Senate intelligence panel chief unhappy about choice

Washington: Leon E. Panetta, a former congressman and White House chief of staff, has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to head the CIA.

The choice, disclosed on Monday by Democratic officials, immediately revealed divisions in the party as two senior lawmakers questioned why Obama would nominate a candidate with limited experience in intelligence matters.

The job was the last unfilled major post for Obama, who has criticised the agency for using interrogation methods he characterised as torture.

Democratic officials said Obama had selected Panetta for his managerial skills, his bipartisan standing and the foreign policy and budget experience he gained under President Bill Clinton.

Panetta has himself been a sharp critic of the agency's interrogation practices. Some Democrats expressed strong support for the choice, with Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, describing him as "one of the finest public servants I have ever served with and dealt with since he left the White House".

But Panetta, 70, was also widely described as a surprising and unusual choice to head the CIA, an agency that has been notoriously unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders. News of the decision was disclosed by Democratic officials who insisted on anonymity, and neither Obama nor his transition office has commented publicly about it.

Expertise

Among the lawmakers who expressed scepticism about the choice was Senator Dianne Feinstein, the new chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Feinstein, who would oversee any confirmation hearing for Panetta, issued a statement that signalled clear disapproval and said she had not been notified about the choice.

Feinstein's Republican counterpart on the Intelligence Committee, Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, said he would be "looking hard at Panetta's intelligence expertise and qualifications".

It was not clear whether the scepticism would become an obstacle to the nomination of Panetta, who would succeed Michael V. Hayden, a retired Air Force general with decades of intelligence experience.

Sen Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who is a member of the intelligence committee, called Panetta a "strong choice" who "has the skills to usher in a new era of accountability at the nation's premier intelligence agency".

The choice of Panetta comes nearly two weeks after Obama had otherwise wrapped up his major personnel moves. It appears to reflect the difficulty Obama encountered in finding a candidate who is capable of taking charge of the troubled agency but not tainted by links to the interrogation and detention program run by the CIA under President Bush.

- New York Times News Service

selection

man of political wisdom

Leon Panetta, Barack Obama's surprise choice to head the CIA, clearly isn't someone with much hands-on national security or intelligence experience. But no one disputes that the man knows government.

The former eight-term congressman from California has had plenty of experience in overseeing all aspects of the federal bureaucracy as a former chairman of the House Budget Committee, as budget director and then chief of staff for President Bill Clinton; and more recently as a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

"It is true that he doesn't have an intelligence background. But he certainly dealt with intelligence. In the Iraq Study Group, we dealt with it every day. He certainly dealt with it as chief of staff," said Democrat Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House International Relations Committee and chairman of the Iraq Study Group.

Panetta brings an "outside perspective" to the job, he said.

Still, Hamilton said, "I think it will be very important that Leon bring into his inner circle, onto his team, professional intelligence people."

Panetta, 70, who has an easy laugh and slightly owlish demeanour behind large round glasses, was popular on both sides of the aisle in the 16 years that he represented the Monterey, California, district where he was born to Italian immigrant parents. He still lives there today with his wife, Sylvia. The couple founded the Leon and Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy in 1998 and both serve as the institute's directors. It is based at California State University, Monterey Bay, which he helped establish on the site of the former US Army base, Ford Ord, where he served while he was in the Army from 1964-1966.

- AP