On Politics, We Can Always See the Whites of Their Eyes.
Panetta's #2: Blair, the man who ignores orders
by: Clyde Middleton posted: 2009-01-05 16:08:00
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Welcome Patterico readers!
Lost in the curious Panetta appointment is this: Obama also has picked retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair to be director of national intelligence, overseeing all the nation's spy agencies, a Democratic official said. Perhaps because the appointment was announced in December. But now that we know the players, let's focus on Blair - because we know Panetta has no appropriate background. His new job? From the immediately above article: Blair will be responsible for any intelligence that suggests the United States might be under threat of attack. The position was created to synthesize the analysis of the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community.
Blair has a good background in intelligence (compared to Panetta), but a spotty record on following orders.
He's been the president of the Institute for Defense Analyses: The Institute for Defense Analyses is a non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded research and development centers to provide objective analyses of national security issues, particularly those requiring scientific and technical expertise, and conduct related research on other national challenges.
He's been in and around the NSC and intelligence in various staff positions throughout the Clinton Era.
But here is an interesting account is given in US Complicity in Timor. He apparently quite blatantly disobeyed orders. In part:
US officials say that this past April, as militia terror escalated, a top US officer was dispatched to give a message to Jakarta. Adm. Dennis Blair, the US Commander in Chief of the Pacific, leader of all US military forces in the Pacific region, was sent to meet with General Wiranto, the Indonesian armed forces commander, on April 8. Blair's mission, as one senior US official told me, was to tell Wiranto that the time had come to shut the militia operation down. The gravity of the meeting was heightened by the fact that two days before, the militias had committed a horrific machete massacre at the Catholic church in Liquiça, Timor. YAYASAN HAK, a Timorese human rights group, estimated that many dozens of civilians were murdered. Some of the victims' flesh was reportedly stuck to the walls of the church and a pastor's house. But Admiral Blair, fully briefed on Liquiça, quickly made clear at the meeting with Wiranto that he was there to reassure the TNI chief. According to a classified cable on the meeting, circulating at Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii, Blair, rather than telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, instead offered him a series of promises of new US assistance.
The whole article is worth reading, but the implications are rather amazing. He clearly put his personal preference above country policy.
Ouch.
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