Trying to clarify after yesterday’s initial back-and-forth with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a critic of setting any date, Gen. Petraeus read a prepared statement expressing support for the date. During the administration’s debate over Afghanistan strategy last fall, “I did believe there is value of sending a message of urgency” to the Afghan government, Petraeus said. “But it is important that July 2011 be seen for what it is: a date a process begins, determined by conditions” on the ground, “not the end” of a U.S. commitment to Afghanistan.

Flournoy reiterated that the date is “an inflection point,” marking the end of the deployment of the surge brigades being sent to Afghanistan now, and the pace of additional drawdowns will be “conditions based.” The president “believes in a conditions-based process,” Flournoy said, adding that May’s visit by the Afghan government provided an opportunity to clarify the U.S.’s “long-term commitment” to Afghanistan.

That said, Petraeus left himself some wiggle room to change his perspective when July 2011 approaches. His support for setting the date in the fall debate — a date he said was “etched in stone” — was “based on projections of conditions by July 2011.” Left unsaid, but hanging in the air, is the prospect that Petraeus would support a rather slow troop drawdown if those conditions don’t materialize. That said, he expressed great confidence that they would. “The trajectory, in my view, has generally been upward” in Afghanistan, Petraeus said, “despite the losses despite the setbacks.”

That may sound like parsing, but parsing July 2011 is the order of the morning. No matter how often Petraeus and Flournoy described July 2011 as marking the beginning of a conditions-based transition to Afghan security responsibilities, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) characterized it as “a goal.”

Evincing an apparent understanding about the political stakes of parsing July 2011, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, passed to reporters a statement reading: “I am glad to hear Gen. Petraeus express his support for the decision to begin U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan in July 2011. I strongly believe it is essential for success in Afghanistan that everyone understand the urgency with which the Afghans need to take responsibility for their own security.”

I contacted Frank Cillusso, the director of the HSPI at George Washington University, who tells me that Nidal Hasan has no affiliation with the HSPI or with George Washington University, at all. “[Hasan] has no role on the task force, other than the fact that he attended these meetings as an audience member, as did hundreds of others.” Hasan’s name appears on the list of participants only because he provided the HSPI with an RSVP, indicating his attendance. Cillusso told me, “We always record RSVPs and publish them as a matter of transparency, and will continue to do so.”

Annie Lowery at Foreign Policy does the same yeoman work.

There is now literally nothing left of Corsi’s report. Nothing at all. Will he retract it and issue the full and frank apology that his readers deserve? Or will, instead, the smear linger, in the hope of being picked up by Glenn Beck?

Things are looking better for Geithner than Obama’s former pick for commerce secretary, Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), who withdrew his nomination after a months-old federal probe in the governor’s home state heated up. Incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has already blasted out a statement supporting Geithner, saying the nominee shouldn’t be punished for “honest mistakes,” particularly since they have been corrected.

Full text of Gibbs’ statement after the jump:

“The President-elect chose Tim Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary because he’s the right person to help lead our economic recovery during these challenging times. He’s dedicated his career to our country and served with honor, intelligence and distinction. That service should not be tarnished by honest mistakes, which, upon learning of them, he quickly addressed. He made a common mistake on his taxes, and was unaware that his part-time housekeeper’s work authorization expired for the last three months of her employment. We hope that the Senate will confirm him with strong bipartisan support so that he can begin the important work of the country,” said incoming White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

This situation kind of reminds me of the time I didn’t pay taxes for three years, then was audited, then grudgingly paid up — that was an honest mistake too! (Just kidding!)

Still, this is certainly not how the Obama team would have liked to begin the confirmation process for what will surely be one of its most high-profile cabinet positions.

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.

On the nomination of Mr. Holder, President-elect Obama chose not to seek my advice or even to give me advance notice in my capacity as Ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, which is his prerogative. Had he done so, I could have given him some facts about Mr. Holder’s background that he might not have known.

Specter’s big worry: That Holder could be as rotten at the top of DOJ as Alberto Gonzales.

After our recent experience with Attorney General Gonzales, it is imperative that the Attorney General undertake and effectuate that responsibility of independence.  Mr. Gonzales left office accused of politicizing the Justice Department, failing to restrain Executive overreaching, and being less than forthcoming with Congress … I am convinced that many of Attorney General Gonzales’ missteps were caused by his eagerness to please the White House. Similarly, when Mr. Holder was serving as DAG to President Clinton, some of his actions raised concerns about his ability to maintain his independence from the president.

Specter alleges that “serious questions” were raised about Holder’s “candor” during the Marc Rich hearings, and that Holder may have been responsible for “deviation from normal pardon procedures.” In some of the cases, Specter talked about, Holder “appear[ed] to be serving the interest of his superiors.  There is an underlying issue about Mr. Holder not following the recommendations of career attorneys.” His conclusion:

I am prepared to give Mr. Holder a full opportunity to explain his past actions and convince the Committee and the Senate that his record warrants confirmation.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) couldn’t have written fainter praise.

Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way. He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer.

When reached for comment today, Gupta did not deny the account but declined to comment.

The offer followed a two-hour Chicago meeting in November with Obama, who said that Gupta could be the highest-profile surgeon general in history and would have an expanded role in providing health policy advice, the sources said. Gupta later spoke with Tom Daschle, Obama’s White House health czar and nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, and other advisers to the president-elect.

The Wall Street Journal mulls Gupta’s qualifications:

Besides his CNN gig, Gupta also appears on CBS and writes for Time Magazine. He was a White House Fellow and a special adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady. Oh, and he’s a neurosurgeon at Emory and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital.

There’s a certain logic to picking a TV talking head to be surgeon general, because the surgeon general is largely a talking head. The top doc does oversee the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, but the real work of the job is traveling around the country, using the title as a bully pulpit to advance a public health agenda.

In this media-saturated era, who could do that better than a doc who’s famous for explaining health issues on cable TV?

Good point. If the report is confirmed and Gupta accepts, Gupta would become the second high-profile journalist lured away from his current gig to work in the Obama administration, after Time’s Jay Carney, who has signed on as Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s communications director.

The ACLU doesn’t take positions on nominees, but “it’s a suggestion that the Obama administration will carry through on a committment to respect the rule of law,” said Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU’s Washington director. Fredrickson, who knows Johnsen personally, said she was optimistic about the new prospective OLC chief, owing to Johnsen’s legal writings on issues like executive authority.

“To the extent she helps restore the boundaries of the executive branch vis-a-vis the other [governmental] branches,” Fredrickson said, “it’s an important effort.”

Fredrickson’s not alone. “Having looked at her writings on the subject,” said Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in a prepared statement, “we’re happy to see that the president is appointing someone who understands that the Office of Legal Counsel should provide a forthright and honest evaluation of the legality of proposed executive action rather than as a rubber stamp on presidential policy.”

Glenn Greenwald is pretty satisfied as well. Blogging at Salon, the man who pretty much nixed the John Brennan appointment to CIA rounds up a bunch of Johnsen’s writings on torture and executive authority and pronounces it “a positive sign.”

“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director.  I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read,” said Senator Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the 111^th Congress.

“My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”

Not an auspicious sign for Panetta’s confirmation hearings.

Well, he’s no Mike Hayden. More soon.

None of these appointments, some of which we’ve speculated about recently, are big surprises. Not surprisingly, three are, like Obama, Harvard Law alums.

Here are their bios:

David Ogden, Deputy Attorney General:

Ogden is a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and the Department of Justice Agency Review lead for the Obama-Biden Transition Project. Ogden was Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division, appointed by President Clinton, from 1999 – 2001. From 1998 – 1999, he served as Chief of Staff to Attorney General Janet Reno and as Counselor to the Attorney General from 1997-1998. From 1995-1997, Ogden served as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, and from 1994 -1995 served as Deputy General Counsel, Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense. Ogden was a partner at Jenner and Block in Washington, DC from 1988-1994 and worked at the law firm of Ennis Friedman & Bersoff from 1983-1988. He clerked for Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun in the U.S. Supreme Court from 1982-1983 and for Judge Abraham D. Sofaer in the Southern District Court of New York from 1981-1982. He received his B.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 (summa cum laude) and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1981 (magna cum laude). He served on the Harvard Law Review from 1979-81.

Elena Kagan, Solicitor General:

Kagan is the Dean of Harvard Law School, where she’s been since 2003. From 1995 to 1999, Kagan served in the White House, first as Associate Counsel to the President (1995-96) and then as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council (1997-99). Kagan launched her academic career at the University of Chicago Law School, where she became an assistant professor in 1991 and a tenured professor of law in 1995. Kagan clerked for Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1986 to 1987. The next year she clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. She then worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly from 1989 to 1991. Kagan received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton in 1981 (summa cum laude). She then attended Harvard Law School, where she was supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated magna cum laude in 1986.

Tom Perrelli, Associate Attorney General:

Perrelli is Managing Partner of Jenner & Block’s Washington, DC office. From 1997-99, Mr. Perrelli served as counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno, supervising civil matters at the Department of Justice. He rose to Deputy Assistant Attorney General (1999-2001), supervising the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division. He has been recognized as one of the leading media and entertainment lawyers in the United States by Chambers & Partners USA, named as one of 500 “New Stars” by Lawdragon in 2006, and named Best Intellectual Property Lawyer in Washington D.C. by the Washington Business Journal in 2008. Prior to joining Jenner & Block, in 1991-92, Perrelli clerked for the Honorable Royce C. Lamberth of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Perrelli graduated from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, in 1991, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. He received an A.B. in History from Brown University in 1988.

Dawn Johnsen, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel:

Johnsen is a Professor of Law at the Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington, where she teaches and writes about issues of constitutional law. Her recent publications on issues of presidential power include Faithfully Executing the Laws: Internal Legal Constraints on Executive Power, 54 UCLA L. Rev. 1559 (2007) and What’s a President to Do? Interpreting the Constitution in the Wake of the Bush Administration’s Abuses, 88 Boston U. L. Rev. 395 (2008). She serves on the board of directors of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. She served in the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, as the acting assistant attorney general heading that office (1997-98) and as a deputy assistant attorney general (1993-96). In that capacity, she provided constitutional and other legal advice to the attorney general, the President, and the general counsels of the various executive branch agencies. From 1988-93, she was the legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL). She clerked for the Honorable Richard D. Cudahy, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She received a B.A from Yale University in 1983 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1986.