It's Torture, Stupid: Why Obama Picked Leon Panetta to Head the CIA

Fred Kaplan has a good piece at Slate today laying out a theory as to the calculus Barack Obama used to pick former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta as his nominee to head up the CIA:

This has been Obama's persistent dilemma on the matter of picking a CIA chief (and the reason it has taken him so long to do so); finding someone who is a) up on the issues and the workings of the intelligence bureaucracy but b) not tainted by the Bush administration's record on renditions, torture, or extralegal surveillance.

Panetta's pick suggests that no such person exists--and that, if forced to make priorities, Obama values b) over a). Panetta has written articles denouncing the use of torture under any circumstances. In that respect, he is clean.

Many of Obama's critics have stated that Panetta has no experience in spycraft, and is therefore ill-suited to lead the agency. But former White House counterterrorism director Richard Clarke tells Kaplan a different story:

Leon was in all of the important national security meetings for years, both as [Office of Management and Budget] director and as chief of staff. He made substantive contributions well outside of his job description. And as OMB director, he was one of a very few people who knew all of the covert and special-access programs.

Still, some, like The New Yorker's Steve Coll, who don't doubt that Panetta will be quite good at a lot of what the CIA post requires, have a fundamental problem with the pick:

The essential problem is that Panetta is a man of Washington, not a man of the world. He's seventy-years-old, spends his time on his California farm, and he's been out of the deal flow, as they say on Wall Street, for about a decade; he knows California budget policy like the back of his hand, but what intuition of insight does he bring to the most dangerous territories in American foreign policy--Anbar Province, the Logar Valley, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas?

So, does the CIA director position require more of a global vision that Panetta possesses? As has always been the case when a new spy chief is announced, the spies in the agency's rank and file seem to have mixed feelings, but the root of that dispute, again, seems to center on whether or not a person without a background as a spy can effectively lead the CIA. And that brings us, oddly enough, to neocon Richard Pearle, who, via Ben Smith, adds:

Panetta is "is a very smart, very capable guy with a lot of experience--I think he's the right sort of person to take a shot at improving the place."

But one should take all of these learned opinions with a grain of salt, because, as Diane Feinstein proved (twice in the same week, no less), opinions can have a way changing, even when it comes to whether or not Panetta is the person we need to head the CIA. After assuring the California Senator and intelligence chairman that Panetta would be supported by the kinds of deputies Feinstein advocated for assuming the top post (notably, current second-in-charge, Stephen Kappes) Obama is now said to have signed off on Panetta.

How much will change at the CIA, should Panetta be confirmed, remains to be seen. As a symbolic move away from the abhorrent torture polices of the Bush-era, however, this pick should be applauded.