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Panetta and The Experience Question

By Larry Johnson on January 6, 2009 at 7:34 PM in Current Affairs

I am a tad amused by the insistence that we need a CIA director with “intelligence” experience. Really? Then why in the hell is the CIA Headquarters named for a guy who was, by this criteria, one of the least experienced CIA Director’s ever named. I refer of course to George H. W. Bush. Don’t get me wrong. I like Bush 41. He is an honorable, decent man. He did brief stints as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN and to China. But he also headed the Republican National Committee. You do not get much more political than that. In fact, very few CIA Directors have every had “prior” intelligence experience.

In terms of temperament Leon Panetta reminds me a lot of Bush 41. Both are politicians but neither seemed to relish the partisan blood feuds that have become the norm in Washington over the last twenty years.

But Panetta has some decided advantages over George Bush Sr. Unlike Bush senior, he served as White House Chief of Staff and headed up the Office of Management and Budget. So he actually goes into the job with more management experience the Bush 41 ever had.

So what kind of experience are we looking for?

Do we want someone who has been to a CIA training center and completed the Field Officer’s Training Course? Sorry, I do not think any of the CIA Directors in the last fifty years have done that. Richard Helms and William Colby had OSS experience. I don’t think they ever did FOTC.

Do we want someone who understands the difference between intelligence collection and intelligence analysis? Absolutely. And I think Panetta meets that bill. Do we want someone who understands how certain decisions based on imprecise or inadequate information can damage irreparably a Presidency? Yes!

I find the longing of former CIA people for the “perfect” boss a little sad. The current Director, General Hayden, is a competent manager but still is faulted by some I know for allowing politics to sway his decisions. Others praise Hayden for restoring morale damaged by the political pandering of George Tenet. The quest for a perfect CIA Director may be the equivalent to Monty Python’s search for the Holy Grail.

The needs at CIA are very simple. People need to be held accountable. Rewarded for good work and punished for grievous errors. No one at CIA, for example, received as much as a reprimand for the failure to share critical intelligence about Al Qaeda operatives with the FBI. When you fail to hold those in charge for such an error you send a very strong message–no one cares.

You also need a leader at CIA who can tell the President that the case for going to war in Iraq is not strong and is in fact off base. But we saw the exact opposite under George Tenet. As I have pointed out in previous pieces, Tenet did some good in restoring morale in the aftermath of the disaster that was John Deutch. (And some of my former colleagues blame Panetta for advancing Deutch to replace Jim Woolsey). Does Leon Panetta have the personal strength to tell a President keen on pursuing a foreign fiasco to steer clear? I do not know the answer to that.

If the answer is ‘no” then the legacy of Panetta at the CIA is already foretold. He will be another war story about a bad Director. If the answer is “yes” then we may be on the threshold of an era of enlightened leadership at the CIA. I hope for the sake of our country that it is the latter and not the former. I am certain of this–Leon Panetta has enough experience in Washington to know what will destroy you and what is truly lasting. I believe he is smart enough to seek the latter.