No One in CIA Is Crime-free Enough to Deserve Promotion

Barack Obama has announced that his CIA Director will be Leon Panetta, former Clinton Chief-of-Staff and total non-spy guy. The NY Times, who has a history of shitty reporting concerning the CIA, reports:

"Given his background, Mr. Panetta is a somewhat unusual choice to lead the C.I.A., an agency that has been unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders, such as Stansfield M. Turner and John M. Deutch. But his selection points up the difficulty Mr. Obama had in finding a C.I.A. director with no connection to controversial counterterrorism programs of the Bush era."

So we suppose that means that everyone in the CIA is a criminal who wouldn't stand up to Congressional approval.

We'll report more on this Panetta character as more dirt comes out, but for now he actually doesn't sound like that bad a guy. He enforced the Civil Rights act even though then-President Nixon said, "no more civil rights!" (direct quote) and he also tried to prevent oil drilling off the California coast. No word yet on his feelings about committing war crimes. It seems like it should be a given, but it should be clear by now that nothing should be taken for granted.