Jan 5, 2009 4:53pm
Panetta to Head CIA — Doesn’t Intelligence Experience Matter?
EmailABC News is reporting that Leon Panetta, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is Obama’s choice for director of the CIA. As ABC’s Jake Tapper points out on his blog Political Punch, Panetta is regarded as a good manager but has zero intelligence experience. It is an interesting choice especially given this moment in time. The nation is at war on multiple fronts and the agency is still operating in the wake of intelligence failures and accusations of controversial tactics. Bad move to place a person with no intelligence experience in the top slot at Langley? Or is this exactly what is needed right now?
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Experience doesn’t matter to Obama voters. Clearly. Heaven help this country.
Posted by: uh, no | January 5, 2009, 5:33 pm 5:33 pm
In 1996 this Chief of Staff wasn’t aware that his boss was having a fling with a White House employee just down the hall. ( Or so he swore before a grand jury. ) Now he’s going to be in charge of ferreting out the world’s intelligence secrets…?
Posted by: Carl | January 5, 2009, 5:49 pm 5:49 pm
I question whether the Obama administration takes national security as seriously as I do. Appointing a couple of political types to head the CIA ,former California Representative Leon Panetta and Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona to head the Homeland Security Agency makes me nervous.
These jobs are not for on the job training and I know our enemies are watching.
Posted by: jim 234 | January 5, 2009, 5:49 pm 5:49 pm
Obama campaigned on “Change we can believe in”, and chided John McCain as saying he would be four more years of George Bush. What he did not tell you is the only change will be that we get four more years of Clinton with all the returning Clinton political hacks.
Posted by: jim 234 | January 5, 2009, 5:52 pm 5:52 pm
If the terror groups around the globe sense that we are going to back off in our intelligence surveillance, we will all discover the hard way that experience in this arena is critical.
The stakes are just bit too high to start BS’ing with the intelligence community!
Posted by: Mike_C | January 6, 2009, 9:43 am 9:43 am