| Politics

Leon Panetta is a man with extensive Public Service. However, his experience in the international arena is not as extensive.He is a surprise choice.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - Leon E. Panetta is a well known political figure in Washington, D.C. He currently co-directs with his wife Sylvia the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, a “nonpartisan, not-for-profit study center for the advancement public policy, seeking in particular to attract thoughtful men and women to lives of public service.” If confirmed by Congress, which is all but certain, he will soon be the head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Panetta is a practicing Roman Catholic but will soon be numbered among the many Catholics chosen by President Elect Obama who openly dissent with their Church on the infallible teaching concerning the inalienable right to life from conception to natural death.

Panetta earned a B.A. from Santa Clara University and his J.D. from Santa Clara University Law School. He served as a First Lieutenant in the Army from 1964 to 1966. He went to Washington in 1966, where he served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Thomas H. Kuchel of California, the Senate Minority Whip. In 1969, he became Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and then Director of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, where he was responsible for enforcement of equal education laws.

In 1970, he went to New York City, where he served as executive assistant to Mayor John Lindsay, overseeing the city’s relations with the state and federal governments. Then, in 1971, he returned to California, where he practiced law in the Monterey firm of Panetta, Thompson & Panetta until he was elected to Congress in 1976.Panetta was a U.S. Representative from California’s 16th (now 17th) district from 1977 to 1993.

From 1989 to 1993, Panetta was chairman of the House Committee on the Budget. He also served as a member of that committee from 1979 to 1985. He chaired the House Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Domestic Marketing, Consumer Relations and Nutrition; the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel and Police; and the Select Committee on Hunger’s Task Force on Domestic Hunger. He also served as vice chairman of the Caucus of Vietnam Era Veterans in Congress and as a member of the President’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies.

Panetta left Congress in 1993 to become Director of the Office of Management and Budget for the incoming Clinton administration. He was appointed Chief of Staff to President Clinton on July 17, 1994, and served in that position until January 20, 1997. In March 2006, he was chosen to serve on the Iraq Study Group, a bi-partisan committee established at the urging of Congress and organized by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and the James A. Baker III Institute. Since 2005, he has served as member of the Independent Task Force on Immigration and America’s Future. In November 2004, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed him co-chair of the Council on Base Support and Retention.

Certainly, Leon Panetta is a man with extensive Public Service. However, his experience in the international arena is not as extensive. That is the reason the decision by the President Elect to choose him to head the CIA is considered a surprise by many Washington observers.