Former official: Obama’s CIA director ‘captured’ by ‘ideological drivers’ for torture

Buried within a front page Washington Post article about the CIA’s campaign to urge President Obama to keep portions of a controversial detainee report classified is a statement from a former official against the agency’s current director.

“General information about the agency’s interrogation program has already been made public through the Obama administration’s release of memos by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel authorizing the harsh CIA techniques and through the earlier leak of a 2005 report on CIA interrogations by the International Committee of the Red Cross,” the paper notes. “The broad conclusions of the inspector general’s report, as well as its specific assertion that some interrogators exceeded limits approved by the Justice Department, have previously been disclosed.”

The Post quotes a “a former senior officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity when discussing the still-classified report,” who charges that “ Leon Panetta has been captured by the people who were the ideological drivers for the interrogation program in the first place.”

“But one intelligence official countered that Panetta ‘was never a fan of the interrogation program,’” the paper notes. “‘He’s reached his own independent decisions on these issues. He’s standing up for people who followed lawful guidance’ issued to the agency during the Bush administration, the official said.”

After being tapped for the Director job, Panetta wrote in January, “We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.”

Panetta recently attracted media coverage for blasting Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism measures: “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.”

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/17/former-official-obamas-cia-director-captured-by-ideological-drivers-for-torture/

He said most outsiders who are put in charge of the CIA get co opted by the cloak and dagger boys within about 90 days of their arrival.

Maybe Panetta was a poor choice if the goal was really to shake things up there.

which is such a shame, i had high hopes for him that he would be able to change the corrupt culture over at the CIA.

You have an agenda. Enjoy your thread.

the unnamed source said. He has done a 180 after a few months begin in office.

I dont enjoy running down Democrats, but i also dont like hypocrites either. He is now protecting those who were committed torture, which will more than likely mean that they will keep there jobs. That makes me sick.

I firmly believe that unless there is accountability, there is nothing to stop this happening again in the future. Panetta is off to a bad start. He is not the reformist I thought he would be.

have taken on the worst characters in the CIA directly for their illicit actions over the years.

Unfortunately, most Democrats couldn't name them or even begin to understand how important their work has been to this nation.