by Leon Panetta
Of all the work that commission did and all the specific ideas it put forth, the language that most strongly conveyed my broader feelings about leadership appeared at the outset of our final report: “Our country deserves a debate that prizes substance over rhetoric, and a policy that is adequately funded and sustainable. The President and Congress must work together. Our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people in order to win their support.”15
Those were the ideas that had guided my service to my country since my first election in 1976. They were the principles that would, unbeknownst to me in 2006, bring me back for one more tour.
PART II
PROTECT AND DEFEND
NINE
“The Combatant Commander in the War on Terrorism”
Our youngest son, Jimmy, joined the service of his country as a Naval Reserve intelligence officer in February 2003. He explained to Sylvia and me that he felt a sense of duty, a commitment to service that he had long seen in both of us, and that he was compelled to follow it. We gulped hard. America was fighting two wars when he signed up, and the thought of him in harm’s way was sobering, even frightening. We tried to ask the right questions, to understand his decision but not to challenge it. Were we afraid? Yes. But our anxiety paled next to our pride, and hearing my son proclaim his call to service made my heart swell.
Then, in July 2007, the other shoe dropped. Jimmy had volunteered to deploy and had been notified that he was to be sent to Afghanistan. He had two little girls at home by then, ages one and three, so any danger to him now had ramifications for them as well. Nevertheless, he explained that he could not bear to see his fellow reserves sent off while he stayed home—“I need to go forward,” he told us—and he figured it was better to go while his girls were little, rather than when they were older and might have a harder time with him away. There was no arguing with his passion, his logic, or his resolve, not that I wanted to. But my heart was in my throat as we saw him off. “Go,” I said. “Do your job. Keep your head down. And get the fuck home.”
He was sent to Bagram Airfield, far inside the war. Not one day passed while he was gone that Sylvia and I did not pause to worry about him. But Jimmy served with distinction and came home safe. From then on, I understood the indescribable mixture of pain and patriotism that dominates the lives of families who offer up a son or daughter to their country.
Worry for Jimmy shadowed us, but it did not consume us. Sylvia and I were home in Carmel Valley, and the burgeoning Cal State Monterey Bay campus provided a picturesque and efficient base of operations for our various projects. We were working with students, exploring ways to encourage responsible citizenship. It was our little war against cynicism, and it wasn’t easy, but both of us believed in it. That Jimmy was abroad defending his country only strengthened our conviction that this was a country worth fighting for.
As the Democratic presidential primaries took shape in 2007 and 2008, I supported Hillary Clinton. I knew her from my time in the Clinton White House, of course, and admired her intelligence, tenacity, and decisiveness. Yes, we had disagreed on occasion—I had favored deficit reduction over what I regarded as an uncertain course on health care reform, and she initially had watched over my work as chief of staff to make sure I was sufficiently protective of her husband—but we had come to trust each other, and there were few people in politics whose acumen I more admired. I hosted events for her in California and voted for her in our state’s Democratic primary.
I did not know Barack Obama as well, but we had met a few times. We first literally bumped into each other at the Democratic convention in 2004, where I was doing some media interviews and he delivered the stirring speech that first brought him to national attention. As I was leaving the hall one evening, he was entering, and we got jostled in the crowd. Ever gracious, he introduced himself, generously complimenting me on my leadership and accomplishments. Afterward, as he settled into the U.S. Senate, he asked me to Washington to discuss budget issues with him. We met in his Senate office, and I was struck by his quick grasp of the budget and its broader implications for the economy.
Once Obama prevailed in the primaries, I was happy to support him, though I actually was far better acquainted with John McCain. John and I had worked together on many issues during my time in Congress and the White House, and I respected him as a man of conviction and principle. On immigration and campaign finance, for instance, he had taken stands that defied the party’s conservative and moneyed bases out of his belief that they were good for America. As a candidate, however, he succumbed to the pressures that refashion so many centrists—particularly Republicans—when they set their sights on the presidency. Just as Dole had done in 1996, when he dropped health care in order to pacify the Republican right, McCain in 2008 reinvented himself as a more extreme conservative in order to win his party’s nomination. Once a principled maverick, now John picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice president. I understand the pragmatic side of politics—you can’t govern if you don’t win—but McCain’s pick was manifestly incapable of taking over the country should harm have come to him.
As a result, I was thrilled at Obama’s ringing victory on election night, welcoming not only the return of a Democrat to the White House but also savoring the deep satisfaction of seeing my nation, less than sixty years after concluding that school segregation violated the Constitution, elect a black man as president. It was a stirring reminder of this nation’s capacity to grow.
Just a day or two after the election, I was attending a conference in Wyoming and staying with my old friend and former colleague Alan Simpson at his ranch. It was there that the Obama transition team tracked me down and asked me to join a call with the president-elect and Erskine Bowles in order to talk about Obama’s selection of a chief of staff. I agreed, and a few hours later the three of us were on the line, joined by John Podesta, who was then serving as Obama’s transition chief.
Obama went first, and dispensed with the obvious question. “Are either of you guys interested in the job?” he asked. I said no. I felt I’d already done it and wasn’t eager to take it on again. Erskine said the same was true for him. With that out of the way, we moved to a conversation about what the chief of staff’s duties were, and what made for an effective person in that post. I emphasized the need for the chief of staff to be someone the president trusts completely and someone with the character and fortitude to be candid. Both Erskine and I also discussed the importance of scheduling and access and coordinating relations with Congress. When Obama turned to candidates, I mentioned Tom Daschle as someone he should consider—his background in Congress would, I argued, be helpful.
We chewed that over for a bit, and then Podesta asked our impressions of Rahm Emanuel. I’d known Rahm in the Clinton White House, and thought very highly of him. Like Daschle, he knew Congress, and he also was close to the president-elect. His politics were centrist—he had supported welfare reform and NAFTA during the Clinton years. Moreover, he was famously blunt. There are a million stories of his intensity and colorful language. One of my favorites involved a nameplate he kept on his desk. It looked official, a brass plate attached to a piece of wood, and it read, UNDERSECRETARY FOR GO FUCK YOURSELF. I thought he’d make a fine chief of staff.
The president-elect thanked us for our advice and ended the conversation without making—or at least sharing with us—any decision. I went back to my conference and wondered whether I would hear from him again.
I did not presume that I was in line for a top position. As noted, I liked and respected Obama, but we barely knew each other, and eight years of President Bush had left lots of Democrats craving an opportunity to return to power in the White House. Moreover, I was seventy years old, arguably on my way to retirement. I wasn’t beyond wondering, though. My work on the oceans project for Pew had exposed me to issues related to the environment and trade, and I did ponder whether I might be considered for secret
ary of commerce. The Iraq Study Group had given me some background in the current debate over national security policy, but I didn’t imagine a place for myself in that arena, though Podesta did at one point rather casually mention the possibility of it.
So it was without much thought of the future that Sylvia and I visited our son Carmelo in Minneapolis over New Year’s. We were enjoying our grandchildren and relaxing as a family when Rahm, who had just accepted the chief of staff job, called to sound me out on an idea: “What would you think about being considered for director of CIA?”
Despite Podesta’s hint of something like this, I still was surprised by Rahm’s call. “I don’t know, Rahm,” I answered. “Most of my work has been on budgets. Are you sure you have the right guy?”
He acknowledged that it was unconventional, but said that Obama was convinced the CIA needed to regain credibility lost in the Bush years. The agency had a rich history, of course, and its officers had worked furiously since 9/11 to protect the country from another attack. But it also had troubles. First and foremost, the agency had misjudged the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In addition, the administration’s critics were blaming the CIA for engaging in the process of “rendition”—taking prisoners across borders for interrogation without legal process. Even more controversially, the administration had sanctioned “enhanced interrogation” techniques, the worst of which was waterboarding, a method I regarded as torture, though many others felt that it was the kind of aggressive interrogation method that was warranted to prevent another 9/11. Some of that predated Bush—rendition, for instance—but the revelations about secret prisons and rough interrogations had become hotly debated issues in the presidential campaign and in my view badly damaged America’s standing in the world. Though it was merely an agent of the administration’s policies, the CIA was being vilified on Capitol Hill and was viewed by the public with even greater suspicion than normal. Rahm argued that I could help restore some of the agency’s standing and therefore its effectiveness.
It still struck me as odd, and not necessarily a great fit, given my background. And yet the idea did intrigue me. There were few greater challenges for the new Obama administration than ensuring that we had the intelligence necessary to combat terrorism, and there was no better post from which to orchestrate that effort than the CIA. I hadn’t had much experience with intelligence, but I had served as an intelligence officer in the military, and during my years as Clinton’s chief of staff I often sat in on the intelligence briefing, when the president is informed of the panoply of potential crises that loom over the world every day. I hesitated a bit, but told Emanuel I’d think it over. Hanging up, I told Sylvia about our conversation. She was as surprised as I was. “Where did that come from?” she asked.
We went on with our vacation while I pondered the possible job, the idea steadily growing on me. On Sunday, January 4, I attended mass with Carmelo and prayed for guidance. We then headed to the Vikings playoff game—they lost to the Eagles—and as we were leaving, Sylvia called Carmelo’s cell phone to let me know that the president-elect was looking for me. I hustled back to our hotel and called him from there.
He immediately proffered the job: “I’d like you to be CIA director.”
By that point, I was ready to accept, but I felt I owed him the opportunity to consider my lingering reservations. “Mr. President,” I said, “my experience with the CIA director is that this is the person who has to provide you with very objective intelligence. If I took this, I’d feel an obligation to tell you the truth, no matter how uncomfortable.”
He acknowledged that and emphatically said he would expect nothing less. Right answer, I thought. So I continued, describing briefly my experience at the Office of Civil Rights, where my determination to do my job had so offended higher-ups in the Nixon administration. Obama interjected that he knew that piece of my biography and appreciated it.
“I remember that,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I want you to do this, to restore the credibility of the CIA.”
With that, I agreed. After I hung up the phone, I took a moment to marvel at this latest turn in my career, focusing not so much on what it meant for me as for what it said about my country. It had been more than seventy-five years since my father had arrived at Ellis Island, a peasant with twenty-five dollars to his name. The United States had given him the chance to make a living, raise a family, and become an American. And now I, a first-generation American, son of an immigrant peasant, was poised to assume command of the nation’s premier intelligence agency. My previous jobs in government had involved significant responsibilities, but now I was being entrusted with a leading role in its protection, and in the midst of two wars, no less. It surely is a testament to this nation’s appreciation of its immigrants that it would bestow that responsibility on one of their sons.
I didn’t have much time to ponder those ideas. Word of my appointment began to leak almost immediately. Sylvia and I were headed home to Carmel Valley the following day when I heard it on the radio. By late afternoon it was being confirmed by sources on the transition team and in Congress, putting me in a bit of a bind, particularly because of one person who had not been told in advance: Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, the very committee that would consider my nomination. As I noted earlier, I considered Dianne a friend—our politics were similar and our careers in California had often brought us together. But Dianne zealously guards her prerogatives as chairman, and she does not take kindly to slight. In other words, she’s not a good person to overlook in naming a senior intelligence official.
She made her unhappiness clear. “I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director. I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read,” she told the Washington Post. As for my qualifications, she added, “My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”1 And that was from my friend! Imagine what my enemies were thinking.
As soon as I heard the reports of Feinstein’s displeasure, I got to Rahm. I scolded him and urged him to talk to her directly. Otherwise, I warned, “it could be trouble.”
After a few minutes, I called Dianne myself as Sylvia and I drove from San Francisco down the Central Coast. I apologized for the way in which she had heard the news and said I hoped we could meet to discuss my appointment. As we talked, I felt some of her rancor subside, but she remained concerned about my lack of experience. We agreed to meet as soon as I returned to Washington.
The next couple of days were a whirl of phone calls. I alerted the Panetta Institute’s board members that this assignment might take me out of our work for a while, which they accepted with grace; similarly, I detached myself from the various boards and groups with which I was then affiliated. Sylvia and I also had a long conversation about what this meant for us. Our work at the institute was important to both of us, and it would be difficult to drop it while I moved to the CIA. Moreover, we both knew that my new assignment would be consuming. We knew the difficulty of separation, but we also knew how to make it work. Sylvia would stay in California and run the institute while I returned to Washington to run the CIA—and I would come home as often as I could. A part of me did wonder who was getting the better deal: Sylvia would stay on our twelve-acre ranch in the Carmel Valley with our golden retriever, Bravo, while I again scrounged for a place to rent three thousand miles from home.
After a day or two at home, I packed my bags and made the familiar trip to Washington. On arrival, I went straight to the transition team headquarters in downtown Washington, two floors in an unremarkable office building at the corner of D and 6th Streets, NW, about a block from the federal courthouse. Though nondescript on the outside, the offices inside hummed with anticipation and energy. The lobby of the building was a hive of activity. Reporters were staked out, taking note of who came and went. Se
curity was tight. Young campaign aides were jostling in from the cold to drop off résumés.
As I stepped off the elevator, I was greeted by a sturdy, grinning young man, hand outstretched. He introduced himself as Jeremy Bash, and before I’d settled into my office, he had presented me with the names and phone numbers of every living former CIA chief, thoughts on key people for me to meet, and a draft of remarks for me to deliver when the president formally announced my appointment later that week. Bash was the chief counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, and was on loan to the transition team. Over those first few days, I marveled at his crisp efficiency and encyclopedic knowledge of intelligence programs and principles. Within a week, I asked him to serve as my chief of staff. As always, he was both accommodating and strategic: He accepted tentatively, urging me to check him out before making a final offer, and counseled against assembling a large team to accompany me to CIA. “I’ll be your chief of staff,” Jeremy said, “on two conditions. First, I’m going to be more ‘staff’ than ‘chief.’ There are a lot of professionals there, and we should rely on them. And second, I need to be the only aide who comes in with you at the beginning. No entourage.”
Specifically, Jeremy warned me not to repeat the mistakes of Porter Goss, who had chaired the House Intelligence Committee until being asked to take over the agency in 2004. Goss arrived with a large group of senior advisers, displacing the CIA’s existing leadership. The result was a significant political blowup, contributing to years of turmoil and dissatisfaction, as well as the loss of important, senior people: Two of the ClA’s most experienced operations officers, Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick, had quit their posts rather than work for Goss and his inner circle. I took Jeremy’s advice to heart, checked him out, and offered him the job again. He accepted. We would spend much of the next four years together, to my great advantage and satisfaction.
