All posts tagged "Leon Panetta"

A former CIA director on Saturday slammed the Trump administration for a cover-up he predicts is doomed to fail.

In an interview with The Guardian, Leon Panetta laid out how he believes the Pentagon is trying to combat press access amid the war in Iran.

"There's a deliberate effort here to basically withhold information from the American people," Panetta said. "And I think it represents in many ways a shameful approach to sharing the responsibility that we all have when it comes to fighting a war."...

A national security expert flagged the impact of one of President Donald Trump's moves that effectively allowed a key U.S. spy tool to expire.

During an appearance on CNN, Leon Panetta, the former CIA director under former President Barack Obama and White House chief of staff during the Clinton administration, expressed concern about the expiration of a key part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

House lawmakers refused to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA earlier this month in response to Trump's pick for acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte. When Trump refused to drop Pulte, FISA lapsed, and Panetta explained what losing FISA means for national security....

A former CIA director cautioned that recent missteps by the Trump administration in its handling of the war in Iran could spell "real trouble for the future."

Leon Panetta, the former CIA director, said on CNN on Thursday that "badly stalled" talks with Iran will make a military response more likely on both sides.

"While talks are stalemated, that could be real trouble for the future," Panetta explained. "The longer we are held back from somehow sitting down and beginning those discussions, I think the problem that I see is that the earlier the tendency to respond militarily will be."...

Donald Trump's decision to threaten massive tariffs on China only to retreat risks making the U.S. a “paper tiger” and encouraging Chinese aggression against Taiwan, a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing and a former CIA chief and defense secretary said.

“We have a very tough, tough position on Taiwan,” said Nicholas Burns, who was ambassador to China under Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025, referring to U.S. support for the island nation whose independence Beijing does not recognize.

“If [Chinese President] Xi Jinping concludes from a tariff negotiations that the United States is in essence a paper tiger, that it doesn't mean what it says, that it blinks first, that's not what you want to have in his mind on something even more serious, which would be Taiwan, for instance, and a cross-strait invasion by the People's Liberation Army. ...

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vehemently asserted Monday that the person who created the Signal chat revealing war plans about an attack on Houthi terrorists to a journalist with The Atlantic should be fired.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, wrote in a stunning article of his inadvertent inclusion in a Signal messaging chat revealing war plans about an imminent strike on Yemen. Goldberg wrote that he believed top officials on the chat included National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Vice President J.D. Vance, among others.

At first, Goldberg thought the messaging chain was fake, but Panetta, who served in several Democratic administrations including as Defense Secretay under President Barack Obama, told CNN, "there's no question this is legitimate." ...

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the DOD’s response to the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.