In addition to concerns about the CIA’s reputation and its legal exposure, other White House insiders say Panetta has been frustrated by what he perceives to be less of a role than he was promised in the administration’s intelligence structure. Panetta has reportedly chafed at reporting through the director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, according to the senior adviser who said Blair is equally unhappy with Panetta. “Leon will be leaving,” predicted a former top U.S. intelligence official, citing the conflict with Blair. The former official said Panetta is also “uncomfortable” with some of the operations being carried out by the CIA that he did not know about until he took the job.”

Indeed. With Holder appointing a prosecutor to investigate the CIA and the announcement of a new unit in charge of interrogations, who could blame Panetta? What’s the point of putting your own guy in charge of the CIA if you’re just going to go around him anyway? It’ll be interesting to see how long Mr. Panetta sticks around and what stories will come out about the tensions between him and the White House along the way. Here is a statement Panetta issued to the agency today (in response to the disclosure of an Inspector General report from 2004):

“I make no judgments on the accuracy of the 2004 IG report or the various views expressed about it. Nor am I eager to enter the debate, already politicized, over the ultimate utility of the Agency’s past detention and interrogation effort. But this much is clear: The CIA obtained intelligence from high-value detainees when inside information on al-Qa’ida was in short supply.

Whether this was the only way to obtain that information will remain a legitimate area of dispute, with Americans holding a range of views on the methods used. The CIA requested and received legal guidance and referred allegations of abuse to the Department of Justice. President Obama has established new policies for interrogation.”

If the administration has already decided that investigators must abide by the Army Field Manual while conducting interrogations, what’s the point of this new department? The optimist in me tried to read between the lines, wondering if this could be another example of the administration governing through loopholes.

What I mean is for a second, I wondered if this could be a signal, an admission from the administration that every situation is different, and that when lives are in danger, civilian or military, sometimes the rules of the Army Field Manual just might not cut it. But, my hopes were shattered later on in the article. The entire structure has apparently been set up, if I understand it correctly, to work as a sort of liaison on behalf of detainees, to ensure that they are not ‘tortured’ and that, when they are sent back to their mother countries, that they have a safe trip.

With the economy in decline, the deficit projections having been increased by another $2 trillion, unemployment on the rise, states’ budgets sinking deeper into the red, and citizens up in arms in fear of the government taking over the health care industry, the Obama administration is spending it’s time looking after the rights of terror suspects. Which brings me to another issue, why is this task force necessary at all? Isn’t that what we have the CIA for?

Even with Obama distancing himself from policies implemented by the CIA during the Bush administration, he has his own guy in there now. It seems like everyone has their hand in this new unit except for Leon Panetta. What happened to moving forward? This seems like another situation in which the President’s rhetoric and his actions don’t match up.