Word: panetta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...perfect government servant." - Then New York Rep. Charles Schumer, on Panetta's appointment to be Clinton's budget director, USA Today...
...time he was here two weeks, I could see how calm things were...He increased the confidence level." - Bill Clinton, on Panetta's debut as White House Chief of Staff, Washington Post...
...Leon Panetta may not have an intelligence background, but his appointment as CIA director shows that Barack Obama understands the CIA's problems. As a former White House chief of staff, Clinton Administration budget director and eight-term California Congressman, Panetta knows his way around Washington better than most people, and that kind of knowledge is exactly what the CIA needs right...
...Panetta is experienced enough to understand that the CIA was the victim of political manipulation under the Bush Administration. It was the Bush White House that cherry-picked the intelligence on Iraq, not the CIA. Panetta will have the ear of the new President to walk him through all of this and to make the case that there is no point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Panetta will also serve as a good counterweight to retired Admiral Dennis Blair, the designated director of national intelligence who is unlikely to streamline the intelligence community or challenge the Pentagon...
...will need Panetta to hold off the Senate and House intelligence committees, which are gearing up to rip into the CIA for the past eight years of renditions, secret prisons and bad intelligence on Iraq. Mistakes aside, the last thing the CIA needs is another round of overly intrusive congressional hearings like those that so badly damaged the agency in the 1970s. If today's Congress were to deliver a coup de grâce to the CIA, the Pentagon would effectively be the nation's only intelligence agency...