade I served overseas as a CIA agent, are either dead or otherwise absent, and I don't know a soul who is employed in today's agency. Despite rumors of deep bureaucratic problems and deeper dissatisfaction in Langley, the profile probably hasn't changed much since my day. As in the past, the personnel likely are brighter than most, workaholic, patriotic, ambitious, a little too impressed with success in what they suppose is the real world. I hope for their sakes that they don't drink as much as the old boys used to do.
Also, I suspect that they are doing a better and a more ethical job for our country than most people think or would be willing to believe. And no doubt they are more than a little nervous at the prospect of a new administration, a new director, a new political orthodoxy, and quite possibly, yet another purge. New presidents and new directors have sometimes been hostile, and heads have rolled in the past for reasons that baffled.
In the Carter administration, for example, many of the organization's most senior and experienced operations officers were retired early or fired outright. Their mass departure took a large bite out of the agency's institutional memory, and abruptly terminated relationships all over the world that had been a generation in the making. Many of those dismissed were Ivy Leaguers, and whether or not that had anything to do with the purge, it ended an era and changed the CIA's culture.
Since the CIA rose to the top of the news this week with the nomination of a new director, the idea that the agency needs to change its culture yet again has come to the fore. If that means tighter control and more bureaucracy, one trembles for the future.
As an old man who remembers the intellectual exhilaration and the pleasure of having done good work that characterized the CIA when it was young, I wonder if it might not be better to speak and think in terms of restoring its culture. Allen Dulles, the first director under whom I served, seemed to want to recruit every bright young person in America, and once he had hired them, to give them every opportunity to use their brains to the utmost. Freedom of speech was the rule regardless of differences in rank. Ingenuity in the field was valued and rewarded. A mentor lurked in nearly every office. Significantly, that CIA had no headquarters; its people were scattered all over town in ramshackle temporary buildings and rented quarters.
It is doubtful that this Nirvana can ever be restored; the CIA is not the only culture in Washington that has been altered in the past 50 years. But wouldn't it be grand if the new management, as its first act, offered reassurance instead of recriminations to a troubled agency? Suppose, for starters, the boss said that on his watch, protocols would be clear, instructions would be plain, boundaries would be well defined, and within those limits, initiative would be valued, and that there would be no ex post facto rules.
He might also state that the allegations of abusive interrogation of captured enemies of the United States is a big issue for the CIA, but a separate issue, and that it will be handled and settled by due process in isolation from the good work that has been done by men and women who have been given a very difficult assignment and deserve credit and praise for what they have accomplished. After all, there has not been a single terrorist act on American soil since 9/11, and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have seen large numbers of their leaders and operatives hunted down and neutralized. Obviously the credit for this belongs to many people in and out of government, not just Americans but also some of our allies and friends. But surely the CIA was among the players.
Maybe the CIA, disheartened and distanced from its countrymen, could use a word of acknowledgment and a hint of better days to come. It might not be a bad idea to omit, for once, the customary spongeful of vinegar before proceeding with the usual reforms.
Mr. McCarry is the author of 11 novels and eight nonfiction books. He is at work on a new novel.