Panetta Choice Could Reopen Old Wounds on Clinton Terrorism Policies

Leon Panetta with President Clinton (Photo from the Washington Post)

From CQ Politics/Spytalk:

President-elect Obama's selection of former congressman and White House official Leon E. Panetta to run the CIA is likely to give Republicans fresh ammunition to reopen questions about the Clinton administration's counterterrorism policies.

Critics have long maintained that Clinton was uninterested in intelligence issues and slow to come to grips with the threat of Islamist terrorism, even after the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993.

Panetta was budget director and later chief of staff during the first Clinton term.

In an interview three months after the 9/11 attacks, Panetta said that senior Clinton aides viewed terrorism as just one of many pressing global problems.

"Clinton was aware of the threat and sometimes he would mention it," Panetta told the New York Times. But the "big issues" in the president's first term, he said, were "Russia, Eastern bloc, Middle East peace, human rights, rogue nations and then terrorism."

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My Comment: I usually am in disagreement with Spytalk .... but I completely concur with what they are saying in this post.