Op-Ed at Pajamas Media: Panetta and the CIA
Here’s the PJM piece I mentioned yesterday:
Why Leon Panetta May Be The Right Man For CIA Chief
Given the extent to which President-elect Barack Obama previously positioned himself on the left wing of the Democratic Party, his appointments in the areas of national security and defense have been remarkable in the degree to which the worst fears of conservatives have not come to pass. Robert Gates as secretary of defense would have been a dream pick for a McCain administration and former commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Jones is someone I wish President Bush had chosen as his wartime national security adviser. The immediate howls of protest from liberal Senate Intelligence Committee members and chairmen that greeted Leon Panetta’s nomination to head the CIA are genuine in their rage. For many reasons, conservatives and advocates of a reinvigorated, reinvented, depoliticized CIA may end up being quite happy with the tenure of Director Panetta
….The truth is that the CIA has been in an existential crisis since at least 1991 that has waxed and waned, but it never recovered the competence in clandestinity or the esprit de corps it enjoyed in its glory years under Allen Dulles or the brief revival ushered in by William Casey and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The CIA now bleeds talent to better-paying private military companies like CACI or Blackwater and engages in domestic political intrigue and gross waste like any other government agency. Post-9/11 “intelligence reforms” badly battered the CIA as an institution without building up its original core mission of HUMINT collection and strategic influence operations to a robust and dynamic capacity
Read the whole thing here.
There are of course, respected bloggers and experts with views of their own on Panetta’s appointment. Here is a sample:
…As I’ve noted before the incoming administration’s managerial experience is extremely limited and, frankly, I think they’re underestimating its importance. Now it may well be that lawyers and politicians are the best possible picks for these important roles to achieve the confidence of the departments they’ll head, the American people’s, and President Obama’s. If that’s right, we’ll be in for an interesting ride with the new administration. If it’s wrong, the downside risk is probably minimized by the civil bureaucracy.
As to the Panetta appointment itself, it is unconvincing. The C.I.A. directorship is a diminished post, no longer in charge of the full intelligence community and subordinate to the Director of National Intelligence (who will apparently be Dennis Blair, a retired admiral.) Still, the C.I.A. director has four important jobs: manage the White House relationship; manage Congress, particularly to obtain budgetary favor; manage the agency’s workforce and daily operations; and manage liaisons with other spy chiefs, friendly and unfriendly. Panetta is thoroughly qualified for the first two functions but unqualified for the latter two. He seems to have been selected as a kind of political auditor and consensus builder. He will make sure the White House is protected from surprises or risks emanating from C.I.A. operations; he will ensure that interrogation and detention practices change, and that the Democratic Congress is satisfied by those changes; he will ensure that all of this occurs with a minimum of disruptive bloodletting. All good, but it is not enough
…The point I was trying to make about the Panetta appointment was that although his hands are not tainted by any acceptance of torture, that alone is hardly a sufficient reason to appoint him. I have learned that our fellow blogger and my friend Michael Ledeen has said Panetta is a good choice, as have Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. Their arguments, that he is a good manager and can possibly clean up a highly ineffective and politicized CIA, hopefully has merit. Counterpoints, however, have been effectively made by J.G. Thayer, who writing on the Commentary magazine’s Contentions, blog…
January 8th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
As you might expect, those of us on the left are about as unhappy with the national security picks as you are happy with them. "Change we can believe in" has turned out to mean more-ethical Republicans and former Clinton Administration officials. There’s no change quite like more of the the same.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
The comments there are characteristically putrid (I.e. they see the name and subject and comment w/o even reading your op-ed) but your points echo strongly, particularly the observation that"the CIA now bleeds talent to better-paying private military companies like CACI or Blackwater and engages in domestic political intrigue and gross waste like any other government agency.".
Its striking that I see very rarely in reports and suggestions the idea of actually paying people their market value, as Singapore does for its government agencies. Would that at all be possible in this economic climate of cost-cutting, because very little else incentive for improvement and sticking around would seem to be viable.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
hi Jeremy,
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I can see your point. I wonder if Obama’s motivation is to re-brand the Democrats as "strong on security" with voters, a lack of confirmable talent for key national security positions in the DP, a desire to spend political capital fighting the GOP on the domestic side to better advantage or to make sure the agencies won’t "capture" and control the ppl he appoints. Whatever it is, I’m as pleased as I am surprised.
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hi Eddie,
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The Singhs have no margin for error – they have to do everything right in foreign policy/defense the first time in order to preserve their strategic position and freedom of action. We think we can afford stupid policies for political reasons. Maybe we used to – now, not so much.
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I read every comment. I go in expecting to get what they dish out but it’s better so far than the Georgia artcle where some commenters thought I was a kind of commie 🙂 Cost of having a bigger platform.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
My fantasy scenario: Panetta is there to preside over the dissolution of the CIA into its component parts and their distribution to Defense, FBI, etc. The DNI will then be the guy who packages the intelligence product for the President. CIA itself goes away. It never worked right. Republicans used to talk about getting rid of the Dept. of Education, but could never do it. So this won’t happen either. But it should.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
ZP, all good possibilities. However, beyond my personal distaste at these "experienced" picks, it does seem vaguely undemocratic to me. If Americans wanted "experienced" Clinton officials, they could have voted for Clinton; if they had wanted Republicans, they could have voted for McCain. Instead, they voted for "change," and got the same thing as if they’d voted for Clinton, with a few Republicans for added spice.
It’s the same on the partisan appointments front. We rejected DLC official Hillary Clinton for supposedly anti-DLC Obama — and then watched as Obama replaced Howard Dean with DLC-affiliated Tim Kaine. Everyone’s entitled to their perspective in this administration, it seems, except for outspoken movement progressives — Raul Grijalva and Dean got passed over for appointments they richly deserved in favor of DLC types.
I’m pleased with exactly three appointments out of the whole bunch: Hilda Solis at Labor, Eric Shinseki at VA, and Steven Chu at Energy. I liked Richardson at Commerce too, but I can see why he had to go. The rest? If I’d wanted to bring back the Clinton years, I would have voted for Clinton.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Funny, that’s my dream, too. They called me mad, mad I tell you! Bwahahaha.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
ZP, good op-ed. I am not really sold on Panetta yet because I’m pretty wary of putting more politics in IC, but you do convince me that he has the ability to run it. The IC is extremely dysfunctional and it may take a man of Panetta’s style to whip it into shape.
Jeremy, I understand your frustration but I think that most on the left projected their own desires for change on Obama, whose campaign platform really showed he was a Clintonite centrist from the beginning. I’m not an Obamanaut (I initially supported others during the primaries), but I think that the disappointment voiced by many is somewhat disingenous. Granted, he was given to rhetorical flights of fancy about "change" but what politician isn’t?
January 9th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Zen : they call ’em "singaporeans". The "Singhs" are an ethnic people from India. A minority in said minuscule state.
Re : "to preserve their strategic position and freedom of action" = kissin’ near everyone’s a$$. MHO.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
The comments at the articles main site are pretty lousy.
Zen, I hope your analysis is right on. I just don’t know though. I wish he were 60 and not 70. He won’t have the stamina at 70 he used to have. We will no more how this all shakes out in the year to come. Obama’s pick’s so far have been interesting.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Sings, no h = Singaporeans. I have heard this expression used and I think it is recognized.
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Singhs, with h = a subgroup of the Sikhs of the Punjab, now a global diaspora community, in addition to living in their old homeland.
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Asia, man, it’s complicated.
January 10th, 2009 at 12:44 am
Robert Baer on Panetta.
January 10th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Sure is , LG. States in asia have a facade of "democracy" on ’em. With all the infrastructures (better equipped than even the U.S.!) & all. Education (nationalism), economic efficiency (fascist timetable), arts (our cultures are older & SUPERIOR to others) & all the hocus – pocus (strategic position and freedom of action) that captivates foreigners. One has to live in these damn places to KNOW.