US president-elect Barack Obama named former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the CIA and nominated a retired Navy admiral to oversee the entire espionage community according to DPA. Dennis Blair, the chief of US Pacific Command from 1999 to 2002, will become the director of national intelligence, a so-called czar for coordinating the espionage activities and analyses of the nation's 16 intelligence organizations. In addition to the CIA, those include the Defence Intelligence Agency and the super secret National Security Agency, as well as outfits in the Army, Navy, Air Force, State Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. The choice of Panetta, 70, has been questioned because he does not have direct experience in the intelligence field, but also reflects the difficulty of finding seasoned candidates untainted by President George W Bush's harsh interrogation policies in the war on terrorism.
