Panetta urges focus on threats to U.S.

In a bid to defuse political skirmishing over the Bush administration’s interrogation methods, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta urged Congress on Monday not to allow the debate to become a distraction from the security threats facing the country.

“We are a nation at war,” Panetta said at a Los Angeles forum. “We have to confront that reality every day. And while it’s important to learn the lessons of the past, we must not do it in a way that sacrifices our capability to stay focused on the present, stay focused on the future, and stay focused on those who threaten the United States of America.”

Panetta’s speech to the Pacific Council on International Policy was his first since becoming CIA chief this year. His nomination was controversial because, as a former California congressman, he was an outsider with no background in intelligence.

Last week, however, he jumped to defend the agency when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) accused it of misleading her, and Congress, about whether waterboarding had been used on detainees. President Obama banned extreme interrogation methods, including the simulated drowning technique, during his first week in office.

At the forum Monday, Panetta did not raise the issue directly. But a member of the audience asked if he would support a full and independent inquiry into the use of extreme interrogation methods. Pelosi advocates such a probe.

Panetta said he was already cooperating with a review by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and would work with any others that Congress deemed necessary.

As a “creature of Congress” himself, Panetta said, “I do believe it’s important to learn the lessons from that period.”

But he added: “What I’m most concerned about is that this stuff doesn’t become the kind of political issue that everything else becomes in Washington, D.C., where it becomes so divisive that it begins to interfere with the ability of these intelligence agencies to do our primary job, which is to focus on the threats that face us today and tomorrow.”

Among the threats he outlined were that Al Qaeda might seek new sanctuaries in countries such as Somalia and Yemen; that Iran was “at a minimum” keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons; and that North Korea was willing to sell its nuclear technology to anyone willing to pay.

The controversy over whether the CIA accurately briefed Congress has generated some partisan sniping.

Pelosi, as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee until late 2002, was regularly briefed by the CIA as part of the panel’s duty to oversee the agency. But, she says, she did not learn that detainees were being waterboarded until about six months after it began.

Records indicate that the CIA waterboarded Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002. Pelosi received a classified CIA briefing the next month, but says she was not told.

“The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed,” she said last week, accusing the agency of “misleading the Congress.”

Pelosi says she didn’t learn of the waterboarding until February 2003, and then from one of her aides who had been briefed.

Republicans have seized on Pelosi’s status on the intelligence committee as proof that she condoned waterboarding, or at minimum made no effort to stop it.

Panetta jumped into the fray Friday, issuing a statement to CIA employees that was also released to the public.

“Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress,” the statement said. Agency records indicate that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.”

On Monday, Panetta said he hoped to improve relations between Congress and the CIA with more frank and regular dialogue.

“When the Congress and the CIA don’t feel like they are partners in this effort, then frankly it hurts both, and more importantly, it hurts this country,” he said. “The intelligence committee does have a responsibility to oversee our operations, and what I intend to do is to make sure that they are fully informed of what we are doing.”

--

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com