Central Intelligence Agency - Obama Presidency Oral History Back Central Intelligence Agency Index / Organizations Transcripts Jeremy Bash ...was chief of staff to director of the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], Leo... ...chief of staff to director of the CIA [ Central Intelligence Agency ], Leon [E.] Panetta, and from 2011 t... ...important to the work you did at the CIA or at DOD [Department of Defense], wha... ...government later as chief of staff at CIA , I was dealing with some of th... ...the relationships, for example, between CIA and the FBI [Federal Bureau o... ...was surprised—when he was asked to be CIA director by President Obama. I thin... ...a statesman, like Leon Panetta lead CIA , I think that came from Rahm [I.... ...sense, and the credibility to lead CIA , which, of course, had taken som... ...said, “Leon Panetta is going to be the CIA nominee.” And I remember thinking... ...got the phone numbers of all the former CIA directors for you, because it's ... ...And during the transition, what the CIA did, even before Secretary Panett... ...Secretary Panetta began his role as CIA director—so even before he wa... ...and confirmed by the Senate—the CIA began to give him a mornin... ...And he asked for their support as the CIA director nominee. He explained hi... ...some of the relationships at the CIA . Can you talk a little bit about ho... ...Sure. What I had observed about CIA from my perspective as chief counsel o... ...It doesn't really mesh with the CIA culture. So when Secretary Panett... ...I'm not chief of jack shit at the CIA . And second,” I said, “I want to mak... ...Kappes, the career professional at CIA . There's a good trust that wa... ...and you'd meet others. When I was CIA chief of staff, it was less relevant... ...appointee. I was a director of CIA appointee. And I wasn't really in th... ...be as chief of staff to the director of CIA . You talked about being more staf... ...service already by the time he became CIA director. He had been a congressman... ...and prepare for those. The director of CIA also deals primarily with Congress and... ...was a very important role that the CIA director played and does play to thi... ...about national security. And the CIA director's role in those meetings i... ...what specific and unique contributions CIA might make to an issue. So if the issu... ...those first two years when you were at CIA , where you were doing this staff wor... ...you had someone who had been a career CIA officer himself, a subject-matte... ...who had supported the director of CIA . So he knew the agency well, and h... ...was our natural interface. And he was CIA 's natural interface at the NSC. An... ...between the White House, between CIA , between the FBI, and between th... ...the intelligence community, and CIA in particular, saw an opportunity t... ...Service, basically the top spy for the CIA , himself a Russia expert. And I said... ...him. And all the Russia hands at the CIA , by the way, they were saying... ...I just wanted to ask what role the CIA did play in that first year, becaus... ...And I'm just curious what you saw the CIA 's contribution, both to the genera... ...surge. Yeah. Well, after nine-eleven, CIA was first into Afghanistan. They wer... ...overthrew the Taliban government. And CIA had been operating in Afghanistan fo... ...the Soviets from Afghanistan. So CIA knew the terrain. They had peopl... ...the very austere mountain ranges. And CIA began to build an intelligenc... ...when the review came up in 2009, CIA had a lot of credibility to bot... ...about the challenges. But also, CIA was conducting operations. And w... ...that were emanating from that area. And CIA had to conduct a number of operationa... ...that we were concerned about. And so CIA , in those meetings, in those revie... ...to statute. But it's basically where CIA , on behalf of a president—and ther... ...Panetta, Secretary Panetta, got to CIA in early 2009, the trail had gone cold... ...2009, the trail had gone cold. We asked CIA officers responsible for the bin Lade... ...al-Qaeda senior leadership. And we at CIA briefed this lead to the Nationa... ...Washington—it became clear that we at CIA were the victim of a double agen... ...killed, the largest loss of life for CIA since the '80s and the Beirut bombing... ...by family—Panetta said to the CIA officers in his conference room, “We'r... ...and where could he be? And that led CIA to ultimately find the two couriers wh... ...room on the seventh floor of the CIA headquarters at Langley, and w... ...I attended some of the funerals of the CIA officers who had been killed in Khost... ...when you sit next to a director of CIA or a secretary of defense, and they'r... ...I had before we moved on from the CIA —although I'll ask if there's anythin... ...because of the hits you said that the CIA had taken during and at the end of th... ...to end enhanced interrogations and also CIA detentions through the executive order... ...I imagine, for a lot of the staff at CIA —and just essentially your assessmen... ...this executive order that prohibited CIA or any entity in the US government fro... ...that was not going to go down well at CIA , because there were a lot of concern... ...realized this, because essentially, CIA officers came running into his offic... ...hatched a plan to bring, I think, six CIA officers, a combination of operation... ...United States sitting down with career CIA officers, and CIA officers wer... ...down with career CIA officers, and CIA officers were basically saying, “Mr... ...you this, which is, I will come out to CIA . I'll explain my decision. I'll mee... ...that day, and then he came out to CIA , and he met privately with dozens o... ...to happen. Is there anything from the CIA years that we haven't talked about tha... ...intelligence, or should that be the CIA director? And although I think ther... ...were some arguments on both sides, the CIA director really was responsible fo... ...and so it was important for the CIA director to do that. And Panetta fel... ...Vice President Biden decided that the CIA should be the element that appoint... ...saying, Why is this important? But the CIA was feeling pretty sensitive in th... ...national security component, the CIA . You've been in all the Nationa... ...Director Panetta came into my office at CIA , and he said, “I've talked to Sylvi... ...meeting, Panetta just announced to the CIA staff, he said, “Look, the presiden... ...to accept it. And so I'll be leaving CIA if I get confirmed, and I'll be DOD... ...would say, is much more public than the CIA director role. So there was a lot mor... ...we traveled, instead of traveling as CIA director, quietly on a small... ...and not a lot was known about him. The CIA was pressed into action to provide it... ...the surge in 2009, when you were at the CIA . That was your vantage point on tha... ...to ask you. But I just, as I did in the CIA case, want to ask if there's anythin... ...was [crosstalk]— Yes, right. I was at CIA when the decision to engage militaril... Show more... Akram Dweikat ...be able to give them a visa, or I am CIA or something. I was like, “No, I wish... John Kerry ...going to do in terms of a finding, the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] o... ...to do in terms of a finding, the CIA [ Central Intelligence Agency ] or something. I always say t... Denis McDonough ...to Moscow was the guy who's currently CIA director, Bill Burns. So, it was a... ...Bash was chief of staff for Panetta at CIA at the time. I'm just curious: Doe... Hillary Clinton ...he was, at the time, director of the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], and h... ...was, at the time, director of the CIA [ Central Intelligence Agency ], and he had been a particularl... ...the White House paired him with an NSC- CIA rep, and they went off to Oman totall... ...the militia turned its attention to a CIA facility—not a State Departmen... ...a State Department facility, a CIA facility—that was engaged in a serie... ...and two of the employees of the CIA were killed. So it was a terrible... Show more... Tom Donilon ...Intelligence], [Leon E.] Panetta at the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]. It was ... ...[Leon E.] Panetta at the CIA [ Central Intelligence Agency ]. It was a very, very senior team... ...ending the black-site program at the CIA , ending enhanced interrogatio... Rick Jordan ...chemical weapons program was actually a CIA [Central Intelligence Agency... ...weapons program was actually a CIA [ Central Intelligence Agency ] informant. So they knew everythin... Leon Panetta ...to June 2011, he was director of the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], and from July 2011 to Februar... ...of the Central Intelligence Agency [ CIA ], and from July 2011 to February 2013... ...that you confronted as director of the CIA or as secretary of defense. One thin... ...in terms of my ultimate job at the CIA , having to work with intelligence... ...I was getting into, certainly at the CIA . Then, as OMB director, same thing—OM... ...House, working with the head of the CIA , working with the secretary o... ...of asking me to be director of the CIA . That's the next thing I want to as... ...your appointment as director of the CIA . You got that call from John Podesta... ...that when they were talking about the CIA , that there was a great deal o... ...of concern that the credibility of the CIA had been impacted because o... ...could restore the credibility of the CIA , but also someone who could restor... ...could restore the credibility of the CIA with Capitol Hill, and be able t... ...to the president, and had worked at the CIA , but they were concerned that becaus... ...his ties to the interrogation period at CIA , that he would have a difficult tim... ...able to restore the credibility of the CIA ? I think that's why they probabl... ...to improve the credibility of the CIA ,” I said, “but I want you to know tha... ...to bring that same attitude to the CIA . I will tell you the truth whether yo... ...relationships between the president and CIA director, I knew that saying you'r... ...by the way, is in my portraits at both CIA and the Defense Department—it's more o... ...flying, etc., he said, as a former CIA guy—we got tired of drinking tea al... ...Well, sure enough, he knew where the CIA station was, so we went to the CI... ...the CIA station was, so we went to the CIA station—and every CIA station has ... ...so we went to the CIA station—and every CIA station has a bar, god bless them. W... ...depicted the challenge of leading the CIA as restoring, preserving th... ...transitions, particularly the CIA . He had been on the Intelligenc... ...a series of briefings for me from the CIA that had all of the professional staf... ...briefings on, “This is the way the CIA operates.” I can remember, basically... ...going through the operations that the CIA was involved with, science an... ...was something—I knew enough about the CIA that I knew it was this uniqu... ...and undermined morale there at the CIA . I didn't do any of that. The two o... ...who really had deep background in the CIA that would be there. Secondly, it sen... ...to almost everything I had to do at the CIA . How much of that trust building wa... ...decisions you were making inside the CIA , in order to build trust? It wa... ...here, particularly with regards to the CIA , was the problem of a president wh... ...when he came over and spoke at the CIA , he made very clear that we are full... ...That message reverberated through the CIA , because it made clear that th... ...policy. You and others in the CIA who objected to their release, th... ...As you look back at your time at CIA , do you think he handled—and the Whit... ...to do this and screw the people at CIA .” When I made clear that the memo... ...okay. So, here's the people at the CIA who have to do their job, and they'r... ...after that that he came over to the CIA . He cared enough about the situatio... ...about the situation to come over to the CIA , meet personally with members of th... ...course, address the people there at the CIA , and conveyed that most importan... ...at Guantanamo were people that the CIA had thrown into Guantanamo in prio... ...the expectation that that's what the CIA and what the intelligence enterprise a... ...what the intelligence enterprise at the CIA overseas had really come to be focuse... ...whatever efforts you've done. As CIA director, I felt that if one terroris... ...American people. That's the mission of CIA director. It's the mission of th... ...I used to read the PDB going to the CIA in the morning, and it's a depressin... ...you talked about Obama speaking to the CIA when he came, I believe it was in Apri... ...remember sitting in my office at the CIA and wondering, How do we keep a handl... ...Bureau of Investigation]. We've got CIA . We've got DIA [Defense Intelligenc... ...me that, being there as director of the CIA , your role in that process is no... ...line in your book where he says, “The CIA gets what it wants,” because there'... ...them, etc., etc., and here was the CIA , that had these clean-cu... ...as indicative of the way Obama used the CIA , or looked to the intelligenc... ...there, every operation we did at the CIA , Rahm Emanuel was, like, right—h... ...kind of role do we play there? For the CIA and for the military, it's actually ... ...that story, of both your role at the CIA and in that operation coming together... ...first thing I did was to go back to the CIA and, basically, say, Who's responsibl... ...heard the crowds yelling, “USA, USA, CIA , CIA,” there was this real sense, tha... ...the crowds yelling, “USA, USA, CIA, CIA ,” there was this real sense, tha... ...spoke about his time as Director of the CIA , the position in which he served fro... ...being consumed by what I was doing at CIA , and kind of enjoying the job of bein... ...and kind of enjoying the job of being CIA director, I was not really that excite... ...excited about suddenly going from the CIA to Department of Defense [DOD]. And ... ...and I went back to work at the CIA . And then, I think the next meetin... ...job.” I said, “Well, what about the CIA ?” He then mentioned the possibility o... ...know if that's a very good fit for CIA director. Even though I had a lot o... ...that I was being considered in the CIA , and the people there were ver... ...trust that you had set out to do at the CIA ? Or did you see that as a longe... ...think General Petraeus was announced as CIA director. I think he introduced th... ...this yesterday, but I had a session at CIA with all of my senior staff in which ... ...be getting briefings on moving from the CIA , which is a little bit like the corne... ...To the point about the differences of CIA and DOD, did you have a sense of wh... ...I asked you the same thing about the CIA , and I wonder what you two talke... ...I think I had earned a lot of trust as CIA director in terms of how we conducte... ...you something. Having done that job at CIA and the bin Laden operation, I also wa... ...happened in the time that you were at CIA , so how did you pick up that issu... ...were a lot of gays who were in the CIA . They were in other departments an... ...context of you being director of the CIA in 2009, thinking specifically abou... ...go to those places as director of the CIA , and obviously as a member of the Ira... ...Afghanistan as well. As director of the CIA , I think as I mentioned, I had a sens... ...with, because it was not like the CIA was involved in trying to bolster th... ...that a lot more closely than I did as CIA director, because it did relate t... ...think we mentioned this during the CIA phase, but one thing I'd learned at CI... ...CIA phase, but one thing I'd learned at CIA is that we—obviously as result of th... ...with Russia. When I went to the CIA [laughs] and sat down with some of th... ...some of the Russian types there at the CIA , I mean, their attitude was, “This i... ...what happens is that the FBI and the CIA , together, find out that there are te... ...that I should talk about is Israel. As CIA director, I had a very goo... ...certainly in the time I was there as CIA director, and for that matter a... ...of staff. It was certainly true at CIA , and it was true at Defense... ...was true at Defense. Obviously, at the CIA the ability not only to play a role i... Show more... Load more Transcripts Related Topics go to the Native America Native America go to the Financial Reform and Regulation Financial Reform and Regulation go to the Veterans Veterans go to the Transparency and Media Transparency and Media go to the Supreme Court Supreme Court