rssCQ: CIA Operations Folks Dissatisfied With Panetta
Wednesday, January 07, 2009 at 8:25 am
- 5 Comments
My CIA sources on Monday were surprised but not so dismayed by the news that Leon Panetta is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to head the agency. Jeff Stein’s CIA sources yesterday? Much more dismayed.
Writing in his CQ column, Jeff talks to veterans of the CIA’s operations directorate — the people who recruit spies, gather information, try to infiltrate governments and extremist organizations and, yes, interrogate detainees these days — and finds that they don’t see how Panetta has the skills necessary to lead the agency in wartime. Here’s Sam Faddis, a 20-year operative who retired earlier this year who calls himself “a big supporter of President-Elect Obama.” He says the central problem facing CIA is that it’s doing a poor job of intelligence collection:
“To fix that you need to get down in the weeds and really address the nuts and bolts of how CIA is performing its mission. You cannot do that unless you understand the business, and, frankly, you probably can’t do it unless you have been out on the street doing the work yourself.”
No outsiders need apply, in other words.
Clearly, there’s something to the idea that experience matters, familiarity with the profession matters and the details matter. And the “steep learning curve” that a few intelligence veterans told me independently of each other that Panetta faces is particularly steep in his case. But, to quote the fictional words of Commissioner Ervin Burrell, “that’s what the Deputy Ops is for.” In this case, the CIA’s deputy director for operations. You’d never want someone in that job without that experience and that skill set. The director’s job is much broader. It’s easy to imagine someone in the analysis directorate — the people who interpret the collected information — making Faddis’ exact same argument for why a CIA analyst ought to get the job.
Follow Spencer Ackerman on Twitter
5 Comments
Comment posted January 7, 2009 @ 8:30 am
That the CIA is not willing to work with the Obama administration is not new. In fact the CIA effectively warned the new president back in December not to appoint a “progressive Democrat” at its helm. Not that Panetta is that, of course, but he is not a hawk either, especially on torture.
See “Panetta’s CIA Nomination Part of Broader Obama Plan” at intelnews.org .
Chances are Panetta will receive a very frosty welcoming at the CIA.
Pingback posted January 7, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
[...] Spack, CQ’s Jeff Stein finds a cool reception to the Panetta nomination among CIA operations [...]
Comment posted January 7, 2009 @ 1:40 pm
I read Jeff's piece in CQ, I took the comments from the former CIA officer as nothing more than the same arguement you hear throughout the business and trade world. It goes like this, “the people that build our homes, buildings and other edifices from the ground up, regulalry complain about engineers, architects and other bulding planners simply not understanding the nuts and bolts of putting things together. Managers, architects, and engineers readily complain about the workers performance, skill and ability to accomplish those plans.” I had a friend who worked on an oil platform but got injured two years into his job. The company decided to keep him on and put him to work using cad to design off-shore rigs. Having worked in the manufacturing/building side of things, gave him an advantage no working on the other side of the table to plan effectively for the workers and their ability.
I would imagine that this CIA guy simply does not see Panetta as being able to understand the day to day/ nuts and bolts of how and what they do in intelligence gathering. But from everything I have rad about this pick it would seem that Admiral Blair and Sec of Def Gates will be in charge of answering those questions. Panetta is being placed there because he seems to be loyal, understanding of the legal requirments of his job and that of the CIA and because he has a history of working with many power players being a former cheif of staff. I see him as a loyal person to Obama and someone capable of feeling comfortable around the Intelligence community. It is understandable that this former CIA officer thinks Panetta is a bad pick, but most workers have problems with their managers, so I really fail to see why Panetta based on the CIA's history is a bad pick. Some of the best CIA directors have come in from outside of intelligence, notably George Bush I and some of the worst in terms of blowback and bad foreign ploicy decisions have come from the intelligence community, notable Johnson and Nixon's CIA director Helms.
Comment posted January 7, 2009 @ 4:30 pm
That the CIA is not willing to work with the Obama administration is not new. In fact the CIA effectively warned the new president back in December not to appoint a “progressive Democrat” at its helm. Not that Panetta is that, of course, but he is not a hawk either, especially on torture.
See “Panetta’s CIA Nomination Part of Broader Obama Plan” at intelnews.org .
Chances are Panetta will receive a very frosty welcoming at the CIA.
Comment posted January 7, 2009 @ 9:40 pm
I read Jeff's piece in CQ, I took the comments from the former CIA officer as nothing more than the same arguement you hear throughout the business and trade world. It goes like this, “the people that build our homes, buildings and other edifices from the ground up, regulalry complain about engineers, architects and other bulding planners simply not understanding the nuts and bolts of putting things together. Managers, architects, and engineers readily complain about the workers performance, skill and ability to accomplish those plans.” I had a friend who worked on an oil platform but got injured two years into his job. The company decided to keep him on and put him to work using cad to design off-shore rigs. Having worked in the manufacturing/building side of things, gave him an advantage no working on the other side of the table to plan effectively for the workers and their ability.
I would imagine that this CIA guy simply does not see Panetta as being able to understand the day to day/ nuts and bolts of how and what they do in intelligence gathering. But from everything I have rad about this pick it would seem that Admiral Blair and Sec of Def Gates will be in charge of answering those questions. Panetta is being placed there because he seems to be loyal, understanding of the legal requirments of his job and that of the CIA and because he has a history of working with many power players being a former cheif of staff. I see him as a loyal person to Obama and someone capable of feeling comfortable around the Intelligence community. It is understandable that this former CIA officer thinks Panetta is a bad pick, but most workers have problems with their managers, so I really fail to see why Panetta based on the CIA's history is a bad pick. Some of the best CIA directors have come in from outside of intelligence, notably George Bush I and some of the worst in terms of blowback and bad foreign ploicy decisions have come from the intelligence community, notable Johnson and Nixon's CIA director Helms.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
