Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in remarks Thursday, ranked U.S. ally India with China as a rising threat to the U.S. in Asia. The Pentagon quickly sought to roll back the remarks.
“We face the threats from rising powers — China, India, others — that we have to always have sufficient force protection out there in the Pacific to make sure they know we’re never going anywhere,” Mr. Panetta said during a visit to a shipyard in Groton, Conn., where he toured a submarine, the Mississippi, in the final stages of construction.
Tag: leon panetta
The war of leaks may now begin.
And as I noted yesterday, what an interesting war it will be. Via AoSHQ:
Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.
[snip]
With the release of the details on Monday and the formal advice that at least some cases be reopened, it now seems all but certain that the appointment of a prosecutor or other concrete steps will follow, posing significant new problems for the C.I.A. It is politically awkward, too, for Mr. Holder because President Obama has said that he would rather move forward than get bogged down in the issue at the expense of his own agenda.
My reading of the article suggests that the focus of this is not Bush administration policies, but is instead on how the CIA carried those policies out. This should prove interesting: the CIA is already dealing with new Director Leon Panetta’s epic-level bungling of the ‘assassination program’ nonsense, and this is going to do nothing to persuade the career bureaucrats in the Agency that the current administration isn’t planning to hang them all out to dry. Having lived through one Church Committee, I suspect that the CIA is not inclined to endure another.
I don’t exactly have ‘a pox on both their houses’ attitude towards this, but I do consider this to be a bit of a karmic balancing for both the White House and the CIA.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
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It’s like a demented tennis match:
CIA director says Pelosi received the truth
CIA Director Leon Panetta challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusations that the agency lied to her, writing a memo to his agents saying she received nothing but the truth.
[snip]
Panetta, President Obama’s pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton’s former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,'” according to CIA records.
“We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication,” Panetta said in the memo. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”
(Via Riehl World View, via AoSHQ)
…and that last statement translates to, as near as I can tell, “Go ahead and hit her again.” Add that to the apparent dismissive attitude of Panetta towards Speaker Pelosi’s allegations (I think that he referred to it as ‘noise’), and you get the feeling that the CIA is prepared to be the brick wall that the Speaker is pounding her head against for as long as the Speaker feels like pounding. That suggests that there’s a lot of paperwork still out there that can accidentally-on purpose show up when the time is right.
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