In a surprise development, the CIA just announced that longtime and well-respected Deputy Director Steve Kappes will retire from the agency in May. Kappes was the initial favorite of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to be CIA director, and Leon Panetta’s ultimate decision to retain Kappes as his deputy was More…
Last month, Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, gave an interview to The Washington Post bragging about the impact the CIA’s drone strikes have had on al-Qaeda and Taliban operations in Pakistan. Not having sufficient information to independently evaluate it, I sort of marked Panetta’s comments As Read. More…
I snarked Wednesday about CIA Director Leon Panetta’s assertion that the CIA has lately dealt al-Qaeda a hefty blow, since we don’t really have the visibility into that process to independently evaluate the claim. But the Los Angeles Times’ Greg Miller has a great piece about how U.S. More…
The Washington Post sits down with the CIA director, who has lots of great things to say about how the CIA is disrupting al-Qaeda:
Panetta credited an increasingly aggressive campaign against al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies, including more frequent strikes and better coordination with Pakistan. He called it “the most
Whatever’s happening with the Baradar capture, President Obama convenes his national security team today for what I think is the first all-hands meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan since the December West Point speech. The (very long) guest list:
Under a new policy announced today by CIA director Leon Panetta, an intelligence officer can’t be promoted to the agency’s highest rank — the Senior Intelligence Service — without a demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language. From a CIA release:
While many senior Agency officers have tested proficient in a
It comes in the course of a good Laura Rozen story about the differences in style and results between embattled Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and CIA Director Leon Panetta:
Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA official and National Intelligence Council senior officer, said it’s no surprise
If President Obama didn’t have enough headaches after the loss of the Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate majority on Tuesday night, another one emerged for him at a Senate hearing on Wednesday morning: Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence.
During the first in a battery of congressional hearings about the failed More…
After nearly a day’s worth of radio silence from Langley about the suicide bombing at a CIA outpost in eastern Afghanistan, this statement comes from Director Leon Panetta:
Statement on CIA Casualties in Afghanistan
CIA Director Leon E. Panetta informed the Agency workforce today that seven of their colleagues
Marc Ambinder has a seriously detailed curtain-raiser on a turf war that’s roiled the intelligence community for months. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, and Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, have clashed over who controls the top U.S. intelligence officer in various foreign countries. But More…
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