Panetta as CIA Director

I will have an op-ed up tomorrow at Pajamas Media on Leon Panetta’s nomination to be the Director of the CIA. For now here are some other views:

Lewsis Shepherd – Swap Panetta and Blair: A Modest Proposal

My puzzlement, though, is at the placement of Panetta and Blair in those two particular jobs. 

I believe a more effective arrangement would be to appoint Panetta as the DNI and Blair as head of CIA.  I wager to say that if those appointments had been announced at first, there would have been no “uproar” over Panetta’s role.

Here’s a quick cut at my own rationale:

• The DNI was created to whip the intelligence community into shape and break down the insular, agency-focused stovepipes.  Having “the high-profile Panetta at CIA and the low-key Blair at DNI” (that’s a characterization by David Ignatius in an op-ed this morning) seems to fly in the face of that critical reform, and might actually retard the effort to have the “community” live up to that moniker.
• The main argument which Panetta backers make for him is his general managerial excellence – presumably he’ll whip CIA into shape through budgetary wizardry and management practices, learned in his OMB days. But ODNI is supposed to be exercising community-wide budget authority, and the reform movement to get tight-fisted central control over individual agency budgets could be subverted, not helped, by putting a crafty budgeteer in place leading one agency.

Larry Johnson ( No Quarter) – Inspired Choices for DNI and CIA? » and  More Reactions to Panetta

The ideal candidate is someone who is smart, who is not looking to feather his or her nest to reap economic benefits, and who understands that the President needs an honest broker. Look at the Clinton choices-Jim Woolsey, John Deutch, and George Tenet. Horrible choices and a terrible legacy. And George Bush did no better-George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden. Hayden is awful because he has perpetuated the militarization of the intelligence community. Goss played politics. And Tenet? Two words. SLAM DUNK! Enough said about that clown.

Josh Marshall ( TPM ) – Really a Mystery

Marshall quotes a retired military senior member of the IC:

“….I think there is a lot more here than is being said. I believe that Feinstein did not want someone like Panetta who has a large and independent power base and network. If you get a career guy they are a lot easier to isolate and move around. Panetta has been around for a long time and has his own network. I actually think that it is a good choice. He knows how intelligence needs to be presented to the President – that is the critical issue here.

…. We need a significant re-orientation away from tactical support by CIA and other National agencies and back to their primary mission – direct intelligence support to the President. The last 15 years have seen an explosion of tactical intelligence capability with the advent of UAVs (which DoD fought against for so long due to the fighter pilot mentality). National systems need to be re-oriented to national priorities and away from tactical or operational desires of the warfighter. “

More later.