Yesterday I told you guys I had a credible though unconfirmed rumor that Leon Panetta had sent his resignation letter up the Barack Obama’s vacation retreat.

Spencer Ackerman, not known to believe the government when ChimpyMcBushitlerHalliburton ran it, took the CIA’s denial at face value.

Likewise, George Little from the CIA emailed me this:

I read your post at redstate.com. I don’t know where these rumors are coming from, but they’re simply false. There’s nothing to them. If ever you hear this sort of thing, it’s always beneficial for accuracy purposes to contact us.

Now, I tend to take these things for face value and having the “Spokesman, CIA Office of Public Affairs” email to deny it suggests to me that there is nothing official happening.

But I am hearing from really good sources that Panetta is leaving. Brian Ross from ABC News is also reporting that Panetta is done. So perhaps a letter was not sent, but something seems to be happening and I’m told it is all related to Eric Holder’s latest actions.

I’m hearing a very credible rumor that Leon Panetta has dispatched a resignation letter to Barack Obama on vacation.

Panetta is said to be extremely angry about the possible prosecution of CIA officers doing their job and has decided to resign in protest.

The rumor is unconfirmed, but given the sourcing I think it is safe to treat it credibly.

UPDATED: Spencer Ackerman, cast in the role of news guy, says it is not true.

Checking my spam folder, I find an email from George Little at the CIA saying it is not happening.

There is a game of distractions being played in Washington, D.C. right now. It is both intentional and designed to minimize conservative strengths.

We must not play the game as the left would have us play it.

Here is how the game is played.

The President pushes cap and trade to the Senate while also advancing socialized healthcare.

As those balls advance, the Attorney General makes rumblings about prosecuting individuals who engaged in enhanced interrogation techniques.

While conservatives get distracted by the Attorney General, the administration claims Dick Cheney refused to disclose a CIA program and the Democrats will investigate.

Tomorrow Sonya Sotomayor begins her confirmation hearings.

By throwing all of these balls around, the left hopes to distract the right. Our natural inclination is to be distracted by the shiny national security balls. Some of us will fixate on Sotomayor.

Meanwhile, the leftist agenda makes it way further through Congress. Already, some Blue Dog Democrats are leaning toward supporting socialized healthcare. And the right is suddenly intrigued by the Cheney story, which is as much about distracting us from Nancy Pelosi’s lies about the CIA as it is to distract us from coming policy.

Don’t play the game.

Sonya Sotomayor will be confirmed. Ignore that ball as best you can.

Dick Cheney will need some help, but we don’t all need to focus on that ball.

The interrogators will not be prosecuted. It is a ruse. Do not be distracted.

Cap and Trade and Obamacare are the balls in play. Keep focusing on them.

We cannot afford to be distracted from these two policy initiatives. They are trying to distract us. We must target Congress on healthcare and cap and trade.

It is a telling point of the game’s existence that the Democrats have not revealed the terms of their healthcare legislation. They want us fully distracted by these other matters before they do and rush it through.

Our singleminded focus right now must be on defeating healthcare reform. These other balls can keep bouncing off the walls.

One would expect the current American DCI, at any point in time, to be the most informed person in the world. OK, probably the heads of Mossad, the Chinese Army, and MI-6 all come in front. But hey, work with me, my friends.

Alas. No.

Panetta, whose previous intel experience seems to consist of having helped Hillary run Bimbo Eruption Eradication Patrols (BEEP program, henceforth), is terribly confused about exactly who is who in the American political landscape. Of Real-Man Dick Cheney he says “it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again”.

Mm-kay, let’s look at that a bit, shall we?

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It’s like a demented tennis match:

CIA director says Pelosi received the truth

CIA Director Leon Panetta challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusations that the agency lied to her, writing a memo to his agents saying she received nothing but the truth.

[snip]

Panetta, President Obama’s pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton’s former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,’” according to CIA records.

“We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication,” Panetta said in the memo. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”

(Via Riehl World View, via AoSHQ)

…and that last statement translates to, as near as I can tell, “Go ahead and hit her again.” Add that to the apparent dismissive attitude of Panetta towards Speaker Pelosi’s allegations (I think that he referred to it as ‘noise’), and you get the feeling that the CIA is prepared to be the brick wall that the Speaker is pounding her head against for as long as the Speaker feels like pounding. That suggests that there’s a lot of paperwork still out there that can accidentally-on purpose show up when the time is right.

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This is the kind of thing one uses one’s inside voice to comment about. And if one has to speak up about it, one speaks up about it privately.

Pardon my snark, but if Leon Panetta were more versed in national security and intelligence matters–instead of merely being parachuted into a national security/intelligence position–he might have known this. And while I had hoped that his experience as White House Chief of Staff during the Clinton Administration would have been helpful in navigating these policy thickets, it would appear otherwise.

Link:

President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, Leon E. Panetta, said Friday that he intended to test the claims by current agency officials that coercive interrogation methods were effective in getting terrorism suspects to talk.

Panetta’s comments were the latest indication that the Obama administration may restore some of the CIA’s authority to use interrogation techniques that go beyond those allowed for the U.S. military.

But Panetta emphasized that he would also examine the downside of using coercive methods, and that the agency would operate within the law.

Yup. Pretty equivocal indeed. Hope and Change may have just taken another hit.

For all the stories that have come out in the last month about how President Obama has executed the smoothest administrative transition in memory, and how Obama has chosen to enforce the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to the administration vetting and recruitment process, the facts sure do seem to point to an altogether different conclusion — especially in terms of cabinet nominees and senior staff.

Let’s take a quick look at a few members of the crack team Obama has tried to surround himself with since being elected President three months ago.

• Bill Richardson: Nominated to be Obama’s Secretary of Commerce; withdrew when it became public that he was “being investigated by a federal grand jury in his home state for…steering state bond business from the New Mexico Financial Authority toward…a significant campaign contributor.”
• Tim Geithner: Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary (and head of the IRS) failed to pay owed payroll taxes for several years, despite accepting reimbursement from the IMF for those taxes and signing certifications that he had paid them.
• Tom Daschle: Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services owed nearly $102,000 in taxes “on the car and driver a wealthy friend let him use from 2005 through 2007″ and neglected to “report $83,333 in consulting income in 2007.”
• Leon Panetta: The only experience Obama’s choice to be Director of Central Intelligence during the War on Terror and multiple international crises had with the CIA was fighting battles against the leadership and attempting to slash its budget while a staffer in the Clinton White House.
• William Lynn: Within hours of declaring his new no-lobbyists rule, Obama made an exception for Lynn, a lobbyist for the 3rd largest defense contractor in the nation and now an Obama nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense
• Hillary Clinton: While a Senator, Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State “intervened at least six times in government issues directly affecting companies and others that later contributed to her husband’s foundation.
• Lobbyists of the World, Unite!: Despite repeatedly promising during his campaign that lobbyists would not be welcome in his administration, Obama bent his own new rules and hired over a dozen lobbyists to fill senior staff positions.

The absurd attacks by leftists (and by “conservative” poseurs) on John McCain for his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, and the supposed incompetence of his vetting staff that selection displayed, look very hollow indeed when measured up against the apparent lack of any vetting whatsoever President Obama’s nominees for half a dozen cabinet positions (and countless more senior staff jobs).

Between the lack of vetting, the memory-holing of vital documents posted on WhiteHouse.gov during the Bush years (like, for example, the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, which is now only available via html cache), and Obama’s repeated violation of his own “ethics” rules for the purpose of filling his cabinet and senior staff rosters, the title “smoothest transition in history” appears to be almost exactly the opposite of what this incoming administration’s actions over the last few months deserve.

In fact, the only parts of this transition that have gone smoothly are the parts President Bush handled himself.

Now that should be a scary thought for all those liberals who proclaimed January 20, 2009 to be the day “competence” returned to the White House, shouldn’t it?