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WASHINGTON - US president-elect Barack Obama has chosen former lawmaker and White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, a Democratic Party official told AFP Monday.
The official, asking to remain anonymous, confirmed media reports that Panetta, who was White House chief of staff for former president Bill Clinton, was the incoming president's choice to head the agency under scrutiny for its conduct in the fight against international terrorism.
Presidential transition aides have said that retired admiral Dennis Blair is Obama's choice for director of national intelligence to oversee the country's sprawling intelligence system.
A former commander of US forces in the Pacific from 1999 to 2002, Blair will be only the third director of national intelligence.
The position was created by Congress in 2004 after investigations revealed that turf-sensitive intelligence agencies failed to share information that might have averted the September 11 attacks. That failure was followed by US intelligence's fateful error on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The DNI's main mission was to break down the barriers between the agencies, and make them operate more collaboratively.
- AFP /ls
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