Good post. Still, Panetta’s recent actions are more consistent with a liberal perspective than a Marxist one.
At any rate, that’s probably the best we can hope for...
But he hasn't been in a powerful position in government since his days with the Chinagate Clinton administration, where, as Bubba's Chief of Staff, he lobbied on behalf of the Chicoms in the COSCO deal. Perhaps he is just waiting for such an influential position again. Of course he isn't going to be overly obvious about his intentions. What he has done in the past, at least in these two deeply troubling instances, is sufficiently alarming.
From the article...
"Readers who recall the movement to impeach Bill Clinton remember that one of the charges raised by Clinton's critics was the conflict of interest created when individuals connected with the Chinese Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO) — such as John Huang, Charles Trie, and James and Mochtar Riady — helped funnel contributions to the Clinton reelection campaign. Afterwards, the Clinton administration lobbied for granting COSCO a 10-year lease on the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard in California. During a March 1997 edition of CNBC's Equal Time program, California Republican State Senator Dick Mountjoy noted that COSCO-linked arms dealer Wang Jun had been granted personal access to President Clinton, and that Wang's business associates had smuggled illegal assault weapons into California for delivery to street gangs by making use of a ship owned and operated by COSCO. Mountjoy then stated:
The next thing you know, (then-Chief of Staff) Leon Panetta is down here negotiating that port for the Chinese.
There is much more to the COSCO-Long Beach connection than we have room for here, but a good summary of the threat the arrangement made to U.S. security may be found in an item inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon on May 20, 1997.
Even the most unbiased of observers may legitimately ask: Why on Earth is an individual who helped negotiate the turnover of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard to the communist Chinese, thereby creating the threat to U.S. national security described in the Washington Times article by Rowan Scarborough and inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Solomon, being considered for a top position at one of our nation's most critical intelligence agencies?"