(image via charlotteobserver)
The nomination of Leon Panetta, a respected executive, to become Director of the CIA took many -- this blogger included -- by surprise. The labyrinthine spy agency with the byzantine structure is notoriously difficult to navigate. Many, even ex-agents and former members of the House Intelligence Committee, have failed. Panetta, in contrast, has no intelligence or even counterterrorism experience. Such a break with the past from a President-elect who ran on change could augur either well for the respected manager-nominee, or for ill. Thus far Senator Dianne Feinstein as well as Senator Jay Rockefeller, ranking members of the Committee have both expressed vague reservations about the pick. That public frost may have more to do with the lack of a heads up courtesy call by the Obama team than any move to oppose the nomination (That rift is presently being massaged). As petty as it sounds, nominations in Washington have =died quiet, solitary deaths for lack of deference shown to Senate committee chairs.
CQPolitics' Spy Talk heard from an agent who doesn't regard the nomination at all well:
"A retired senior CIA operations officer who quit last summer after 20 years tracking terrorists says the rank-and-file reaction to President-elect Obama's choice of Leon E.Panetta to run the spy agency has been "overwhelmingly negative."
"Charles 'Sam' Faddis, who led a CIA team into northern Iraq before the 2003 invasion, says he had 'already heard from a large number of rank and file within CIA on this choice, and the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative.'"
George H.W. Bush, who later became the 40th President, had virtually no experience and also took the helm of the CIA at a time of crisis in the agency's history and is generally regarded as having been successful. More here.
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