Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA is an amazing though controversial book.  I am listening to it again, and recommend the interview I conducted with Weiner from September 2007 as an intro to the book, and as background to the discussion of the selection of Leon Panetta to lead the CIA.   Many fans of the CIA blasted Weiner's book as a one-sided assault on a crucial arm of our national security infrastructure that passed far too quickly over the Agency's many successes.  Others argued that because of the nature of the CIA, the public, and even serious historians like Weiner, will only know about the organization's failures.

I think the book is an invaluable contribution to the public's understanding of how the CIA works, and whether or not Weiner got everything right, the lesson is that the CIA has often gotten things wrong and to the great detriment of the country.  The intelligence professionals who work there are by-and-large extraordinary public servants, and their patriotism and courage is never adequately conveyed, but their jobs require a near perfection that it is impossible to expect much less demand.

The job of the DCIA is enormously important, and has often been filled by individuals with no background in intelligence or even national security.  Sometimes it has been filled by people with such backgrounds but with very little in the way of senior executive experience.  Weiner's book makes clear that a good DCIA will have one essential attribute --access to the president.  No matter how experienced in intelligence or management, a DCIA who stays at Langley without ever or even often getting to the president to present the Agency's findings, warnings and recommendations will be a failed DCIA.

In Panetta's favor is the likelihood of access and his experience managing the White House under Clinton.  Panetta is widely regarded as very smart as well, and widely liked across both parties.  Though a liberal, the experience of having skippered a White House staff will have schooled Panetta in the art of getting to the president when it must happen and in the ways of winning internal Executive Branch dust-ups.  The Congressional background didn't help Porter Goss much, but perhaps it will help Panetta keep the budget cutters away.

Panetta's a patriot, an experienced Washington hand, and close to the president-elect.  As with many of the other early appointments on the incoming national security team, conservatives should be asking themselves if they ought not to be thanking their stars that the new team appears very realistic about the world they are being called on to lead and the enemies they will be facing.



The Weiner interview and many others with key authors of books central to understanding the national security of the United States are contained in my recent The War Against the West.  When I interviewed Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald yesterday and learned he had never read The Looming Tower, I thought to myself that this explains part of his naivete about Hamas --he hasn't done the basic reading.  People who want to understand the war in which we are engaged have to work at it by reading books like Weiner's, Lawrence Wright's and the many other titles that are extraordinary efforts at reporting and analysis.

And if you won't read the books, at least read the conversations with their authors. 

I write about W's eight years in today's Politico.

Two Atlantic writers join me on today's program to discuss the Israel-Hamas war --Jeffrey Goldberg and Robert Kaplan.

Kaplan is very familiar to my audience, and every one of his visits very welcome.  His most recent book is Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts.

Goldberg has extensive experience in Israel, and his book Prisoners, is all about the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.

Goldberg wrote this on his blog yesterday:

I have friends in Gaza about whom I worry a great deal; I've seen many people killed in Gaza; I've served in the Israeli Army in Gaza; I've been kidnapped in Gaza; I've reported for years from Gaza; I hope my former army doesn't kill the wrong people in Gaza; I hope Israeli soldiers all leave Gaza alive; I know they'll be back in Gaza; I think this operation will work; and I have no actual hope that it will work for very long, because nothing works for very long in the Middle East. Gaza is where dreams of reconciliation go to die. Gaza is where the dream of Palestinian statehood goes to die; Gaza is where the Zionist dream might yet die. Or, more to the point, might be murdered.

Goldberg ought to be guesting on every cable channel --if cable channels were interested in what is happening in Gaza that is.

Professor Michael Oren of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and the Georgetown's School of Foreign Service is also a reservist in the IDF.  He has been called up to active duty, and I interviewed him yesterday from his position near the Israeli-Gaza border.

The transcript is here.  The podcast is here.

Today's program featured interviews on the Israel-Hamas war with the Shalem Center's Michael Oren and Martin Kramer from Israel (Oren is on active duty with the IDF), ThreatsWatch's Stephen Schippert and the Center for Security Policy's Frank Gaffney.

It also contained a long, five segment conversation with Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald, a critic of Israel (and most Israel supporters in America).  Here's the transcript of that conversation:

HH: Pleased to welcome now to the Hugh Hewitt Show Glenn Greenwald. He’s a columnist for Salon.com, he’s also the author of many, many books. He’s a friend of our late, departed friend, Dean Barnett as well. Glenn, welcome to the program, good to have you on.

GG: Great to be here, Hugh.

HH: Glenn, you’ve been writing a lot about Israel-Gaza. I’m spending most of the show today talking to people like Michael Oren and others about Israel and Gaza. Summarize for the audience your opinion of what’s going on and the American reaction to it.

GG: Well, my focus is basically, since I’m American and not Israeli, on American policy towards Israel, and the fact that we don’t have nearly the interest in the dispute that the Israelis have with the Palestinians over who controls what West Bank hill, and what part of Gaza is controlled by the Israelis. And so the bulk of what I’ve been writing about is questioning why the United States involves itself in every dispute that the Israelis have as though we’re a partisan in that dispute. But beyond that, I think there’s real questions about whether what the Israelis are doing is both just and wise from their perspective.

HH: Let’s come back to that, but pause for a moment on Hamas. Do you think Hamas is a threat to the United States?

GG: No, I don’t think Hamas is remotely a threat to the United States. I think Saddam Hussein was more of a threat to the United States, and I don’t think he was a threat to the United States.

HH: Do you think Hamas is an extension of Iran?

GG: No, I don’t think Hamas is an extension of Iran.
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I'll be very sorry to see Al Franken be declared a winner today, though of course there's at least one more round to go in the courts.

And I'm intrigued by the talk of a massive tax cut in the stimulus package.  The president-elect surprised us with his national security selections, and perhaps he will with his economic program as well.  When he meets with GOP Leaders McConnell and Boehner today, they should push the tax cuts and a strong spending surge for nuclear power.  A package they could support would be good for the country.

The departure of Bill Richardson makes you wonder how long it will be to a Patrick Fitzgerald in the Enchantment State calls a press conference.

But as interesting and important as all these stories are, the pale in comparison to the battle in Gaza to topple Hamas.

Hamas is an al Qeada-like terrorist organization, and though manned by Sunnis, it operates as the proxy of the radical mullahs of Iran.  As long as it controls Gaza i poses a threat not just to Israel but to Egypt and the wider region, as well as the future of all Palestinians.  Bill Kristol is correct today to note in his New York Times' column:

An Israeli success in Gaza would be a victory in the war on terror — and in the broader struggle for the future of the Middle East. Hamas is only one manifestation of the rise, over the past few decades, of a terror-friendly and almost death-cult-like form of Islamic extremism. The combination of such terror movements with a terror-sponsoring and nuclear-weapons-seeking Iranian state (aided by its sidekick Syria) has produced a new kind of threat to Israel.

But not just to Israel. To everyone in the Middle East — very much including Muslims — who aren’t interested in living under the sway of extremist regimes. And to any nation, like the United States, that is a target of Islamic terror. So there are sound reasons why the United States — whether led by George W. Bush or Barack Obama — will stand with Israel as it fights.

Every civilian casualty in Gaza is a terrible thing, but terrorists work to maximize civilian casualties, and Israel cannot allow Hamas to create a zone within which it is invulnerable to attack.  Now that it is launched, Israel must stay as long as necessary to uproot Hamas and provide at least an opportunity for the people of Gaza to join with the people of the West Bank in some sort of near-normal state not constantly thirsting for war with Israel.

The stakes are thus huge, though apparently only little understood by most of the networks.  The coverage of the battle against Hamas is startlingly void of any characterization of Hamas, as though Hamas was a state actor and not a terrorist group.  Israel's battle against Hamas is exactly the battle America wages against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, except that Hamas' outrages against Israel are more recent in time, and continue to this day. 

The left --see Simon Tisdall's column in The Guardian-- is angry that the president-elect hasn't come out forcefully criticizing Israel.  This is astonishing, as the president-elect, if he does anything before taking office, must confirm that the United States stands with its closest ally in the region.  Surely the incoming Secretaryof State will make that clear in her first week in office, and if the left screams, so be it. 

The longtime enemies of Israel in the West confuse their old grievances against the Jewish state with today's challenges.  Hamas is not Fatah, and Iran is not Egypt of 1973.  Whatever one thinks of the fence, of the Lebanon invasion of 1983, of the refusal to divide Jerusalem etc, the nature of Hezbollah to the north, Hamas to the south, and especially Iran over the horizon oblige Israel's critics to give up their canards and deal with the fact that you cannot negotiate with entities that want your total destruction.  Any commentary that doesn't acknowledge the nature of Hamas is as dishonest as it is ignorant of the reality facing Israel today, one which the new president should acknowledge as soon as he enters office -if not sooner.

Alan Murray in the Wall Street Journal.

The Jerusalem Post reports damage to the Hamas command-and-control structure.

But the Belmont Club notes that Hamas has a high probability of survival unless the Israelis find some way to compromise the Hamas internal security structure.

Does the lame duck Israeli government have the strength of will to take as long as necessary to cripple Hamas?  Will the Obama Adminstration stand by Israel if Israel does attempt to crush the terrorist organization?

As John Hinderaker points out, the Islamist radical fringe is already blaming the president-elect for Israel's offensive.  It is hard to imagine that the new president or his secretary of state would begin their time in office by pressuring Israel to end its battle against Hamas, but the silence from the transition office is worrying. 

E-mail from my favorite ad exec, "Bear in the Woods":