Your statement about the CIA’s behavior is 100% correct. The Bush
administration should have cleaned house there and at State. But
Panetta’s appointment SHOULD concern people because as bad as
the CIA’s actions have been it will be worse under Panetta.

I guess it was your saying ” Let me say up front that I don’t have a problem with Barack Obama’s nomination of long time Clinton loyalist and former California congressman Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency.” that threw me.
I guess since I have a problem with the entire Obama Administration
it stands to reason I wouldn’t like the Panetta appointment. His appointment is even more upsetting given the need the CIA has for a strong leader with an intelligence background.

“Panetta is a fixer”

Last paragraph…

Did I mis-understand?

I will guarantee you that there won’t be any leaks or sabotage from the CIA in a BHO Administration. I don’t know if the GWB Administration even bothered to put any of their own people below the very top levels of the Agency, but I’ll guarantee you that they’ll all be fired within seconds of BHO’s hand coming off the Bible and everyone in that Agency that has ever had a Republican thought will have a laser dot on their forehead.

but I would suggest learning a little more about the Intelligence Community before commenting on an issue this important. This is not a typical gov’t agency. This isn’t the Secretary of Housing or Dep’t of Commerce. This is a position that oversees people in harms way. This isn’t meant for a paper pushing bureaucrat to gain political advantage for the CIA. This is ot about the CIA getting better exposure with Congress. Don’t you understand that having an intelligence neophyte leading the CIA could cost lives? Not just intelligence officers’ lives, but the lives of Americans all over the world. You clearly don’t understand the importance of the agency. Stop looking at it like the Democrats who think intelligence is unnecessary dirty work. This work is vital to our country’s national security and defense and having an inexperienced director will undoubtedly have serious consequences for our country. Look at history when there were other directors without intel experience. The results were not good. This isn’t politics.

but that has nothing to do with it. Stop with the resume bulls%&^. I can assure you that having a Director with absolutey no intel experience would be detrimental to the mission and those serving therein. I’m not saying that it has to be someone coming directly from an Case Officer or otherwise Operations background. I think analysts can make great administrators, because they understand firsthand what the IC is about, the mission, and the best methods of achieving the mission. Further, it could be someone from military service, State Dep’t, elsewhere in the IC. But, Leon Panetta, whom I have met and talked to personally in the White House when he was COS to Clinton, is not appropriate for this position. Newsflash: this is war time. We can’t wait for a former politician who’s been lobbying for the past few years to get past the learning curve and get up to speed on how the IC works. Stop defending him and admit this is a bad appointment. The fact that you’ve had experience as an intelligence consumer is even more disappointing, because you should know firsthand how important it is to improve the state of our IC. Clearly, your experience is overstated. Moreover, you exhibit why Obama’s comments were even more absurd, thinking that an intelligence consumer automatically makes someone prepared for running the nation’s intelligence operations (or at least Central Intelligence). That’s like saying that since I am a consumer of healthcare services, I should be a surgeon. Come on.

No, I don’t, do you?
Are we just going to hope that he has any leadership expertise?
I can, and will continue to, make the leader versus manager argument when I (1) think that an Agency of the government needs leadership and (2) when one of the two most critical “qualifications” Mr Obama quoted in his sorta announcement is managerial experience.
Perhaps I am sticky about the terms.
Management is something that a leader needs to be competent in.
Managers, in my experience based opinion, generally fail in leadership roles.
Mostly because once they recognize the problem, their own inability to inspire others to their cause, they fall back on “managing” things. Which generally turns out to be insuring that blame is properly placed.
And haven’t we had about enough of placing blame in the last few years?
Do we really want a “Not my fault” guy at the top of the CIA?

Or are we to ‘hope’ that he has some leadership ability, or just accept another “Not my fault” manager in the CIA?
Leaders need to be able to manage.
Managers, in my experience based opinion, rarely understand the leadership role.
They assume that a “plan” can be managed and massaged to an effective conclusion.
They, managers, often fail to recognize their own lack of capacity to inspire others to their cause, and it’s critical role in leadership.
Managers, once faced with their inability to lead, tend to fall back on the time tested rule of insure blame is placed on someone else.
Which isn’t to say that there haven’t been, and won’t be in the future, leaders who fail once elevated above their abilities.
But having zero established ability in the first place seems to better portend failure.
Again, a chance I’d rather the Country didn’t have to face.

New blood is great if its the right blood. The Democrats have shown they have no respect for our country’s intelligence. They have committed treason, in my opinion, for political gain with our secrets.
You think they have leaks now, what until it’s the DCI himself spilling the beans. He’s a political hump and shouldn’t be the Director.
He may grow the CIA, bureaucratically, but as far as the CIA doing it’s job gathering and disseminating intelligence without the world knowing our every move, he will fail.

And this comment you made here, “I don’t think the CIA is capable of connecting the dots and so I fail to see why a certified incompetent from within is better than someone who can’t do worse than the professionals.” are the words of someone who has surrendered to mediocrity and failure. So you are saying we shouldn’t endeavor to do better, to improve and maybe even, if I can be so bold to suggest, succeed? As a country where would we be now if we accepted that outlook on things.
What would it be like in Iraq right now if, after all that went wrong there, Bush hadn’t kept at it and put Gen. Petraeus in charge. If he had adopted the defeatism of the left and pulled out. There would be a ongoing civil war with probably 10’s of thousands dead and it would be blood on our hands. You can’t just say the CIA is broken so lets leave it that way and not strive to fix it. That is just so wrong Streiff.