Do you believe Leon Panetta has control of the CIA ?

Reportedly, he only learned of a secret CIA program in June, months after he had taken over the CIA. Do you think there are other "secrets" being kept from the new Director? If Panetta is not in charge, then who is??

Is the CIA supportive of the new President, whomever it may be? Or do they have a long-term agenda and long-term loyalties that have nothing to do with who might be in the White House or who might be the CIA Director at the moment?

Are there leftovers at the CIA as has been rumored? Who do they report to? What should be done about it?

Perhaps, but I doubt it's Panetta.

He needs to clean house and dump the bushie leftovers before they undermine this country further.

Many of them then became involved in operations that support crazy right wing policy - especially in the Mideast. They are still working in the shadows today including the development of propaganda that took us into Iraq.

Many would argue that Carter served only one term because he took on the renegades in The Company.

Both Obama and Paneta must be very careful.

The one that exists on paper.

The actual org chart.

that is only there as a temp.

That his subordinates just now informed him of the program in the end of June. "Continuity of Government" and all that but 6 months before he got through the whole fucking org chart?

for a long time . I believe that Panetta is basically a good man in an impossible job. The CIA needs to be dismantled and started over in my opinion.

over any branch of our military, including the intelligence services, at this point.

I think that the CIA has become too full of itself. Now I'm sure that most of the analysts are just there to do the job that's required, but it's the upper echelons that have gotten so arrogant over the past few years that are turning the organization into a ugly version of Blackwater.

I guess his influence is waning with this
news of a secret agency within an agency.

Remember, also, it was his office that outed Plame.

He's pretty silent right now.

all that the CIA was up to, and not just overseas.

Now we'll see what he's made of. Will he call people on the carpet and demand investigations into OTHER goings-on?

I think the CIA is self-governing in a way, with whole divisions and subdivisions that set their own agenda, regardless of who the Director is.

Poppy's crew has been in charge for a long while.
Panetta may never get, be in, or assume "control."

This country has 16 intelligence agencies...

Members of the Intelligence Community

Director of National Intelligence
Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence
Air Force Intelligence
Army Intelligence
Central Intelligence Agency
Coast Guard Intelligence
Defense Intelligence Agency
Department of Energy
Department of Homeland Security
Department of State
Department of the Treasury
Drug Enforcement Administration
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Marine Corps Intelligence
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
National Reconnaissance Office
National Security Agency

http://www.intelligence.gov/1-members.shtml

...yet we seem only to hear/read about the CIA. Why is that, I wonder? :shrug:

and like most all other public office holders he's merely the servant of the money powers.

but I hope he follows the road of reform...

My guess is no. Bob Gates and the Generals, Petraeus and others, are running the military operations in both wars and are making the decisions from day to day on the ground. I do not believe the President is deeply involved with the military operations at this time. Just my opinion.

When the CIA was successful in toppling the Iranian government in 1953, they went out of control. Since then, they have done what they want, where they want, when they want. Since the time of the Dulles brothers, they have been more under the control of the John Birch Society than the three legitimate branches of the U.S. government. They recruit reactionary anti-Communists, support fascism wherever it gets a toehold (Chile, Indonesia, Guatemala, and on, and on...), take money from Congress with no accountability, and regard Presidential directives as mere suggestions. They NEED to be disbanded and their legitimate functions assigned to other agencies, never to be grouped together where they can be hijacked like they have been.