WASHINGTON — If Leon Panetta was hired to lead the CIA because of his deft touch with Congress, he’s been earning his paycheck.
Relations between the CIA and Capitol Hill are never easy because of the spy agency’s inherent secrecy. But they reached a boiling point by the end of the Bush era, and that heat is still burning off.
Panetta took command in February, acknowledging that one of his primary tasks will be to repair relations with Congress.
Those relations have taken a sharp downward turn in recent weeks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s public tiff with the CIA over her remarks that agency briefers had lied to her about the use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, on a terrorist suspect.
Panetta, a former Democratic congressman from California and a longtime Washington presence — appears to have navigated carefully, and with some success, between supporting his CIA employees and keeping lines open to power players in Congress.
But his release of a list aimed at documenting the CIA’s classified briefings on harsh interrogations may have backfired, possibly irritating longtime political ally Pelosi and raising questions about the agency’s record-keeping accuracy.
Pelosi, D-Calif., first insisted that the CIA had not told her that waterboarding had been used on a prisoner, then claimed the CIA had lied to her during a classified 2002 briefing.
Pelosi’s remarks were spurred by Republican charges that she had been told about the interrogation method seven years ago but didn’t object. Pelosi said she was told only that it had been deemed legal by the Bush administration.
It is into this partisan tit for tat that Panetta waded, seeking a way to both protect the interests of the agency while not fanning the flames on the Hill.
He tried to thread that needle last week when he sent a message to agency employees — rather than Pelosi herself — called “Turning Down the Volume.”
In the message, he was careful not to call out Pelosi by name, but he said the CIA had been truthful in the Bush-era briefings and indicated he would not allow the agency to be a political football for either side.
He told agency employees to keep their heads down, do their work and not be distracted by the noise. “Keep it up,” he wrote. “Our national security depends on it.”
One of those applauding Panetta’s performance so far is Mark Lowenthal, a former assistant director of the CIA and now president of the Intelligence and Security Academy.
“I think he’s actually doing quite well overall,” Lowenthal said. “I think he has made it clear to the CIA that he’s not there to clean up Dodge, name names and put people on report. He’s there to help the agency move forward, which is exactly what the staff wanted to hear.”
Lowenthal said Panetta understands that his job is to pacify, but not bow to, Congress. “One of the things that’s unique about CIA is that this is the president’s agency,” he said. “They don’t work for anybody else. If they are not effective, the person who gets hurt here is the big guy.”
Another veteran who spent 30 years at the agency on both the analysis and operations side, Dick Coffman, said he is impressed with Panetta’s “skill and guts in taking on the speaker of the House in order to protect his very fragile agency.”
“CIA — and the country — are often hurt when the agency becomes entangled in Washington politics,” he said. “My guess is that Panetta, who is a smart and experienced Washington hand, has the quiet backing of the White House and knows it.”
Last week, in a speech in Los Angeles, Panetta referred to his time in Congress to publicly remind those serving there now that he understands the lingering frustrations and disappointments about the last eight years.
But he said he was “most concerned about is that this stuff doesn’t become the kind of political issue that everything else becomes in Washington, D.C., where it becomes so divisive that it begins to interfere with the ability of these intelligence agencies to do our primary job, which is to focus on the threats that face us today and tomorrow.”
Panetta’s management of the issue hasn’t been spotless. The leaked CIA list that he had provided to Congress to settle the question of who had been given classified briefings became an issue of its own. It turned out that the list had errors, causing both Republicans and Democrats to call for a full release of classified CIA records to clear up remaining ambiguity.
And agency officials say Panetta was also on the losing side of an internal battle over whether to withhold classified Bush-era “torture memos” that the Obama administration ultimately released. Panetta had argued the memos should not be made public, and when that argument was overruled, he lost a second time, pressing for heavy redactions. The memos were released with only light edits.
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