"Reading More Closely"

Josh Marshall:

From deep in The Politico beast, we find that Josh Gerstein's close reading acumen has not at all been impaired. Here's Gerstein looking closely this afternoon at that Leon Panetta statement from last Friday ...

Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta didn't reject or deny House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's allegations that she was falsely briefed by the CIA about interrogations.

Look carefully at Panetta's statement from Friday, especially the verb tense used. "Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress." First, "let me be clear" always precedes an ambiguous statement. Without fail. Panetta isn't opining on past acts. He's referring to the current policy. He's also not saying it never happens or happened that someone lied to or misled Congress. He's saying the agency as a whole doesn't intend to.

Panetta was at his Monterey, Calif. think tank when this all happened in 2002 and 2003. He doesn't know if Pelosi was lied to. He also doesn't say he talked to the briefers and is convinced they're telling the truth. He just says the paper records say she was briefed about the techniques. We knew that already from agency statements. So he's adding his voice to the mix and sending a signal that he'll stand by his agency, but to say he sided with the briefers on the specifics is just wrong.Again, I'm not saying Pelosi was lied to or even misled. It would seem rather brazen to do that. But Panetta's statement says less than people are claiming.

This is just right. This was certainly Panetta standing up for his Agency after Pelosi, the second person in line to the presidency, had taken a swipe. But to get the full significance of a document, even a simple memo, you need to look past the toplines to what the text actually says. And if you read Panetta closely he didn't take any position at all on the key question of whether Pelosi was right or not. It was a point lost on virtually everyone in town.

All about Leon (excerpts)

"Panetta's Peers Back Him for CIA" (WaPo):

As questions continued to swirl on Capitol Hill about President-elect Barack Obama's selection of Panetta to be his CIA director, several of his former White House colleagues rebutted criticism that he lacked the necessary experience and qualifications for the post. They said Panetta worked closely with President Bill Clinton and his most senior lieutenants on every national security issue that came through the White House between 1994 and 1997 while becoming a sophisticated consumer of intelligence during the daily briefings the CIA provided for Clinton and senior advisers.

"Obama Puts Out The Panetta Fire" (Sam Stein):

The vice president-elect attempted to soothe some of the concerns held by the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. According to the official, Biden told her that Stephen Kappes, currently the Deputy Director of the CIA, will likely work under Panetta -- a staffing decision very much to Feinstein's liking. Moreover, he assured her that the presidential transition team had meant to reach out before news broke, though Obama would likely not have changed his choice.

"They had been planning on it but it got out quickly and early," a well-connected Democratic official said of the call. "But it sounded like the phone call was really a 'sell' and not a 'consult.'" (Biden today publicly called the leaking of Panetta's name without Feinstein consultation a "mistake.")

Obama himself would make a call to both Feinstein and outgoing chair, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, offering the same mea culpas. But as of late Tuesday afternoon, the source said, Panetta had not reached out himself.

Either way, the soothing effort seemed to have its desired affect. On Tuesday, Feinstein softened her initial stance on the Panetta nomination, telling reporters that Obama and Biden had "explained to me the reasons why they believe Leon Panetta is the best candidate for CIA Director," and that she looked "forward to speaking with Mr. Panetta about the critical issues facing the intelligence community and his plans to address them."

"Why Obama Picked Panetta To Run the CIA" (Slate):

The puzzler of the hour: Why is Barack Obama picking Leon Panetta, a former congressman and White House official with no intelligence experience, to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency?

Nothing definitive can be said here—the Obama transition team is a tight-lipped shop (the leak probably came from elsewhere)—but some inferences can be drawn.

Barack Obama