Word: panetta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...intelligence expert who has done contract work for the CIA says many in Langley feel Panetta, who had only weeks before testified that the agency did not lie to Congress, was acting "to protect his own skin," rather than in the agency's best interests. "He was looking to make sure nobody could accuse him of knowing about this program and being complicit in keeping it from Congress," says the official. (For his part, Panetta might well argue that it was the agency that misled and embarrassed him in the first place...
Nevertheless, many CIA watchers take the opposite view. Panetta's handling of the secret program was "the one bright lining in this whole business," says Amy Zegart, a national security expert and professor of public policy at UCLA. By immediately shutting down the program, he "signaled that he has turned a new page at the CIA," she adds...
Distancing the agency from a project with Cheney's fingerprints was politically astute. "As a good politician, Panetta probably knew that [Cheney's involvement] was precisely the reason we should get nervous about it," says Paul Pillar, a former deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center...
Another official familiar with the matter says Panetta "understood the political context in which this whole thing unfolded, and recognized that there would be heat on this - even if the program never amounted to much. When something's not adequately briefed to Congress, unlike a fine wine, it doesn't get better with...
Some argue that Panetta's tendency to look through a political lens is a weakness. "He's a decent guy, but I think he doesn't fully understand the intelligence business, and that hurts," says a former high-ranking operations official. An intel veteran, he argues, would have recognized the program for what it was - little more than an idea - and not rushed to inform Congress. But others, like Zegart, say Panetta's political chops may have saved the agency from even greater criticism. In any case, she says, "we don't know the counterfactual: How much worse would...