Panetta on bin Laden's Demise

The headline of this video is a bit misleading (couldn't means what? couldn't bear it or it wasn't in view) and contrary to the media reporting that bin Laden's code name was Geronimo, Panetta seems to say that when the word Geronimo was uttered that meant bin Laden was dead. A minor thing, but you see how easy it is for information to be misconstrued. Also, the photo that went around the world yesterday was captioned not quite in the way that it is being portrayed in the media -- that Obama watched bin Laden get killed. The caption

....along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden

I'd beware of the media stories out there. The media is on a high.

Full video:

Panetta to Replace Gates, Petraeus to Replace Panetta

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Tomorrow the President will announce four important appointments of the national security team.

First he’ll announce that Leon Panetta, currently the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will be nominated as Secretary of Defense to succeed Secretary Gates. Second, he will announce his intention to nominate General Dave Petraeus as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Third, he’ll announce his intention to nominate Ryan Crocker as the United States next ambassador to Afghanistan. And fourth, he’ll announce his intention to nominate General John Allen, currently the Deputy Commander for CENTCOM, as General Petraeus’ successor as commander for ISAF and commander for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

I can give you some background on these appointments and then I'd be glad to take your questions.

First, these announcements tomorrow are the combination of a multi-month process of careful consideration by the President for the nominees for these important positions. As you all know, Secretary Gates indicated last year that he would be stepping down as Secretary of Defense by the middle of this year, and those conversations that he had with the President last summer led to a careful consideration of his successor and led to these other appointments, as well.

Karl Eikenberry, ambassador to Kabul, his appointment or tour was coming to an end after two years this spring, and we needed to make a change there. And we were also working on General Petraeus’ successor.

So it’s the culmination of a multi-month, careful process by the President of consideration.

Point two: The President has put in place here those nominees that provide the strongest possible team to execute our strategies and policies.

I stress the word “team.” We have been very fortunate in this administration from the outset to have an integrated and effective team, with an emphasis on how each member of the team, how the institutions work together as a team. The President places a high priority on this, and he carefully thought through how the various individuals here will interact, work together, to execute his strategies and policies on behalf of the country.

Next, we have laid this out in a way that we believe will provide for a seamless transition in each of these positions -- that is, no gap, no disruption in continuity of execution of policies.

Fourth, and I think this is an obvious point -- that the President has selected a deeply experienced group of people, really the best people for these jobs, very strong figures in their own right, each and every one of these individuals. And again, I think that's consistent with the approach that the President has taken from the outset with respect to his national security team -- strong figures who work together, who respect each other, who have deep experience in national security.

And if you work through this -- and we can go through each of the positions -- you have in Ryan Crocker, one of the nation’s most experienced and well-respected diplomats; in General Dave Petraeus, obviously, one of the nation’s preeminent military leaders; Leon Panetta, a deeply experienced public servant; and John Allen, really one of the great leaders of his generation in the military. Read the rest from the White House

Leon Panetta's Interview with Jake Tapper June 27 Video

The roundtable.

Where's Cheney Now?

Cheney is in hot water for hiding a spy program from Congress, which CIA director Leon Panetta quickly banished. The program hasn't been disclosed. Apparently, it was never fully operational. Both republicans and democrats are calling for further investigation. Check out the latest in an ABC video here and on Face the Nation here.
But where's Cheney now? He spent so much time running off at the mouth recently. Why isn't he defending himself?

Obama's Speech to CIA

Obama thanks the CIA and says Leon Panetta is a strong leader. Obama gets an Amen when he says that the CIA doesn't get credit often because its actions have to stay secret. He then talks about the torture memos. What makes the U.S. different is we uphold our ideals even when it's hard, Obama said.

My hope is the U.S. never tortures again. This means we have to keep electing a democratic president or wait for the enlightenment of the republican party, which could take decades if they're not gone in the next decade. I think we're seeing the rise of the Tea Party. 

Leon Panetta: Too Often We Govern by Crisis

Leon Panetta is sworn in as CIA director today.

Cheney Bush Turned Loose 100s of Guantanamo Detainees

Cheney-Bush released 270 Guantanamo detainees that they at first said were "serious deadly threats." This was mentioned during Leon Panetta's confirmation hearing to head the CIA. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was making a point on secrecy:

Obama Announces His Intelligence Team Video

The United States does not torture. We will abide by Geneva Conventions. Ladies and gentlemen, we have intelligence!

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Obama announces intelligence head, Leon Panetta and retired Adm. Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence. Other intelligence officials:

I will also rely on the talent and expertise of several distinguished public servants with substantial intelligence experience. The current DNI, Mike McConnell, will continue to offer his counsel through my foreign intelligence advisory board. The National Counterterrorism Center, the hub of our efforts to prevent attacks and root out terrorist networks will continue to benefit from the leadership of Michael Leiter.

And I am pleased to announce that John Brennan, a close adviser, CIA veteran, and former leader of the National Counterterrorism Center, will be my homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism serving with the rank of assistant to the president. John has the experience, vision, and integrity to advance America’s security.

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Transcript

CQ Politics: By tapping Leon Panetta to be CIA chief, Barack Obama sent a clear signal: no to torture. A year ago, Panetta wrote an article declaring, "We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances." And he included waterboarding--which the CIA has used---as torture. In fact, Obama's reported first choice for the CIA job, John Brennan, a career CIA official, had had his chances scuttled after bloggers and others griped that he had been soft, if not supportive, when it came to torture and CIA renditions.

Obama Announces Tim Kaine as New DNC Leader Video

Tomorrow, Obama will officially announce Leon Panetta to head the CIA, Dennis Blair, as director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, as White House homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism.

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Obama's CNBC Interview on Economy, Football, Abs, BlackBerrys, Panetta, Regulation

Obama seems to be interested in doing a lot of combining.
He's also considering a collaboration between the Department of Defense and NASA as far as making rockets.
Here's something that's being mulled for the financial industry:

Politico: One of the leading ideas would combine the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission into a super-regulator that would be like another Federal Reserve as a cornerstone of the U.S. financial system.

This plan, still in draft forms, is likely to include tough new rules for stock trading, banks and the broader financial sector — as well as greater transparency for how government money is spent cleaning up the entire system, according to Democrats familiar with the plans.

Obama told CNBC’s John Harwood on Wednesday that he plans “a substantial overhaul” with “better enforcement, better oversight, better disclosure, increased transparency.”

“Wall Street has not worked, our regulatory system has not worked the way it's supposed to,” Obama said. “We're going to have to look at this alphabet soup of agencies and figure out how do we get them to work together more effectively. We've got to stop splintering functions in such a way that capital in one form is treated one way and capital in another form is treated another way, because these days in global financial markets, they're all fungible.”

Here's the full CNBC transcript, where Obama talks extensively about lunching with the presidents yesterday, the economy, Blackberrys, those Hawaii ab shots, Leon Panetta, college football playoffs, the Geneva Convention and regulation:

I've replaced the transcript excerpts with the videos below.
Read the transcript. It's a must read.

Or just watch:

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Obama's Panetta Pick Controversial

In addition to being a big surprise, many seem to think Panetta is not up on his spycraft, including Senator Dianne Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Intelligence Committee. Huh? is their reaction. Others like the shift from waterboarding to intelligence. A former CIA officer, Robert Baer, says at least Obama knows the CIA's problems. 

Leon Panetta may not have an intelligence background, but his appointment as CIA director shows that Barack Obama understands the CIA's problems.

Maybe the long-troubled CIA, which seems to lack leadership, will actually get an intelligence boost.

Houston Chronicle: WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama's decision to fill the nation's top intelligence jobs with two men short on direct experience in intelligence gathering surprised the spy community and signaled the Democrat's intention for a clean break from Bush administration policies.
Former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, an eight-term congressional veteran and administrative expert, is being tapped to head the CIA. Retired Adm. Dennis Blair is Obama's choice to be director of national intelligence, a selection expected for weeks, according to two Democrats who spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama has not officially announced the choices.
Obama is sending an unequivocal message that controversial administration policies approving harsh interrogations, waterboarding and extraordinary renditions — the secret transfer of prisoners to other governments with a history of torture — and warrantless wiretapping are over, said several officials.
Earlier pick withdrew
The search for Obama's new CIA chief had been stalled since November, when John Brennan, Obama's transition intelligence adviser, abruptly withdrew his name from consideration.
And despite an internal list of former and current CIA officials who had impressive administrative credentials, all either worked in intelligence during the Bush administration's development of controversial policies on interrogation and torture or earlier, during the months leading up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Neither Panetta nor Blair are tainted by associations with Bush administration policies, in large part because they both come from outside the intelligence world. Blair was posted at the CIA for about a year.

Another senator balks:

A later e-mail: 'Senator Kit Bond, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, ... made the following comments on President-elect Obama's nomination of Leon Panetta as the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency: 'Job number one at the CIA is to track down and stop terrorists. In a post-9-11 world, intelligence experience would seem to be a prerequisite for the job of CIA Director.'

Some background (2005) from the Foreign Policy Research Institute on what's wrong with the CIA. Here's part 2.
In 2006: 

CIA chief Porter Goss abruptly and unexpectedly resigned his post yesterday, apparently pushed out by intelligence czar John Negroponte after less than two years leading an agency dogged by morale problems.

Senior administration officials told reporters following videotaped statements by Goss and George W. Bush that Negroponte, who was given the nation's top intelligence post by the U.S. president, had recently raised the prospect of the departure of the former Florida congressman.

Here is what Bush said of Goss when he appointed him in 2004:

"He knows the CIA inside and out," Bush said of Goss, who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and served as a clandestine CIA officer in the 1960s in Central America and Western Europe. "He's the right man to lead this important agency at this critical moment in our nation's history."

Which proves that knowing the CIA inside and out doesn't necessarily make a good CIA head.
Politico says Obama will be pushing Panetta's plusses:

THE CASE TEAM OBAMA WILL BE MAKING FOR PANETTA:

*Good manager -- recognized across the board for his management ability

*Foreign policy experience -- handled foreign policy as White House chief of staff, Bosnia war, etc...

*Intelligence -- as head of OMB, handled intelligence budget and other sensitive matters

*Bipartisanship -- good bipartisan support in Congress

--And a former colleague says don't forget: Calm and collected. 

David Axelrod says Panetta will do just fine:

"I think he's going to be fine," senior adviser David Axelrod said. Of concerns that Panetta might not have enough experience with the CIA's culture, Axelrod said Panetta "will do well. He's tough and smart."
Evan Bayh is with Feinstein. They like Steve Kappes, deputy chief of CIA.

Obama Picks Leon Panetta to Head CIA

Update: Dianne Feinstein, who's about to take over as chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, isn't too happy that she wasn't consulted by Obama. 

Apparently, she wanted an insider.

Obama picks Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, and retired Adm. Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence. Panetta replaces Mike McConnell. During the primaries, Panetta compared Clinton Pollster Mark Penn to Karl Rove. Ouch. Opposition to Panetta and challenges. 

CNN: Leon Panetta, chief of staff in President Clinton's White House, will be President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be CIA director, two Democratic officials told CNN on Monday.

Leon Panetta was chief of staff for President Clinton.

The officials also said that retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who formerly headed the U.S. Navy's Pacific Command, will be tapped as director of national intelligence.

Panetta, 70, has had a long political career, beginning in 1966 when he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel, R-California.

Panetta was elected to the House of Representatives in 1977, serving California's 16th (now 17th) Congressional District until Clinton appointed him to head the Office of Budget and Management in 1993. He was chief of staff from 1994 to 1997.

Here is Panetta's bio from the The Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy:

Leon Edward Panetta has had a long and distinguished career in public service, ranging from his tour of duty in the U.S. Army to his service as the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.
Born in Monterey in 1938 of Italian immigrant parents, Panetta attended both Catholic and public schools and worked on his family’s farm in Carmel Valley, where he lives today with his wife Sylvia. He earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Santa Clara University and his J.D. from Santa Clara University Law School, where he was an editor of the Law Review. He served as a First Lieutenant in the Army from 1964 to 1966 and received the Army Commendation Medal.
Panetta first went to Washington in 1966, when he served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Thomas H. Kuchel of California, the Senate Minority Whip. In 1969, he became Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and then Director of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, where he was responsible for enforcement of equal education laws. His book Bring Us Together (published in 1971) is an account of that experience. In 1970, he went to New York City, where he served as executive assistant to Mayor John Lindsay, overseeing the city’s relations with the state and federal governments. Then, in 1971, he returned to California, where he practiced law in the Monterey firm of Panetta, Thompson & Panetta until he was elected to Congress in 1976.
Panetta was a U.S. Representative from California’s 16th (now 17th) district from 1977 to 1993. As a House member, he was a key participant in the 1990 budget summit as well as every other budget summit during the 1980s. He authored the Hunger Prevention Act of 1988; the Fair Employment Practices Resolution extending civil rights protections to House employees for the first time; numerous successful measures to protect the California coast, including creation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary; legislation that established Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for hospice care for the terminally ill; and other legislation on a variety of education, health, agriculture and defense issues.
From 1989 to 1993, Panetta was chairman of the House Committee on the Budget. He also served as a member of that committee from 1979 to 1985. He chaired the House Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Domestic Marketing, Consumer Relations and Nutrition; the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel and Police; and the Select Committee on Hunger’s Task Force on Domestic Hunger. He also served as vice chairman of the Caucus of Vietnam Era Veterans in Congress and as a member of the President’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies.
Panetta left Congress in 1993, at the beginning of his ninth term, to become Director of the Office of Management and Budget for the incoming Clinton administration. In that position, he was instrumental in developing the 1993 budget package that is widely credited with achieving a balanced federal budget and eventual budget surpluses.
Panetta was appointed Chief of Staff to President Clinton on July 17, 1994, and served in that position until January 20, 1997. He was the principal negotiator of the successful 1996 budget compromise, and was widely praised for bringing order and focus to White House operations and policy making.
Panetta is currently co-directs with his wife Sylvia the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay – a university he helped establish on the site of the former U.S. Army base, Fort Ord. The Institute serves as a nonpartisan, not-for-profit study center for the advancement public policy, seeking in particular to attract thoughtful men and women to lives of public service.
In addition, Mr. Panetta serves as Distinguished Scholar to the Chancellor of the California State University system. He advises the Chancellor on national issues affecting higher education and teaches a Master’s course in Public Policy at the Panetta Institute.
In 1997, he was also appointed Presidential Professor at Santa Clara University, teaching a course called Studies in Public Policy
Mr. Panetta has served as a leader in numerous community and national public policy organizations throughout his career. In March 2006, he was chosen to serve on the Iraq Study Group, a bi-partisan committee established at the urging of Congress and organized by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and the James A. Baker III Institute. Since 2005, he has served as member of the Independent Task Force on Immigration and America’s Future. In November 2004, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed him co-chair of the Council on Base Support and Retention.
Mr. Panetta served a six-year term on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange beginning in 1997. He was chairman of the Committee for Review for the New York Stock Exchange Board of Directors and was co-chair of the Corporate Governance and Listing Standards Committee for the Stock Exchange.
He served on the National Review Board of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the board of the National Steinbeck Center, and the University of California Santa Cruz Foundation, and since June 1998, he has served on the board of the Santa Clara University Law School Board of Visitors. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for Santa Clara University; as a member of the Fleishman-Hillard International Advisory Board; as a trustee for the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula; and as a director for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He is chairman of the National Board of Advisors of the Center for National Policy as well as chairman of the Pew Oceans Commission. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for Blue Shield of California; IDT; Zenith; Connetics; the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation; Bread for the World; and Close Up. He lectures nationally and internationally on the state of the economy, the federal budget and other issues facing our nation, and is the recipient of awards and honors too numerous to list.

Mr. Panetta is married to the former Sylvia Marie Varni, who administered his district offices during his service in Congress and continues as a partner in his many activities. They have three grown sons and five grandchildren.

Clintons Suffering "Disloyalties"

in the nyt, the clintons are apparently feeling abandoned by those who were once loyal to them but have now endorsed obama.

clinton could've run a cleaner campaign but it probably wouldn't have mattered. the clintons are up against a movement of people who want to see things changed and obama has simply said, yes, it's possible to change washington and here's how.

when you're up against that momentum, it's tough to fight it back because it looks like we've reached the tipping point. many people in america are living paycheck to paycheck, more than the republicans realize, and the bush administration has been oppressive, so the idea of a clean break from old-fashioned politics is really exciting.

character has proven to be important in this campaign. i know i'm biased, but i've also paid close attention to this campaign, and from what i've seen, the obama camp has tried to stay on the high road, to keep it positive and on point, and hillary's camp keeps tugging on obama to take the low road because that's how the clintons define politics.

some people, women especially, are having a difficult time dealing with the fact that we won't have the first woman president. there virtually is no chance of hillary winning.

i'd like to see a woman president but i'd like the first one to be someone who isn't married to a former president. i'd like to see a woman who truly rises on her own and of her own merits. hillary has relied so much on bill during this campaign, using him especially in places like rural and suburban pennslyvania, where some people are reluctant to vote for a woman candidate, and counting his experience as her experience.

it also seems many women see this election as hillary's revenge for bill's affairs. bill really sullied the office of president with his shenanigans. i do think that the president has a big responsibility not just to run the nation but also to serve as a role model. if not the president, then who? i don't think obama will use his power to get the attention of interns. he seems above that and he seems to be a decent man who truly cares about his family.

but if women are concerned about women's rights, i believe that obama will do more for women than hillary because he has the power to move people and to get them mobilized into action. obama is clearly a better leader, whereas hillary is weak on that point. more than anything else, we need a leader, someone who can get ordinary americans involved.

so here are the clintons feeling that they are owed:

nyt: Nancy Larson’s most difficult conversation was, by far, the one with Chelsea Clinton.

“It was just heartbreaking,” said Mrs. Larson, a Democratic National Committee member from Minnesota and more to the point, a superdelegate who had initially pledged herself to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. This was last Saturday, after the former first daughter learned that Mrs. Larson would be shifting her allegiance to Senator Barack Obama.

“She is a delightful young woman who loves her mother very much,” Mrs. Larson said. “She was really pushing me. She kept asking me why I was doing this. She just kept asking, ‘Why? Why?’ ”

It is a question many in the Clinton camp are asking these days, sometimes in conversations far less civil than that one. After nearly two decades building relationships with a generation of Democrats, Mrs. Clinton has recently suffered a steady erosion of support for her presidential campaign from the party stalwarts that once formed the basis of her perceived juggernaut of “inevitability.”

more

But one person’s “disloyalty” is, to another set of eyes, well-deserved “comeuppance.” And there is no shortage of powerful Democrats who are quick to accuse the Clintons of defining loyalty as a one-way street, with little regard for the sacrifices they have made for a couple whose own political needs seem to their critics always to come first.

This tension was neatly distilled in a heated conversation in January between a prominent Clinton supporter and Cameron Kerry, the younger brother of Senator John Kerry, who had just endorsed Mr. Obama.

In the telling of two Democrats familiar with the discussion, one from each camp, the Clinton supporter, a Democratic fund-raiser with close ties to both Mrs. Clinton and John Kerry, noted that Mr. Clinton campaigned for Mr. Kerry in 2004, even though the former president had just undergone bypass surgery.

To which Cameron Kerry parried that his brother had agreed to fly with Mr. Clinton on Air Force One after the impeachment vote “when no one wanted to be seen with him.”

more

By the same token, “There is clearly a high frustration level among campaign types and from the Clintons themselves,” said Leon Panetta, a White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, who is backing Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

It is partly reserved for former Clinton administration aides who are now with Mr. Obama: Greg Craig, who served as special counsel to Bill Clinton during his impeachment saga, former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, and Mr. Reich, who even before his formal endorsement Friday had spoken approvingly of Mr. Obama and critically of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

“These are people that the Clintons gave an opportunity to serve,” said Mr. Panetta, speaking generally. “They helped give them the titles they now have, and made them a lot of money. I think the Clintons probably feel they are owed something.”

bill clinton's former labor secretary robert reich endorsed obama, making the fifth former clinton cabinet member to back obama