Well, This Explains a Lot

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta has now revealed that Rahm Emanuel attempted to cut him a new one for his cooperation with the Senate investigation of torture:

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta, in his new book, describes being summoned to a White House meeting and cussed out by President Obama’s chief of staff after he agreed to give the Senate intelligence committee access to documents chronicling the agency’s use of torture during the Bush administration.

“The president wants to know who the f%$# authorized this release to the committees,” Rahm Emanuel, who served as Obama’s chief of staff and enforcer in 2009 and 2010, is quoted as saying while slamming the table for emphasis.

Panetta’s book, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, is a blunt account of his time as Obama’s CIA director and, later, Secretary of Defense.

He describes being micromanaged and second-guessed by White House aides who seemed focused on political appearance over substance. White House pushback on the Senate torture inquiry, which came despite Obama’s pledge to run the most transparent administration ever, is in that way typical – as is Emanuel’s profane tirade. (Emanuel, as I’ve written before, saw even the most deeply moral and legal decisions in purely political terms.)

………

Panetta describes then-director of national intelligence Dennis Blair as coming to his rescue, asking Emanuel:

“If the president’s hair is on fire,” he retorted, “I want to know who the f%$# set his hair on fire.”

Blair was fired in May 2010 and replaced by James Clapper, with sources citing as a main reason “the mutual distrust between the White House and members of Mr. Blair’s staff.” John Brennan, who was then Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser and is now CIA director, was one of the people Panetta implied had set the president’s hair on fire.

I do not know whether Obama never had any intention to create openness, or if folks like James Clapper and John Brennan managed to get him to swallow their sky is falling bullsh%$.

It really doesn't matter.

Hope and change, my flabby white ass.