In a bid to defuse political skirmishing over the Bush administration's interrogation methods, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta urged Congress on Monday not to allow the debate to become a distraction from the security threats facing the country.
"We are a nation at war," Panetta said at a Los Angeles forum. "We have to confront that reality every day. And while it's important to learn the lessons of the past, we must not do it in a way that sacrifices our capability to stay focused on the present, stay focused on the future, and stay focused on those who threaten the United States of America."
Panetta's speech to the Pacific Council on International Policy was his first since becoming CIA chief this year. His nomination was controversial because, as a former California congressman, he was an outsider with no background in intelligence.
Last week, however, he jumped to defend the agency when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) accused it of misleading her, and Congress, about whether waterboarding had been used on detainees. President Obama banned extreme interrogation methods, including the simulated drowning technique, during his first week in office.
At the forum Monday, Panetta did not raise the issue directly. But a member of the audience asked if he would support a full and independent inquiry into the use of extreme interrogation methods. Pelosi advocates such a probe.
Panetta said he was already cooperating with a review by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and would work with any others that Congress deemed necessary.
As a "creature of Congress" himself, Panetta said, "I do believe it's important to learn the lessons from that period."
But he added: "What I'm most concerned about is that this stuff doesn't become the kind of political issue that everything else becomes in Washington, D.C., where it becomes so divisive that it begins to interfere with the ability of these intelligence agencies to do our primary job, which is to focus on the threats that face us today and tomorrow."
Among the threats he outlined were that Al Qaeda might seek new sanctuaries in countries such as Somalia and Yemen; that Iran was "at a minimum" keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons; and that North Korea was willing to sell its nuclear technology to anyone willing to pay.
The controversy over whether the CIA accurately briefed Congress has generated some partisan sniping.
