Congressional representatives will give Leon Panetta a grilling
Tuesday to find out if he’s the right guy to run the Central
Intelligence Agency. If he gets the job of CIA director, the South
Valley can boast that our nation’s new head
”
spook
”
hails from our region of California.
Congressional representatives will give Leon Panetta a grilling Tuesday to find out if he’s the right guy to run the Central Intelligence Agency. If he gets the job of CIA director, the South Valley can boast that our nation’s new head “spook” hails from our region of California.
Last summer, I chatted one-on-one with Panetta for a couple of hours for a magazine article. It was one of the most fascinating – and fun – chats I’ve ever had with a politico. I found him a very down-to-earth man with a sharp mind and a quick wit.
Panetta was born in Monterey in 1938 to Italian immigrants. After graduating from high school, he attended Santa Clara University, majoring in political science. He later graduated from its law school and joined the U.S. Army to work as an intelligence officer. One assignment took him to Washington, D.C. and gave him a taste of national politics.
After getting out of the service in 1966, he got a job as a legislative assistant with Tom Kuchel, a Republican. He found himself working on his true passion – civil rights legislation. His work to enforce the Voting Rights Act brought him into heated conflict with President Richard Nixon. Nixon had made a deal with Senator Strom Thurmond to back off on enforcing civil rights laws in exchange for Southern votes. Panetta’s adherence to principle over politics caused the Nixon partisans to push the young congressional aide’s firing. Caught in the political battle over the so-called “Southern strategy,” Panetta resigned.
“I had sworn to uphold the Constitution, and that’s what I was going to do. And ultimately, it cost me my job,” Panetta told me.
Soured on the GOP’s hard-line tactics, Panetta switched over to the Democrats. In 1971, after a short stint working for the mayor of New York City, he moved back to Monterey and joined his brother at their law office.
Panetta eventually did return to Washington, D.C. In 1977, he was elected to serve the people of California’s Congressional District 16 covering Monterey and San Benito counties. Panetta served nine terms as a congressman. In 1993, President Clinton appointed him to be the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and he proved himself by developing policy to achieve a balanced budget. The following year, Clinton appointed him as White House Chief of Staff.
In 1998, Panetta left Washington, D.C. Not willing to rest on his laurels, he and his wife Sylvia founded the Panetta Institute for Public Policy – located at California State University, Monterey Bay, where I interviewed him. At the end of our chat, we discussed his involvement in the Iraq Study Group as well as the current state of national politics. His impression was that heavy-handed partisanship was wrecking havoc on the ship of state.
“The partisan divide has paralyzed Washington and made it dysfunctional,” he told me. “Because Democrats and Republicans can’t work together, we’re paying a very high price for that.”
We also discussed President George W. Bush’s policies – particularly those dealing with the invasion of Iraq and the detention and torture of prisoners suspected of terrorist activities. Those failures of moral leadership caused the United States to lose much respect in the world, Panetta told me. America should serve as a shining light for all nations, he said. But during Bush’s watch, we witnessed the radiance of our republic dim.
“I worry that the very institutions that our forefathers created are really under siege,” he said. “If in fact the president and Congress cannot come together to solve the nation’s issues, then something is seriously wrong. Boy, I’ll tell you, the next president is going to have to face a huge task in trying to heal this country.”
Seven months after Panetta said those words, the next president is settling into the White House and selecting his team. For his choice of Panetta as CIA director, Barrack Obama has received some heated political flack from congressional representatives who say the Monterey man lacks “intelligence credentials.” They need to consider that former CIA Director George Tenet had a wealth of intelligence experience, and yet he still wound up giving Bush misleading briefings on Saddam Hussein’s possessions of weapons of mass destruction. That led America into a disastrous war with Iraq.
As CIA director, Panetta wouldn’t be going out on James Bond secret missions or deciphering coded messages or performing data analysis. He would be managing trained professionals assigned to do that work. And Panetta has the ethics and people skills to do that job competently. He also has the wisdom to keep partisanship from manipulating intelligence for political gain.
I’ve got a hunch that if Congress confirms Panetta for the job of CIA director, the South Valley will be proud our nation’s head spook once represented our region.
