Leon Panetta, who has no direct intelligence gathering or analysis experience, is set to become chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, with a powerful US Senate Committee voting unanimously on his nomination by President Barack Obama.
United States Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta says that while the CIA has been scrupulously tracking the whereabouts of Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal, it has no intelligence about where they are dispersed.
Inter-Services Intelligence chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha, during his meeting with Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta, has reportedly presented evidence regarding India's hand in fanning terrorism in Balochistan and Waziristan.
Asked by Frank Sesno, former CNN anchor who moderated the conversation, if the story that Pakistan handed over parts of the helicopter that went down in bin Laden's compound -- or gave access -- to the Chinesse before returning it to the US was true, United States Defence Secretary Leon Panetta first started shifting uneasily in his seat and then started laughing and said, "this is a very complicated relationship with Pakistan."
Two top United States security officials are traveling to Pakistan on Tuesday to meet the country's civil and military leadership and press for more aggressive action against Al Qaeda-allied groups. Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta and the National Security Advisor General James Jones, who are embarking on a visit to Islamabad, will meet President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani, Army Chief General Ashfaq Kiyani.
Soon after Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta provided a classified briefing to the House leadership in the US Congress on the covert mission inside Pakistan that killed Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden, he was peppered with a volley of questions. He was quizzed about Pakistani duplicity, particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence's perfidy about how it could have not known about bin Laden living right under their nose in Abbottabad.
Pakistani officials were kept deliberately out of loop by the United States in its operation to get Osama bin Laden as it feared they might "alert" the targets and "jeopardise" the mission, Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta said on Tuesday.
Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta will become the new United States defence secretary, replacing Robert Gates, in a major shake-up of President Barack Obama's security team, according to a media report.The top US military commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus is set to take over as the new CIA Director. The television network said Petraeus will be replaced as the US commander in Afghanistan by Lieutenant General John Allen.
Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta will move to Pentagon to become new US Defence Secretary to replace Robert Gates while his top military commander in Afghanistan Gen David Petraeus is to takeover as the new CIA Director.
What needs to be understood is that not one, but three cancers afflict Pakistan
Jones and Panetta bear the same message that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sounded a few days ago. Clinton had said that Pakistan would have to face very serious consequences if an attack on the US, which was planned in Pakistan, had succeeded. To avoid coming down heavily on Pakistan, the US has offered to cooperate with them to eliminate such threats.
Pictures of Osama bin Laden's dead body will not be released, United States President Barack Obama said on Wednesday, according to CBS news. Obama said in an interview that he would not release the post-mortem images of bin Laden taken to prove his death, the news outlet said in a statement.
American intelligence agency Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday warned India and Brazil that they face 'emerging threats' from the Al Qaeda and Taliban, though the terrorist outfits are 'on the run' due to extreme pressure exerted on them in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US may re-look its human and technical intelligence apparatus in Pakistan following the attack on seven CIA officers in Khost and the failed New York bombing plot, writes security expert B Raman
Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta has held a series of meetings with senior government officials in New Delhi. Official sources said Panetta, who also met with Intelligence Bureau chief Rajiv Mathur and Research and Analysis Wing chief A K Verma, discussed various areas of cooperation. This is the first high-profile visit by any American official after a team of the Indian National Investigation Agency had questioned terrorist David Coleman Headley in May.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency has categorically denied any links with the Taliban.The Daily Times quoted ISI Director General Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha as saying that the ISI is a professional agency and does not have links with any militant outfit, including the Taliban. Pasha's remarks came during a meeting with Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta, National Security Adviser Lieutenant General James Jones and other officials.
The decision by the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon Panetta who chose India for his first overseas trip--unprecedented in the annals of the spy agency's history-- was deliberate and intended to sustain the momentum and institutionalize the unprecedented intelligence cooperation between Washington and New Delhi that began in the aftermath of the horrific 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, say intelligence officials.
The Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon E Panetta on Thursday confirmed that seven of its officers died while six others were wounded in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan, the deadliest single attack on a United States intelligence agency.
One could assess without fear of contradiction that the New Delhi visit of Panetta, who is still to find his feet as an intelligence chief, would have had a much larger political objective for Obama. Firstly, to reassure Indian leaders that Clinton's first visit to China does not mean the downgrading of the US relations with India.
US President-elect Barack Obama has named Leon Panetta, a former White House Chief of Staff, to head the Central Intelligence Agency and retired admiral Dennis Blair as the director of the National Intelligence.John Brenna, a former leader of the National Counter-terrorism Center, will be his Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy National Security Adviser for Counter-terrorism Serving, Obama announced.
CIA Director Leon E Panetta said: "The bottom line here is that the war on terrorism is not just about Al Qaeda. It is a series of terrorist groups that are basically confronting us and it is the kinds of changes that we see in their methods of approaching the United States that I think represents the very important threat that we have to pay attention to."
After bin Laden's reported death near Islamabad, rediff.com revisits B Raman's June 2010 analysis
David Petraeus, considered to be one of the best war-time generals and who till recently was commander of US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan, was on Tuesday sworn in as the chief of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The United States long-suspected Pakistan of sheltering Mullah Omar and even confronted then President Asif Ali Zardari in 2011
'Who in Pakistan was intending to carry out one of the most grievous acts of international terrorism just a few months ago?' Former CIA official Bruce Riedel reveals how the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the ISI planned the attack on the Indian consulate in the Afghan city of Herat in May to take Indian diplomats hostage and disrupt Narendra Modi's swearing-in.
We present to you a blow-by-blow account on what happened on the night of May 1, 2011, when the terror mastermind was killed
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