Mission Creep

The Secret History - Can Leon Panetta move the C.I.A. forward

_http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/22/090622fa_fact_mayer_
(http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/22/090622fa_fact_mayer)
The  Political Scene
The Secret History
Can Leon Panetta move the C.I.A.  forward without confronting its past?
by Jane Mayer
June 22, 2009

Panetta has no C.I.A. experience, but, an ex-officer says, it´s not "a bad
thing to have a powerful guy with access to the President."

The Central Intelligence Agency typically fights distant enemies, but on 
May 21st its leaders were preoccupied with a local opponent. A few miles from
the agency´s headquarters, which are in Langley, Virginia, former
Vice-President  Dick Cheney delivered an extraordinary attack on the Obama
Administration´s  emerging national-security policies. Cheney, speaking at the
American Enterprise  Institute, accused the new Administration of making "the
American people less  safe" by banning brutal C.I.A. interrogations of terrorism
suspects that had  been sanctioned by the Bush Administration. Ruling out
such interrogations "is  unwise in the extreme," Cheney charged. "It is
recklessness cloaked in  righteousness."

Leon Panetta, the C.I.A.´s new director-and the man who bears much of the 
responsibility for keeping the country safe-learned the details of Cheney´
s  speech when he arrived in his office, on the seventh floor of the agency´
s  headquarters. An hour earlier, he had been standing at the side of
President  Barack Obama, who was giving a speech at the National Archives, in
which he  argued that America could "fight terrorism while abiding by the rule
of law." In  January, the Obama Administration banned the "enhanced"
techniques that the Bush  Administration had approved for the agency, including
waterboarding and  depriving prisoners of sleep for up to eleven days. Panetta,
pouring a cup of  coffee, responded to Cheney´s speech with surprising
candor. "I think he smells  some blood in the water on the national-security
issue," he told me. "It´s  almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you
read behind it, it´s almost as  if he´s wishing that this country would be
attacked again, in order to make his  point. I think that´s dangerous politics.
"

Panetta was also absorbing criticism from the left. The day before, a group
of progressive human-rights advocates had been given an off-the-record
briefing  with Obama, where they discussed his plans for handling terrorism
suspects; some  of the advocates were enraged at what they saw as a tacit
continuation of the  Bush approach. According to a participant, Obama warned the
group that such  comparisons were "not helpful." Nevertheless, Kenneth
Roth, the executive  director of Human Rights Watch, who also attended the
briefing, went on to  denounce the Administration for considering "preventive
detention"-incarcerating  certain terror suspects indefinitely, without trial.
Obama´s position, Roth  said, "mimics the Bush Administration´s abusive
approach."

Since January, the C.I.A. has become the focus of almost daily struggle, as
Obama attempts to restore the rule of law in America´s fight against
terrorism  without sacrificing safety or losing the support of conservative
Democratic and  independent voters. So far, he has insisted on trying to
recalibrate the  agency´s policies without investigating past mistakes or holding
anyone  responsible for them. Caught in the middle is Panetta, who is seventy
years old  and has virtually no experience in the intelligence field.
Indeed, his  credentials for running the world´s foremost spy agency are so
unlikely that  when John Podesta, the head of Obama´s transition team, asked him
to take the  job he responded, "Are you sure?" Podesta assured Panetta that
his outsider  status was actually an advantage: "He said, `You don´t carry
the scars of the  past eight years. Besides, the President wants somebody
who will talk straight  to him on these issues.´ "

Although Panetta served briefly in the military, half a century ago, his 
reputation has been built almost entirely on his mastery of domestic policy.
For  sixteen years, he was a Democratic congressman from his home town,
Monterey,  California. In 1989, he became the chairman of the House Budget
Committee,  making him a natural choice as President Bill Clinton´s first budget
director.  In 1994, he became Clinton´s chief of staff.

Panetta, the son of Italian immigrants, grew up washing dishes in his 
parents´ restaurant. He is disarmingly forthright, with an easy laugh; he is 
also a stern disciplinarian and a workaholic. Colleagues say that Panetta, who
attends Mass regularly, can be principled to the point of rigidity. It was
partly Panetta´s rectitude that got him the C.I.A. job. During the Bush
years,  he decried the country´s loss of moral authority; in a blunt essay for
Washington Monthly last year, he declared that Americans had been
transformed  "from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of
armchair  torturers." He concluded, "We either believe in the dignity of
the individual,  the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual
punishment, or we  don´t. There is no middle ground."

Panetta´s impassioned essay unexpectedly became an asset during the Obama 
transition, after John Brennan-the initial candidate for C.I.A.director-was
pressured to withdraw. Critics accused Brennan, who had been a top agency 
official during the Bush years, of complicity with the torture program. (A 
friend of Brennan´s from his C.I.A. days complained to me, "After a few 
Cheeto-eating people in the basement working in their underwear who write
blogs  voiced objections to Brennan, the Obama Administration pulled his name
at the  first sign of smoke, and then ruled out a whole class of people:
anyone who had  been at the agency during the past ten years couldn´t pass the
blogger  test.")

Panetta had one other strong qualification: he was close to Rahm Emanuel, 
the new chief of staff. During the Clinton Administration, Emanuel, serving
as  the White House political director, was suspected by former First Lady
Hillary  Clinton and others of leaking information, and was very nearly
fired. Emanuel  entered what he calls his "wilderness period." When Panetta
became chief of  staff, however, he reinstated Emanuel as a top aide. "I thought
he had a lot of  street smarts and good political sense," Panetta told  me.