[Originally published in the Randolph Herald.]
President Obama has nominated Leon Panetta as his candidate for the Director of the CIA. That decision has provoked a flurry of commentary in the media, most of which focuses on the fact that Mr. Panetta has no experience in the intelligence business.
It’s logical that CIA outsiders who have no personal experience with the intelligence business might think of a lack of experience as a shortcoming. Many former insiders share that belief, but for different, more emotional reasons.
The simple fact is that there is very little connection here. An intimate knowledge of the intelligence business, where it may occasionally be useful to a CIA Director, is certainly no guarantee of success.
The most important issue at stake in the choice of a new Director is whether or not the candidate is going to be effective. What makes any given Director effective can be defined: The Director must be willing and able to speak truth to power, he must have access to the President and he has to be a person of established substance outside the CIA who will command respect at the White House, with the public and on Capitol Hill.
One of the most effective Directors during the CIA’s first thirty years was John McCone. McCone knew nothing of the intelligence business, but he had a high reputation in his own right. He was a successful industrialist, a former Director of the Atomic Energy Commission, and a long-time senior governmental advisor. He was respected in the Congress and in the White House and his reputation gave him easy access to a president who valued what he had to say.
In direct contrast, there stands a long line of CIA Directors who were either promoted from within the Agency, or who, by dint of past experience elsewhere, were assumed to be well suited for the intelligence business. Their experience, by and large, is less effective. None of them had much of an established reputation outside the intelligence world, which meant that in order to maintain a relationship with their President, some were tempted to do injudicious things for their Presidents as in Richard Helms’ support to the Watergate burglars, and George Tenet’s positive WMD assessment provided to the White House during the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
As a group, and despite the affection and respect they may have inspired within the Agency, they were less effective as Directors. They knew us all by name and that made us feel good, but they often had imperfect relationships with their Presidents and their reputations outside their Agency experience were often non-existent, further diminishing their effectiveness.
George Tenet, who spent years on the staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, will always be remembered for his positive “slam dunk” assessment on the existence of WMD in Iraq – an opinion reportedly offered because he knew the truth was inconvenient and would not support the Administration’s already chosen policy for an invasion of Iraq. If so, he compromised the truth he should have spoken in order to preserve a relationship with the President, which was based entirely on his status as CIA Chief.
So, we come to Mr. Panetta, a man of broad and diverse experience in the Government who carries with him great respect for his past deeds as a lawyer, US Representative, White House Chief of Staff and professor.
His nomination by, and access to, President Obama is clearly built on a reputation earned during a diverse career that had nothing to do with the intelligence business. If it is felt that this lack of experience will be a drawback to him, the Obama Administration should be able to find the right kind of person with the right kind of experience within the CIA, perhaps from the National Clandestine Service, to serve as his Deputy Director of CIA. In addition, the choice of experienced Deputy Directors of the various CIA directorates should give Mr. Panetta all the expertise he could possibly want.
It’s difficult to see this nomination in anything but a positive light. The last thing the CIA needs today is an “old pro”. To do its job properly, the CIA needs to be professionally connected to the White House and Mr. Panetta will clearly do that.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. A longtime resident of Brookfield, he now lives in Williston.
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