CIA Director Leon E. Panetta says the relationship between the intelligence agency and Congress has "had a lot of problems" under the last administration and "has to be repaired," which he said is one of his top priorities. Panetta, a former House member and top White House official who was sworn in Feb. 13, told a media roundtable Wednesday that the "relationship was badly damaged" and that he hopes "to restore the trust between this Agency and Capitol Hill."
"Frankly, I can't do my job unless I have their trust." he said. "And since I'm a creature of the Hill and understand what it means to be a member up there and have this kind of information, I'm prepared to try to do whatever I can to try to repair that relationship."
Too bad Valerie Plame quit, she'd be a natural as his Congressional liaison ...
Panetta made his comments at a meeting with two dozen reporters who were allowed into his conference room inside the agency's heavily fortified headquarters compound, the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Va. Plates piles with big cookies were in the center of a massive conference table in a room a few doors from the director's office.
The hall is lined with offices with secure doors opened with safe-like dials.
Facing a portrait of President Obama on the opposite wall, Panetta said that under the Bush administration, there was at times "a deliberate effort to not develop firm ground rules" about congressional notification "in order to be able to do this in a haphazard manner depending on what the issues were."
Flexibility is a bitch, what we need is a ponderous bureaucracy.
" I just think that's wrong," he said. "This country has to operate by a set of rules that are in line with our Constitution and in line with the laws of this country. ... We swear to support and defend that Constitution in taking these jobs. I think that, unfortunately, there wasn't a clear set of ground rules her ... in terms of how to deal with the Congress."
Panetta said that on some sensitive matters, the top congressional leaders (the "gang of four," in Hill paralance) were notified by the Bush administration, while other times the intelligence committees were included (the "gang of eight").
"One of the things I'd like to do, frankly, is set some ground rules as to when we do notify the Congress and who we do have to notify," he said. "Do we notify the gang of eight; do we notify all of the members plus their staffs ... so that we all know the rules that we're operating by."
Let's tell Leaky Leahy everything.
At his confirmation hearing, Panetta vowed "a clean break" from some controversial Bush-era polices. He told the reporters: "If we stand by our ideals, if we stand by the beliefs that we have about what this country is all about, I think it makes us stronger, not only here but throughout the world."
There are no sharks in the ocean, only "Charlie the Tuna". Lalalala
For one thing, he said, "We are closing black sites," a reference to secret prisons abroad used to hold and question suspected terrorist combatants.
That makes me feel safer.
The phrase "war on terror," a hallmark of President George W. Bush's White House, is rarely used in the Obama administration, but Panetta that "there's no question this is a war."