Next door at our Spytalk blog, Jeff Stein writes:
Am I the only person who sees some irony in the demands of some key Democrats that Steve Kappes be kept at the CIA as the price of their support for Leon Panetta to run the spy agency?
Am I the only person who sees some irony in the demands of some key Democrats that Steve Kappes be kept at the CIA as the price of their support for Leon Panetta to run the spy agency?
To be sure, Kappes,
now the CIA's No. 2, is "highly regarded," as everyone keeps saying,
inside and outside the CIA. He has been a station chief in Moscow and
Kuwait and in recent years pulled off a Hollywood-like secret operation to get Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi to ditch his nuclear weapons program. His subordinates virtually gush over him.
He has been called "the best spy to emerge from the CIA in a generation."
Former CIA operative Gary Berntsen, who led one of the first teams into Afghanstan, said
Kappes is "probably the finest man I've worked for in my career. You
would know what he wanted from you but it was clear that people would
have the flexibility and the lattitide to make those difficult
decisions on your own, which is what we need."
Continue reading Panetta Faces First Big Test in Choice of CIA Deputy.