Wonkette
Today is “Liberal Day” in the executive branch — it comes but once a year! — what with the release of the 2004 CIA inspector general report on all of the death it caused, as well as Eric Holder’s decision to appoint a prosecutor to investigate, uh, something, to some extent, with regards to the CIA. You know where they’re upset about these two things? At the CIA! Specifically, longtime Washington operative Leon Panetta — he is upset. He has been cursing at Obama and whining about stuff for months, and will probably quit soon.
Well, maybe all of the profanity in this screaming match came from Rahm Emanuel? Although he was probably on Panetta’s side.
A “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com.
Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.
“You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year,” a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com. [...]
“Leon will be leaving,” predicted a former top U.S. intelligence official, citing the conflict with Blair. The former official said Panetta is also “uncomfortable” with some of the operations being carried out by the CIA that he did not know about until he took the job.
Ha ha, who signs up to run the CIA, gets on the job, and then whines about feeling “uncomfortable” with some of its operations? Probably a guy who’s “famous” for running the OMB for Bill Clinton and then becoming his chief of staff, what with the lack of background in the Intelligence community.
On the other hand… poor Leon Panetta, to a certain extent! Obviously anyone who runs the CIA is going to do what he can to protect his organization from any probe or oversight or whatever, and the CIA is much in need of probing. You know, for torture and whatever.
[ABC]
No need for lawyers or spending a lot of money, we can make this simple. We will just waterboard everyone in the CIA, and those that confess to their crimes will be sent to some island in the middle of nowhere.
Meh. Panetta used to argue all the time with Garfunkel, too. He’s just testy.
Leon Panetta is still a top candidate for the Department of Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens, however.
What is this…plan to assassinate guys named Leon? I’m really not comfortable with this…what is it that you guys do here, exactly?
@LeonPanetta: WTF did I take this job?
@MuslinPrez: Where r Clinton bodies buried, Leon?
@LeonPanetta: Fuck.
@MuslinPrez: Plz ship us ur soul overnight.
@LeonPanetta: Can I quit?
@MuslinPrez: No one quits the Agency…
Leon, they made you head of the secret police, and now you are concerned about some of their activities? Dude, SECRET POLICE. What did you think they were doing, organizing jumble sales?
It’s like being hired Madame at a whorehouse and being upset when you find a condom wrapper in the hallway,
What the hell does he have to be upset about? Besides the torture, the renditions, the assassination squads, abetting the Uzbek president boiling dissidents alive, sending some innocent dude to Syria to have him whipped and electrocuted for eighteen months, the denials, the flushing of Korans down toilets, the hiding embarrassing acts behind national security laws, the fabricated justification for Iraq, the starving and beating to death of innocent Afghan farmers and cabdrivers, his agency being a tool of Cheney and Gonzales, and the fact that so many of its members are directly or indirectly complicit in some of the most shameful episodes of American history, that is?
I’d imagine being a newly hired head of the CIA has to be tough because everytime you go through a file cabinet, box, file on the computer you discover some new sort of horrific program Cheney installed. Panetta just probably decided to quite after rifling through a recently discovered file marked something like “Jihadist Kitty Torture Program” and realized he just couldn’t do it anymore
Panetta appears to have a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, so instead of being Obama’s man at the CIA he’s become just another lie, torture and erase CIA hack bent on protecting his turf rather than serving US America. Fucking Italians.
Panetta has had quite enough of Obama’s straw dog arguments, dammit!
We can haz new Defenss Againzt the Dark Artss Teecher??
hahahah funny thing about the CIA is, what if it is ALL WORSE than we had known? I mean seriously, they have had 8 years to get all girls gone wild crazy on us. Torture and private contractor assasinations are prolly the most benign things they have going on at langley these days.
I have asked this before, and will ask it again, what the fuck has the CIA ever accomplished for our own good? Anything? Or just a little intimidation factor that the NSA could never dream of?
Remember, these are the assholes that came up with the exploding cigar during the height of the cold war. Oh yeah and fucking killed Kennedy too cuz he cockblocked their exploding cigars…
Leon wears his war wound like a crown. And calls his child Jesus, etc.
Hey, fuck you, Leon:
“The inspector general determined that the repeated waterboarding of Mohammed was inconsistent with guidelines sanctioned by the Justice Department. But it noted that the attorney general told investigators that he was ‘fully aware of the repetitive use of the waterboard.’
“‘The Attorney General was informed the waterboard had been used 119 times on a single individual,’ the report states. Mohammed was ultimately waterboarded 183 times, according to Justice Department memos.
“The release — a still heavily-redacted form of the 2004 report — was forced by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Later Monday, the government is also expected to turn over a 2007 Justice Department memo reauthorizing the used of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and memos that former vice president Richard B. Cheney recently invoked to assert that harsh tactics worked and ‘kept us safe for seven years.’”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082402220.html?hpid=topnews
Good gog, close the CIA tomorrow! Just shut the mother fucker down.
Lionel Hutz Esq.: those that confess to their crimes will be sent to some island in the middle of nowhere.
Bermuda?
Scooter: Leon strikes me as more of a guy who wears dark socks, sandals and shorts while mowing the lawn.
It was the little robots running up and down the halls yelling “Exterminate! Exterminate!” that got to him, really.
user-of-owls:
Great Britain.
The recent Julia Child movie just brought too much heat on the organization.
Tommmcatt: …and the Uighurs breathe a sigh of relief.
I would like to run my hands through that fabulous head of hair, however.
Pussy.
Back when Leon was in Congress and I was about 18, a friend and I, in D.C. for a couple of days, decided to visit our Congressperson’s office just to see if we could. Not only did Panetta’s staff welcome us warmly, they invited us to sit down and have a personal chat with Leon in his office, which we did. He was very friendly, and either chose not to notice or didn’t mind that we were completely stoned.
Death Panel Wagon: yeah, i wonder that too … when Aldrich Ames (sp?) was head of Eastern block intelligence, the reports are that every major intelligence operation in the Soviet Union was utterly compromised. The USSR fell anyway ….
Scooter: Limeylizzie: Yeah, that’s quite some brillo action Levon gots goin’ on up top the (now permanent) scowl…him 5 o’clock shadow are also approaching Nixon-esque proportiums
Jeebus, let’s get us a REAL Leon, one who would know how to run the CIA:
http://yokim.net/i/rl/LeonTrotsky.jpg
Who the fuck works for whom? Those assholes at the CIA think they are an entity unto themselves, but whine about “protecting the rest of us” when their idiotic bullshit blows up in their faces. Those fuckers have probably cost us more in terms of unnecessary wars and trillions of wasted spending than they “saved” anybody.
user-of-owls: It appears like he’s wearing a rug in that picture, too. Also part of that great grass-mowing look.
user-of-owls: I think they deserve to be punished, but nothing as horrible as that island of exiles.
Lionel Hutz Esq.: St. Helena would be right for Bush and Cheney.
Death Panel Wagon: Remember, there are about 15 other “intelligence” agencies out there, and maybe others we don’t know about. Don’t you suppose Blackwater and Triple Canopy etc. have their info gatherers too?
user-of-owls: St. Helena.
Do you suppose anyone kept track of the number of new cuss words created during this exchange? We know about Rahm’s propensity but I would imagine Leon isn’t a slouch.
One Yield Regular: Hang on. You got so high that you saw Leon Panetta? damn.
zhubajie: Bush, yes; for Cheney, it’s just a long back way to his lair under the Yellowstone whatever-it’s-called.
Number one, why the hell was Panetta–with no intelligence background and no real support from the intelligence community–appointed to this position? It was just dumb.
Number two, why has this agency been allowed to continually run amok for something like 60 years, with, year after year, critical reports of its actions? That’s just dumb.
Number three–why does our federal government even need a CIA? Really–there are frickin’ 22 or so federal government intelligence agencies, and NONE of them work like they should. Re: Sept. 11, 2001.
Number four–it’s time, long past the time, to seriously consider abolishing the CIA in its current form, or completely reorganizing those 22 agencies.
Number five–What is the role of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Council, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, the DEA, the Department of Homeland Security, in relation to the operations of the CIA? It’s a valid question.
Number six–Who’s in charge here?
It’s no wonder our intelligence faces problems every month.
Look for Panetta to bow out before the end of the year, 2009.
Say It With Wookies: What you said, too. Great summarization there.
One Yield Regular: I am familiar with that Congressional District, and I can tell you that he could not have been unaware that you were stoned. He was just used to it.
SayItWithWookies: Comment Win of the Afternoon.
zhubajie: No need for St. Helena when there is a perfectly good island off the coast of Florida that already has a prison camp. After all, Guantanamo is supposed to be empty soon.
Kingbee: No, THIS is the Leon we need running the show.
http://i27.tinypic.com/6gezqp.jpg
“No women, no kids, that’s the rules”
Panetta doesn’t have to turn in his resignation. I’ll be happy to pick it up. And Timmy Geithner’s, too, as soon as he’s ready to go back to Long Island and sit in that ugly blue bathroom.
Hazard a guess I’d say a lot of people who held their breath and clenched their teeth the last eight years exhaled and moved their jaws. The sprinkle of Cheney loyalists are probably feeling antsy.
Can’t blame them. Anybody out there have a lot of sympathy for Yoo or Addington? Those are the real enablers. Skip the lower down, aim for those who justified the shit rain.
thefrontpage: All excellent questions with the most important being about whether we really need the CIA to exist? I think that is a question we must ask ourselves, and by ask ourselves I mean the Congress and publically and now. As you say, they’ve been a broken agency year after year after year and they’ve become more detatched from reality than even originally intended.
I really don’t have anything snark to say, because I believe this is all very serious. The CIA makes the FBI look like a model agency, and in the understatement of my year, that’s worrisome.
Obama will probably follow Scotland’s lead and let all the terrosists go - including the ones who master minded 911 - on campassionate grounds and then charge the CIA as terrorists and put them in jail and see how they like it. After all, the Americans were so mean to these poor terrorists - they need to do more than just apologize to the world for America’s actions on just about everything: as Obama has already done. Its time to admit that America was too tough on terrorists that bombed the Trade Center on their own turf, killed American citizens, and it does not matter that America is still in their crosshairs - everybody just has to be nice to each other and then these poor misdirected terrorists will feel bad and not be terrorists anymore - they will see the spanking we gave our bad CIA boys and repent. Obama wishing them all a happy Ramadan will certainly encourage them to love America and they will decide to take the Americans out of their crosshairs because America is so sorry for everthing it has done and has now seen the light. Certainly, they will turn their weapons into plow shares. Group Hug Everyone! I get weepy just thinking about it.
Fools - Obama wants the American people to dislike the CIA - he will follow Scotlands lead and let all the poos terrorist go on compassionate grounds. America you should be ashamed of yourself look how mean you have been to those who want to kill you. I can not believe how stupid some people are. At least members of the CIA are vetted.
on2u: “the poos terrorist”? You mean Vitter?
“I can not believe how stupid some people are.” Noted without comment.