{"id":578088,"date":"2010-05-25T15:38:01","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T19:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=85678"},"modified":"2010-05-25T15:38:01","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T19:38:01","slug":"senate-intel-committee-no-clapper-yea-panetta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/578088","title":{"rendered":"Senate Intel Committee: No Clapper; Yea Panetta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/85593\/feinstein-doesnt-sound-like-she-wants-james-clapper-as-the-next-dni\">statement she put out yesterday afternoon<\/a>, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sure sounded like she didn&#8217;t want defense intelligence chief James Clapper to take over for the departing Dennis Blair as the next director of national intelligence. (&#8220;It will be important that any nominee is not beholden to the Pentagon\u2019s interests&#8230;&#8221;) But she wasn&#8217;t explicit about it. Josh Rogin <a href=\"http:\/\/thecable.foreignpolicy.com\/posts\/2010\/05\/25\/intel_committee_heads_want_panetta_not_clapper_for_dni\">gets her on the record about her opposition to Clapper&#8217;s prospective nomination<\/a> &#8212; and <em>way<\/em> more.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;I have concerns about Clapper as a choice,&#8221; committee chairwoman\u00a0<strong>Dianne Feinstein<\/strong>, D-CA, told\u00a0<em>The Cable<\/em> in an interview, saying that the widely expected nomination of Clapper, who now is under secretary of defense for intelligence, would give the military too much control of the intelligence community. &#8220;The best thing for intelligence is to have a civilian in charge. The elbows are less sharp.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In a bit of irony that surely warms hearts at Langley, Feinstein&#8217;s choice for the nation&#8217;s top intelligence post is &#8212; wait for it &#8212; <em>Leon Panetta<\/em>, the CIA director whose nomination <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/23827\/dianne-feinstein-not-too-pleased-with-panetta-pick\">Feinstein initially fought hard<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/24021\/dianne-feinstein-is-not-giving-in\">scuttle<\/a>.<span id=\"more-85678\"><\/span> I suppose you could be cute and suggest that Feinstein secretly just wants the bureaucratic meatgrinder that is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to finally grind Panetta&#8217;s flesh and bones. But most likely she&#8217;s just been impressed by his job as CIA director.<\/p>\n<p>And so has Kit Bond (R-Mo.), the committee&#8217;s GOP vice chairman. Rogin further reports that there&#8217;s no daylight between the committee leaders on who they want for Blair&#8217;s job. Panetta is &#8220;the only one who has the clout to make it work,&#8221; Bond told Rogin, &#8220;I have reservations about [Clapper] in that job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Does Clapper&#8217;s (possible, prospective, never official) candidacy survive public opposition from the leadership of the Senate committee that will have to approve him?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a statement she put out yesterday afternoon, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sure sounded like she didn&#8217;t want defense intelligence chief James Clapper to take over for the departing Dennis Blair as the next director of national intelligence. (&#8220;It will be important that any nominee is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-578088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}