How Obama's New Intelligence Chief Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers --
The Skeletons in Dennis Blair's Closet --

... human rights supporters are right to be worried that Dennis Blair will hardly lead the charge for reform in the nation’s intelligence community after the Bush Administration’s embrace of torture, rendition and other crimes. For in the period leading up to and following East Timor’s August 1999 referendum on independence from Indonesia Blair, from his perch as US Commander in Chief of the Pacific (CINCPAC) from February 1999 to May 2000, ran interference for the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) as they and their militia proxies committed crimes against humanity on an awesome scale.

...

With Dennis Blair, Don't Expect Smarter Intelligence --

... like most military officers, Blair is a believer in tactical intelligence. Let me explain why that's problematic: During the last Gulf war, the Pentagon badgered the CIA for things like sand samples and stress limits of Iraq bridges, the terrain its Abrams tanks would roll across. Yes, that information was nice to have, but such requests diverted CIA resources from strategic intelligence. Rather than answering the question of whether Saddam had kept his weapons of mass destruction, the CIA sent its clandestine sources into Iraq with baggies and little plastic shovels.

On top of it, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have diminished the role of the CIA. It's the military in those two countries that collects the body of intelligence. Pragmatically, it couldn't have been otherwise. A lieutenant leading a patrol through an Iraqi village is much more likely to collect relevant information than a CIA officer confined to an office.

Whatever Blair's personal biases and inclinations are, as long as the U.S. remains in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting two wars that have neither been won nor lost, he will have no choice but defer to the Pentagon. You can't fight over money and people in the middle of hot wars. If the Pentagon says it needs sand samples, that's what the intelligence community has to go out and get.

Leaving Robert Gates at the Pentagon and appointing Blair as DNI is a pretty clear sign that Obama intends to live with the national security status quo. Obama knows all too well that intelligence reform is the third rail of American politics, one he does not intend to touch as long the country teeters on the edge of depression. ...

-- Friction on Panetta --

... “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 111th Congress.

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

That seems to reflect the view inside the CIA, and suggests a tough confirmation hearing.

Quite frankly, I don't care what Panetta has to say about his job; he's hardly the right choice for the job. This is probably the most egregious of Obama's picks. He seems to have a knack for misidentifying strengths, talents, and experience and thus placing people into offices in which they don't belong, if you ask me. It kind of reminds me how Obama got his job. He can come across as a nice enough guy, though, barely suited to the task. I'm sure Mother Teresa was against torture, too. It doesn't mean I want to see her as head of the CIA.

and Gates is a short-timer, 18-24 months at most. By the end of Obama's first two years the whole intelligence apparatus will have changed completely and I anticipate for the better.

Watched Panetta very closely during the workup to the new Denver International Airport and as much as I disagreed with everything he did I was certainly impressed with his mastery of the system and how easily he forced the various agencies involved to dance to his tune. He's not one of my favorites, DIA is a horror, but if you want someone to whip an agency into shape Leon is your guy - he reads people like a book and has no scruples when it comes to getting what he wants.

What we still don't know clearly is Obama's take on intelligence policy and that is what matters more than who he taps to head the departments. Regards torture, though, Panetta has been more than clear and I can't see Obama placing him atop CIA unless he actually intends to put an end to the practices.

Regards Feinstein, maybe this is the first hint from the new team that she should seriously consider a run for California governor.

putting it in short form: they've got too much history, too much rivalry, and too many regulations. those who want to torture and run little private kingdoms of slavery and embezzlement have moved on to the next big thing: the new agencies. and the 'new and improved' agencies. DHS, various hardly discussed internationally oriented DoD aspects, "independent" contracting intel services, and of course the ever growing NSA. who needs the CIA, with all that oversight and public scrutiny, when you can be even more shadowy and have an even less open budget? also, that whole "establishment" thing in the intel world: old timers and the scions of the old time dynasties may still go to CIA, but the dusty "hookers, limos and blow" intel people of this world? feh. who needs all that studying to learn languages and getting good with martial arts? that's not where the real money and power are.

panetta is a good "manager," i'm told. that's not wholly a bad thing. i anticipate he'll run damage control, ass covering, and various other bureaucratic games for the O admin, as they seek to clean up (without really cleaning up) bush's various nightmares and messes. i'm less and less interested in CIA every day, as i think their heyday as "chief spooks" has come and gone.

no link, just read it a while ago elsewhere. so there's that. her hubby has been deep in MIC contracting for a while, and she's part of that 'gang of 8' pro torture element in the senate, so if she doesn't like him, it can be all bad.

i swear, it's like you've got a little snoop in my haid, or something. i hate psychics who post right before i do, durnit.

i will soon post what you really want:

seed exchange

and

LONDON!!!

but also: museums. which are much more interesting than just shots of a city we'd all really like to live in, should we be fortunate enough.

heh. how jealous are you that i got to party with Avedon? she's a hoot. you have no idea how much.

Foreign Policy -- 00-Huh? Former intel officials react to Panetta CIA pick --

... The latest word from some who had been informally advising the Obama campaign on intelligence matters the past few days was that the Obama people were going to let expected Director of National Intelligence nominee retired Adm. Dennis Blair have a big hand in picking the CIA director (and take responsibility for the decision). The Obama people, it was said, were inclined to pick someone "not political" in order to avoid some of the unhappiness of, say, the Porter Goss period. And given how the Obama team was hammered by the left for considering former senior intelligence official John Brennan to be CIA director, Obama would be disinclined to pick someone closely associated with the intelligence controversies of the recent Bush-Tenet era. In the end, only that latter hunch proved correct.

"My initial reaction is, I am sorry that there was felt a need to replace the current director," former senior CIA official Paul Pillar, now with Georgetown University told me. "Gen. [Michael] Hayden is a military and intelligence but primarily intelligence professional who has performed his duties in each job he has held in an honorable fashion, so far as I have knowledge of them."

Asked if the Obama team was making a politically safe choice over someone with known deeper experience on intelligence matters, Pillar demurred. "There has been enough controversy over enough of these issues involving the intelligence community. And there has been enough expectation and demand for change, that I expect it was felt amongst the president elect's advisors, whatever their personal view of what is right, that the political context and environment was such that a change was required."

A former senior CIA manager said the message of the Panetta appointment was clear: "The message is, 'I don't want to hear anything out of the CIA. Make it go away. No scandals. Keep it quiet,'" the former officer told me. "They put over there a guy who is a political loyalist, who will keep everything nice and quiet, but who won't know a good piece of intelligence from a shitty piece of intelligence, and wouldn't know a good intelligence officer" from a bad one.

But former intelligence analyst Greg Treverton, now with the Rand Corporation, said Panetta's experience as a former White House chief of staff might give him a unique understanding of the presidency and its needs for intelligence. "One of my experiences with people like Panetta who have been chief of staff is that they have a clear sense of what is helpful to the president that most senior officials don't," Treverton told me. "They get it. What he could do and couldn't do. And that's an interesting advantage Panetta brings. Knowledge of what the presidential stakes are like, how issues arise, and what they need to be protected from, for better or worse." ...

(more reaction there -- note who is named and who's anonymous, and who/what they're connected to, too)

balancing the budget during Bill Clinton's administration. I always thought he organized the Clinton staff as Chief of Staff.

When living in CA, I campaigned hard for Panetta in in '76 run for congress. I thought of him as a very respectable liberal although I found out later that he was a centrist. I was a young college student then....didn't even know what a centrist was.

In re to Feinstein, I also interviewed her for the college newspaper. She was a role model for young women being so visible as the first female elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. However, she stated that she had gone as far as possible as a woman in politics. Then Milk and Moscone were assassinated and being President of the Board, she officially became Mayor of San Francisco.

Then to now.

Typical clear statement:

An aide to current Chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, tells NBC News that while the senator has tremendous respect for Leon Panetta, the aide said he believes the CIA director should go to someone who has significant intelligence experience and someone from outside the political world of Washington D.C.

Who does he want, someone from Mossad?

First, it is truly surprising to know that Obama picked someone who's unequivocally against torture in addition to actually being competent in running a bureaucracy. Seriously. Here's the case for Panetta by Tim Roemer. He addresses the criticism that Panetta doesn't have the adequate intelligence background to run the agency:

I think that underestimates his chief of staff experience, when you're dealing with the CIA and the national security administration on a daily basis. He has about three years of experience dealing with the heads of agencies, with crises, and with national and foreign policy issues. I think he does bring a knowledge of the CIA and good national security experience from both his time on the Hill and the Iraq study group...and as chief of staff to the president where you're immersed in it on an hourly basis. Leon is going to be dealing with sensitive issues, like Guantanamo, and renditions and torture, and [there needs to be] a good working relationship with Capitol Hill, and he has that.

I wonder though: what about the privatization of our intelligence? Torture and other abuses of power must be stopped, but to do so and address other national security concerns I feel we must also put an end to this huge corrupting influence that has already proven disastrous during the Bush years:

As the United States finds itself in the midst of the most radical privatization agenda in its history, few areas have seen as dramatic a transformation to privatized services as the world of intelligence. "This is the magnet now. Everything is being attracted to these private companies in terms of individuals and expertise and functions that were normally done by the intelligence community," says former CIA division chief and senior analyst Melvin Goodman. "My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of control. It's outrageous."

From the Times op-ed:

The orthodoxy of privatization — that it’s the government that’s mired by inefficiency and a lack of competition — has been turned on its head in the intelligence industry. However patriotic, contractors must ultimately answer to their shareholders and the bottom line. There’s more than one way to read Lockheed Martin’s recent advertising slogan: “We never forget who we’re working for.”

I'm curious if there's even a hint that CIA reform is possible under Panetta. I'm guessing, "No," but still I wonder if he'll be asked about it.