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In a 60 Minutes interview set to air Sunday night, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says that President Obama should have left a residual force to “continue the momentum” America had going for itself in Iraq, and that he wasn’t confident that pulling out was the right move for America: Panetta: “We gave them a chance. I mean, no one could guarantee that Iraq would be able to go in the right direction, but we gave them a chance. We gave them the tools.” Pelley: “Back when you watched the stars and stripes being lowered for the last time...

Former Defense Secretary (and former CIA chief) Leon Panetta has offered his first public comments on the Obama deal in which the US released five top Taliban commanders for one US soldier accused of desertion. Panetta says that he opposed the deal and “assumed that it was never going to happen.” “I don’t fault the administration for wanting to get him back. I do question whether the conditions are in place to make sure these terrorists don’t go back into battle,” former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a gas industry gathering in Pittsburgh. Panetta, who was...

Full Title: Leon Panetta Violated NDAA, Changed Benghazi Sp Forces Mission Without Chris Stevens MANDATED Approval Gregory Hicks was the Deputy Chief of Mission on the ground in Tripoli the night of September 11, 2012 when our Benghazicompound and the secret CIA Annex was attacked. In January 2014, Hicks hit back against those blaming Ambassador Chris Stevens for his own death. He refers to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, saying that the Committee interviewed him professionally and thoroughly, but the information below, on why Chris Stevens was forced to refuse military protection did not make it into the...

CNSNews.com) - Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova says he'll be happy if Democrats decide not to appoint members to the special select committee on Benghazi that Republicans plan to establish. "I'm delighted the Democrats don't want to participate. All they would do is obstruct," diGenova told WMAL talk radio in Washington, D.C. Monday morning. "The president is going to pay a price ultimately," he added. "It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but his performance and Leon Panetta's was shameful that night." DiGenova says on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks that killed four Americans,...

Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation's top civilian and uniformed defense officials -- headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama -- were informed that the event was a "terrorist attack," declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president's Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward. Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of...

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed classified information at a 2011 awards ceremony attended by Zero Dark Thirty filmmaker Mark Boal, according to documents obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. The CIA allowed Boal, the screenwriter of Zero Dark Thirty, to attend a June 24, 2011 award ceremony celebrating the successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan that May. A transcript of Panetta’s speech that night obtained by Judicial Watch is labeled “top secret,” and significant portions of it are redacted. At the conclusion his speech, Panetta told the audience, “You have made me proud...

Newly declassified documents show that former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed secret information to "Zero Dark Thirty" scriptwriter Mark Boal, who was allowed to attend Panetta's speech at CIA headquarters marking the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

NEW YORK – While the US has “implemented unprecedented sanctions and pressure on Iran, we may very well have to use military force to back up our policy,” Leon Panetta said on Thursday night. The former US defense secretary and CIA director made the remarks while addressing around 600 people at the Anti-Defamation League’s 100th annual meeting Panetta, who was receiving the ADL’s William and Naomi Gorowitz Institute Service Award, said the US needs to “maintain a healthy skepticism” when negotiating to suss out Iran’s true level of commitment to negotiations over its nuclear program. “It is the Supreme Leader

Leon Panetta served in Washington with nine presidents, starting with Lyndon Johnson. He has been a member of Congress, Office of Management and Budget director, White House chief of staff, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and secretary of defense — the last two under President Obama. He is a man who knows Washington and knows how to choose his words. So Panetta’s implicit rebuke of the president’s hands-off approach to the budget crisis at a breakfast Monday was striking. Indeed, implicit may be an understatement. Asked repeatedly whether he was being correctly understood as critical of President Obama, Panetta...

President Obama’s first two defense secretaries criticized the administration’s handling of the Syrian crisis on Tuesday night and expressed skepticism about the chances that Russia will broker a deal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons.

The U.S. has lost track of some of Syria’s chemical weapons, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday, and does not know if any potentially lethal chemicals have fallen into the hands of Syrian rebels or Iranian forces inside the country. “There has been intelligence that there have been some moves that have taken place. Where exactly that’s taken place, we don’t know.” Panetta said, in a Pentagon press briefing. Panetta said that the “main sites” in Syria storing chemical weapons with which the Pentagon is most concerned remain secured by the Syrian military. But there is “some intelligence” that “limited”...

Washington D.C. is big on tradition, and one of those traditions involves official portraits of top government officials. The Defense Department just awarded a $31,200 contract (frame included) to Portraits, Inc. for an official portrait of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: The Washington Headquarters Services Acquisition Directorate issued a Firm-Fixed Price (FFP) purchase order for the painting and delivery of the official oil portrait for the former Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, as required by the Department of Defense. This portrait shall be executed by an artist experienced in commissions of Presidential Cabinet Level or other Senior/High Ranking Officials. The...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's top special operations commander ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from ever being made public. The secret move, described briefly in a draft report by the Pentagon's inspector general, set off no alarms within the Obama administration even though it appears to have sidestepped federal rules and perhaps also the Freedom of Information Act

Not only did former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta leak the name of the Navy SEAL group responsible for the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011, but the release of the Pentagon Inspector General’s (IG) report revealing the incident, which was ready in July 2012, was delayed until now. In the spring of 2012, GOP members accused Barack Obama’s administration of leaking national security secrets to help Obama get reelected, but the administration denied it. At a CIA awards ceremony on June 24, 2011, Panetta named the SEAL group and its commander. Among those present were 1300 military and...

According to Politico, that’s the conclusion of an Inspector General report. The information on the raid was classified as Secret and Top Secret, and its dissemination to the filmmakers has been a controversial point ever since the film was announced:

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the Navy SEAL unit that carried out the Osama Bin Laden raid and named the unit’s ground commander at a 2011 ceremony attended by Zero Dark Thirty filmmaker Mark Boal, according to a draft Pentagon inspector general’s report obtained by a watchdog group.

It was the Obama administration that sealed the fate of the Pakistani doctor jailed for helping nail Usama Bin Laden, by divulging key details after the fact and dooming any chance Shakil Afridi's cover story could win his freedom, according to a confidential Pakistani report. When former Secretary of Defense and ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta publicly acknowledged Afridi's role in the ruse which helped the CIA pinpoint Bin Laden's presence in an Abbottabad compound, any chance that Pakistani authorities could help him get out of the country vanished, according to what some have called Pakistan’s version of the 9/11 Commission,...

Elite U.S. troops were completely capable of saving Ambassador Chris Stevens during the Benghazi Consulate attacks on September 11, 2012. Elements of the highly specialized Combatant Commanders In-Extremis (CIF) units are always on alert, on forward deployment, ready to respond. Their job description is to hit the ground in 3 to 5 hours. CIF elements are ready to engage in active combat anywhere in their region, 3 to 5 hours after the call. Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense at the time, either misled the U.S. Congress or was incompetent. Panetta testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 7,...

Panetta: Obama Absent Night of Benghazi Daniel Halper February 7, 2013 12:05 PM Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified this morning on Capitol Hill that President Barack Obama was absent the night four Americans were murdered in Benghazi on September 11, 2012: Panetta said that Obama left operational details, including knowledge of what resources were available to help the Americans under siege, "up to us." In fact, Panetta says that the night of 9/11, he did not communicate with a single person at the White House. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Panetta said...

Former Pacific Fleet chief: We need full disclosure on Benghazi — now POSTED AT 9:31 AM ON OCTOBER 30, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY Retired Admiral James A. Lyons likely pulled few punches as commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet during his career … and he hasn’t started pulling punches now, either. In a blistering column at The Washington Times, the former commander blasts the lack of action from the US when the administration learned our consulate in Benghazi had come under attack, writing that “courage was lacking” that might have saved at least some of the four American...