The Disappointing Leon Panetta

[L. Coyote]

The Disappointing Leon Panetta
Melvin A. Goodman - June 19, 2009 - http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/061909b.html

Editor’s Note: When President Barack Obama picked former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the CIA, there was hope among reformers that Panetta would lead the way toward cleaning up the spy agency and assessing some accountability for torture and other abuses of the Bush-Cheney era.
Instead, however, Panetta has protected the CIA’s bureaucratic interests and opposed releasing documentary evidence of torture and other crimes, as former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman notes in this guest essay:

CIA Director Leon Panetta is continuing the culture of cover-up that has plagued the Agency for the past three decades, ever since William Casey and Robert Gates collaborated in the 1980s to hide the crimes of Iran-Contra and to politicize sensitive intelligence.

Panetta was expected to introduce an era of transparency and accountability to the CIA, but he has been a major disappointment, refusing to remove any of the senior officials responsible for policies that led to secret prisons, extraordinary renditions, and torture and abuse.

Currently, he is doing the bidding of the most reactionary elements of the CIA by supporting the heavy redaction of the Inspector General’s report of 2004, which is the most authoritative account on record of the Agency’s interrogation practices and the use of torture and abuse against detainees.

In addition to blocking the release of an authoritative version of the IG report, Panetta has established his own review group within the Agency on interrogation practices and has filled it with operational officials from the National Clandestine Service and lawyers from the Office of the General Counsel.

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[rwheeler31]

1. Why can't he get rid of the goon holdovers?

[Maccagirl]

2. He obviously lacks the will.

Leon Panetta is an insider of the first order or he wouldn't have been WH Chief of Staff. Reformer...uh huh.

[ProgressIn2008]

3. Because he doesn't want to? nt

[Canuckistanian]

4. I think he's getting punked

"Here, boss. I know how busy your schedule is. I took the liberty of writing your speech for you"

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. This is empire, pure and simple

understand, this shit will not stop until the empire disappears or fails

[DURHAM D]

6. Carter purged 600-800 bad apples from the CIA.

Many think that, among other things, they then conspired (along with Poppy Bush/neocons) to sabotage the effort to rescue the hostages in Iran that ended with the disaster in the desert.

You just can't get too far with cleaning up the spook mess. Poppy Bush probably still gets a daily intelligence briefing.

More recently, some of those purged were involved in the yellow cake forgeries that pushed us into Iraq.