“Leon Panetta” on The Daily Caller

WASHINGTON (AP) — After Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the White House released a photo of President Barack Obama and his Cabinet inside the Situation Room, watching the daring raid unfold. (more)

CIA Director Leon Panetta is widely expected to be confirmed as the next Secretary of Defense, but he is nonetheless facing some pointed questions today from the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding troop levels in Afghanistan, defense spending cuts, Libya and Iran. (more)

Washington (CNN) — CIA Director Leon Panetta said Tuesday he thinks a photograph of Osama bin Laden’s body will be released at some point, but that it is up to the White House to make the final call. (more)

In a story about the resurrection of the harsh interrogation techniques debate slated to run on The New York Times’ front page Wednesday morning, reporters Scott Shane and Charlie Savage completely ignore CIA director Leon Panetta’s Tuesday evening confirmation that waterboarding played a role in procuring the intelligence that led U.S. forces to terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. (more)

The Washington cognoscenti love Leon Panetta, the man Obama just nominated to be the new secretary of defense, and it is not hard to understand why: Panetta is one of them, an establishment figure who faithfully reflects the conventional wisdom; a loyal party apparatchik who will do his president’s bidding; and, most importantly, a man fully prepared to make Obama’s vision of a dramatically downsized U.S. military a reality. (more)

President Obama will nominate Leon Panetta to replace Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and Gen. David H. Petraeus to become CIA Director, according to press reports Wednesday. The shuffling is the first in what is expected to be a complete restructuring of the national security team in the Obama Administration. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a major U.S. national security reshuffle, President Barack Obama is sending CIA Director Leon Panetta to the Pentagon to replace Robert Gates, a widely praised Bush holdover, and replacing Panetta at the spy agency with Gen. David Petraeus, the high-profile commander of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. (more)

Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, defended in an interview with Bloomberg the performance of two senior administration officials at his committee’s Thursday hearing. (more)

CAIRO (AP) — Protesters enraged by Hosni Mubarak’s latest refusal to step down streamed into Cairo’s central square Friday and took positions outside key symbols of the hated regime, promising to expand their push to drive the Egyptian president out. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bristling with impatience, President Barack Obama on Thursday openly and sharply questioned whether Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s pledge to shift power to his vice president is an “immediate, meaningful or sufficient” sign of reform for a country in upheaval. (more)

In his October 20th “Inside the Ring” column, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports on the current China-policy debate within the Obama administration. He identifies two opposing groups — the “kowtow” group and the “sad-and-disappointed” group. Twenty-five years ago we called them the “convert-them-to-Christianity-and-democracy” group and the “let’s-just-outsmart-them” group. The U.S. players in the perennial China-policy debate change as administrations come and go, but the fundamental differences between the two classic approaches to China remain the same. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Warnings were ignored, security was lax and good judgment was lacking, leading to one of the worst tragedies in CIA history, when a double-agent suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees in Afghanistan last December. (more)

So, things didn’t work out quite like they were supposed to for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.  His status as the right-hand man to the philosopher-king destined to save the United States largely resulted in “Rahm-ing” through both a stimulus package and a health care “reform” bill that proved wildly unpopular with the American people (including one quite memorable scene involving Rahm in the Congressional gym shower).  Moreover, Rahm’s generally moderate and pragmatic thinking never meshed well with the West Wing FDR ideologues surrounding Obama.  These are the same individuals who believe the stimulus, health care and financial reform didn’t go far enough. (more)

Gen. James Jones is not a “useful idiot.” He’s a well-educated, most respected military professional. He’s also a highly decorated Marine. He is President Obama’s National Security Adviser. Ordinarily, that would be good news for all Americans. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House began deliberating a spy swap with Moscow nearly a month ago, well ahead of the arrests of 10 Russians in the United States less than two weeks ago, a White House official said Friday. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Publicly, the U.S. credits Pakistan with helping kill and capture many al-Qaida and Taliban leaders. Privately, the relationship is often marked by mistrust and double-dealing as Pakistan runs double agents against the CIA and the agency tries to penetrate Pakistan’s closely guarded nuclear program. (more)

President Obama and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency both reacted with skepticism on Sunday about the prospects for an Afghanistan peace deal pushed by Pakistan between the Afghan government and some Taliban militants. (more)

If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Press… and This Week… and Fox News Sunday… and Face the Nation… (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon this week will try to convince the nation that the war in Afghanistan remains on track, despite a shake-up in military leadership. (more)

The resignation of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Dennis Blair, is a symptom of a more serious problem within the Obama administration than the failures of the DNI. It’s a problem that won’t disappear with Blair’s departure. Fixing it requires more than appointing the right replacement. It requires a hard look at the DNI position itself and how President Obama and his White House oversee it. (more)