I noticed he sailed through the Senate hearing with barely a peep out of anybody.
Here's what CNN says:
"Panetta's nomination initially created a stir among both Democrats and Republicans who questioned his lack of experience in the intelligence community at a time when the U.S. was fighting two wars and battling terrorists. But his lack of experience barely got mentioned at his confirmation hearing. Senators seemed satisfied that he had the confidence of the President, would have a good working relationship with Congress and that he was retaining the top leadership at the CIA.
Panetta was not the first choice to head the spy agency. John Brennan, a career intelligence officer who last headed the National Counter Terrorism Center, was the leading candidate until liberal bloggers effectively torpedoed the nomination by linking Brennan to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and the preemptive war in Iraq.
Brennan said he was not involved in the decision making process for those policies, but he withdrew his name from consideration. Sources close to Brennan said he was pushed by the Obama transition team to step aside. Brennan was subsequently appointed by President Obama to be his homeland security advisor at the White House, a position that does not need congressional approval.http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/02/11/senate-committee-approves-cia-chief/#more-39706--------
I'll get to the Brennan part in a moment. My theory about Panetta is that he is deep CIA, has been throughout his career--and high up in the organization--the kind of CIA power you just don't hear about, because he doesn't want you to. Remember DiFi's first reaction? She was really pissed that she hadn't been pre-notifed. But she shut up really fast, and hasn't said a thing since. I don't she knew who he was.
Consider: There has been a war going on between the Bushwhacks--Rumsfeld and Cheney, at least, maybe others--and the CIA. Remember all that stuff about Cheny visiting Langley and pressuring the CIA to 'cherrypick' intelligence to justify the war on Iraq? And Rumsfeld setting up his own shop--the "Office of Special Plans"--at the Pentagon, to circumvent the knowledgeable professionals at the CIA, and those who felt that it is their job to prevent wars, not to manufacture them? And, of course, remember the outing of Valeria Plame, the CIA's top WMD counter-proliferation specialist, with an overseas network--our "eyes and ears" around the world, to notice dangerous weapons movements. All those agents/contacts were put in mortal danger by the Plame outing.
This was a very, VERY serious, dangerous and potentially catastrophic situation--a war within our government. Not just a fight, not just a power struggled, and bloody and deadly war. In addition to Plame's network--whose fates we don't know--I think David Kelly got caught in that war, and got offed possibly by the Bushwhacks or Blair operatives, for something he knew. His murder occurred only four days after Plame was outed. Something was going on. I think it had to do with a Rumsfeld scheme to
plant WMDs in Iraq, to be 'discovered' by the U.S. troops who were looking for them--a profound deception of the American people, and the world, to justify the invasion.
In any case--whether my theory about Kelly is correct or not--it is common knowledge that there was serious warfare between the Bushwhacks and the CIA, at least as bloody as putting all of the agents/contacts in the Brewster-Jennings network at great risk of getting killed.
I don't like our secret government. I think they killed JFK, RFK and MLK, and have been covering it up all these years. (Read James Douglass' book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: why he died and why it matters," published last year by the Maryknoll fathers.) But I do think that the culture of the CIA changed somewhat, over the decades, they generally disavowed assassination and torture, and become more oriented--as I said above--to preventing war, rather than to manufacturing it, and also to influencing events within other countries with less brutality than in the past--less crude, more politically oriented methods. (I'm thinking of South America in particular, but there are other examples.) I think the Bushwhacks tried to change all this, to return to the CIA horrors of the past, and when the CIA resisted, the internal war began.
I also think there was a counter-coup, when Rumsfeld was forced out, and the nuking of Iran was put "off the table" (in a deal that also put "impeachment off the table").
Barack Obama, coming into this situation--and I believe pretty well-informed about it-- is not going to place an inexperienced person in charge of the CIA. Obama is a very smart man. He needed the MOST experienced insider that he could find to run the CIA. I simply don't believe that Panetta is a civilian.
Panetta may have been a somewhat retired insider--retired to his "foreign policy" fiefdom in Monterey (near the CIA language school). But I think the legend is probably true that CIA members never leave the organization (or not the uppermucks, anyway; they always remain somewhat (or very) plugged in. John Brennan--"a career intelligence officer who last headed the National Counter Terrorism Center" (as decribed by CNN)--Obama's first choice, was well known to be experienced, but being on active duty during the Bush junta, and surviving Bushwhack purges, put him too close to the Bushwhacks highly illegal and objectionable activities. He did not survive public scrutiny. Panetta, on the other hand, was out of the fray, or way in the background, and few people even knew that he was CIA. The objections to Panetta, as "inexperienced," were wrong, and were quickly squelched. That is why he sailed through.
One other thing--as deep CIA, he is, of course, loyal to CIA agents, and protective of them, especially in their excruciating dilemmas with the Bushwhacks, and has said he opposes prosecuting any CIA agents who tortured prisoners, for instance, "under orders" (from the Bushwhacks). This was an essential position for him to take, if he is going to put this grievously wounded agency back together, to do the job Obama needs them to do: good intelligence. Panetta mentioned the need to foster language skills and other skills that are essential to good intelligence (i.e., to preventing war, and not manufacturing it). The Bushwhacks did not value and did not foster skills ssential to finding facts and truth; they wanted the CIA to make up lies to serve a president bent on an illegal, unjust, senseless slaughter, mayhem and war profiteering.
All theory, all guesses. But, do you think Obama is a fool--putting an experienced civilian in charge of this tinderbox agency? I don't think so.
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