MELVIN GOODMAN, Goodman just wrote the piece Why Leon Panetta’s Memoir is a Fraud, which states: If Leon Panetta had been a half-decent director of the Central Intelligence Agency or a half-decent secretary of defense, then his ironically-titled “Worthy Fights” could have been viewed as a credible critique of the national security policy of the Obama administration. The fact of the matter is that Panetta had his own worthy fights to encounter at both the CIA and the Pentagon, but he dodged them all. He became an immediate and willing captive of the operational culture of the CIA and the military culture of the Pentagon. And to make certain that the serious problems at both bureaucracies would remain hidden, he destroyed the oversight process at the CIA and weakened the oversight process at the Pentagon. ... Panetta also managed to harm the CIA in an even more fundamental way by undermining and compromising the work of the Office of the Inspector General. His immediate successors had tried to achieve this, particularly Porter Goss and General Michael Hayden, but it was Panetta who pulled the switch. A former colleague of mine, John Helgerson, was the inspector general during the Bush years and tried to stand up to the efforts of Goss and Hayden, but believed that it was safe to retire in 2009 when a Democratic administration came into power and a supposedly decent civil servant and public official such as Panetta was named director of CIA. Well, Helgerson put his money on the wrong horse. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career includes tours with the U.S. Army, the CIA, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense. His most recent books are The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Milita
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 15:49:05 +0000
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