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   During a recession, should college presidents face the same pay cuts as CEOs?
 Forty years of writing from Taylor Branch, James Fallows, Katherine Boo, Marjorie Williams, Joshua Micah Marshall, and more.
 With help from Washington, the for-profit college industry is loading up millions of low-income students with debt they'll never pay off.
 The best recent memoir from republican Washington is a hoax. That should tell you something.
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January 5, 2009
PANETTA TO HEAD CIA.... Outside of Bill Richardson's difficulties, the only cabinet-level position in the Obama administration unfilled by Christmas was the head of the CIA. Rumor has it that 25-year CIA veteran John Brennan was the leading candidate to run the agency, and when he withdrew from consideration after questions over his Bush-era tenure, it delayed the process. There was even a rumor about a month ago that Obama might keep Michael Hayden on at the CIA, but like most rumors floated by Paul Bedard, this was both hard to believe and wrong. In a surprising move, Leon Panetta is getting the job.
That last point is of particular interest. Pretty much every official from within the CIA in recent years has been tainted in some way by Bush administration policies. Obama needed someone capable who had nothing to do with the last eight years, and Panetta fit the bill. At a minimum, he had the highest of security clearances during his tenure as White House chief of staff, and no doubt spent a lot of time in intelligence briefings and in the situation room, and he was a member of the Iraq Study Group*, so it's not as if Panetta is going to the CIA with no background. What's more, while hiring from outside the agency seems a little odd, former CIA Director John Deutch told the New York Times that "two of the agency's most successful directors, John McCone and George H.W. Bush, had little or no intelligence experience when they took over at C.I.A." And what about Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the former senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee? Apparently, she was considered but was ruled out due to her early support for Bush's warrantless-search program. * corrected —Steve Benen 3:00 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (17)Comments
Any government agency that reportedly "doesn't cotton to outsiders" is one that is probably in serious need of reform. Hopefully an Obama administration will recognize that the most important arm of the government for combating terrorism is the State Department, and not the CIA or Pentagon. Posted by: jonas on January 5, 2009 at 3:01 PM | PERMALINKWhat's that you say? All the handwringing over Obama's retention of Bush's team was premature? Well, how about that? Posted by: UncommonSense on January 5, 2009 at 3:04 PM | PERMALINKMcCone was CIA chief when they were running ramshod and unhinged in Southeast Asia and whose voluminous failures on everything from Soviet strength and Cuba to Vietnam caused untold pain in misery in this world. Bush was a one-year placeholder whose agency was held in check due to the Church Committee hearings more than anything Bush did. The CIA has been an overwhelming disaster and when someone picks these two as examples of "successful directors" the bar is so low as to be laughable. I think Panetta can't be any worse than agency lifers or security-complex players (and could be infinitely better), but again: the CIA is and has been a human rights abusing, immoral, budet-sucking, responsibility-avoiding disaster. Posted by: Jay B. on January 5, 2009 at 3:11 PM | PERMALINKthe CIA is and has been a human rights abusing, immoral, budet-sucking, responsibility-avoiding disaster. not to mention law-breaking and flat out lying to Congress. Posted by: Ugh on January 5, 2009 at 3:19 PM | PERMALINKAnd what about Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the former senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee? Apparently, she was considered but was ruled out due to her early support for Bush's warrantless-search program. Let this be a lesson to Harman that actions sometimes have consequences. Posted by: Stefan on January 5, 2009 at 3:32 PM | PERMALINKThe single most encouraging fact in this story is that Obama rejected smirky-fellator and repug sweetheart Jane Harman. She's got to rank as one of the top 10 most destructive DINOs in Congress. Anybody in her district up for a primary fight? Posted by: Yellow Dog on January 5, 2009 at 3:34 PM | PERMALINKCombine this with the appointment of Dawn Johnsen to head OLC, and you've got a pretty good day for appointments. Posted by: Kenneth Fair on January 5, 2009 at 3:40 PM | PERMALINKAgreed Yellow Dog. The coolest thing about this is the people he didn't pick. He could have picked Ronald McDonald for all I care as long as he didn't pick some morally equivocating, Bush apologist or enabler. Looks like our guy is serious on the torture front and with that, I'll sleep a little sounder tonight. Posted by: mark r on January 5, 2009 at 3:42 PM | PERMALINKMy first thought was HUH? Then it struck me after reading the post, that you are right, it was going to be hard to find someone with enough political heft that wasn't connected directly or indirectly to the clusterf**k at the CIA that was the last 8 years. Posted by: ET on January 5, 2009 at 3:52 PM | PERMALINK@ Yellow Dog Anybody in her district up for a primary fight? Yup. Marcy Winograd gave Harman a run for her money in 06. I don't know if she ran again this time, though. Posted by: jonas on January 5, 2009 at 4:29 PM | PERMALINKHopefully Leon can do something about the parking situation. Also I'm getting tired of Burger King and Starbucks in the cafeteria. Maybe he can get new venders. I'm sure not holding my breadth about him making any real changes. Posted by: 1SG on January 5, 2009 at 5:14 PM | PERMALINKYo The fact that Diane Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller seem disposed to oppose seems to suggest that Panetta is the right guy. These two dems have more than a little complicity in the mess the CIA has become, so anyone they oppose must be good. Seriously though, whether it's Panetta or someone else from outside the agency, the CIA needs someone at the helm who is not part of the spook-clique. Of course they don't think they do, but that's all the more reason to insist. :-) Posted by: clarence on January 5, 2009 at 8:48 PM | PERMALINKWhile I have never been a member of the CIA, I have been a member of a law enforcement bureacracy. In the face of a hostile administration those who are at the age and pension levels sufficient to retire, will. Those who must stay until those numbers reach an appropriate level(to them individually) will "hunker down" and protect themselves the way all good bureaucrats do. The real business of the CIA, that of gathering important intelligence information on our enemies, will cease. Obama will have effectively accomplished what his "code pink" allies want, the decapitation of America's intelligence gathering capabilities, so that they can effectuate the one world, green, open border country that they envision we should be. The appointment of Leon Panetta signals the beginning of the dismantling of the Military and Intelligence communities ala Jimmy Carter and the beginning of the europeanization of America. Posted by: ronadolph on January 6, 2009 at 8:56 AM | PERMALINKAppointing Panetta is the same as appointing Sandy Berger. Both have exclusive insider knowledge of the Clinton treachery that exposed us to 9-11. Panetta is part of a package deal with the Clintons to keep the Clinton involvements in various national security treasons from ever coming to light. The Clintons have something big on Obama and that is why he is recycling Bubba's team. Posted by: Rick LaBonte on January 6, 2009 at 1:35 PM | PERMALINKWhat's the big deal. Leon gradgiated the 5th grade and can probably cypher. That's all it takes to be a double naught spy. Posted by: Neo on January 6, 2009 at 7:44 PM | PERMALINK
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