Compañera Panetta, with Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega
If the adult daughter of a CIA Director-designate hangs out with sworn enemies of the United States, it's a matter for the United States Senate to probe aggressively. And so the Senate really has to ask some very pointed questions about Linda Panetta, daughter of President-Elect Obama's pick to lead the CIA, and her ties to Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
Linda Panetta is a noted anti-military activist who has accused the US military of teaching Latin American officers how to torture. She has also been close to causes hostile toward the United States and friendly to the old Soviet Union, and the regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.
As a leader of School of the Americas Watch, Panetta urged Chavez to cancel Venezuela's participation in the US military school for Latin American officers in Fort Benning, Georgia. Chavez agreed, and promptly did so. As such, Compañera Panetta helped sever an important link between the US and the Venezuelan officer corps. This is a big blow to US intelligence efforts in the hemisphere.
Perhaps Linda Panetta is a clever ploy to infiltrate the Chavez regime. Somehow I really doubt it. It looks more like the other way around.
This says a few things about CIA Director-designate Leon Panetta. While a parent can't necessarily be blamed for his wayward children, we think senators should ask the nominee to be the next CIA chief about his daughter's support for sworn enemies of the United States. As a congressman, Panetta was pretty soft on the communist FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador, and Daniel Ortega's Marxist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. So father and daughter's views do coincide somewhat.
Certainly any prospective CIA intelligence analyst would be grilled pretty hard before getting a security clearance if it was known that his or her sister or daughter was an anti-US militant who aided and abetted Chavez and the Sandinistas. And even then he might not get a very high clearance. It's only fair to hold Leon Panetta to at least the same standards that apply to ordinary CIA analysts and operators.
The Senate has an obligation to nail down this problem when it considers confirming Leon Panetta to lead the CIA.
CIA
Posts
