Leon Panetta was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Obama from 2009 to 2011, and Secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2013. John Kiriakou’s assessment: “I never really liked Panetta just because he’s not a nice guy. But Panetta was right to shut [the Blackwater assassination program] down.”[1]
The Blackwater shutdown and the Erik Prince outing
On arrival at the CIA in 2009 Panetta terminated the Blackwater-operated worldwide assassination program. In his memoir, and subsequently in testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Panetta described the program and in the course of doing so publicly identified Erik Prince by name as a CIA non-official-cover officer. Per Kiriakou: “That’s why Erik Prince lives in Dubai now and not in the United States.”[2][1]
The IIPA double standard
Kiriakou’s recurring point in interviews is that Panetta — alongside General David Petraeus — disclosed the identity of covert CIA personnel without ever being charged under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the same statute under which Kiriakou himself was prosecuted and sentenced to 30 months. Per Kiriakou: “Leon Panetta, who outed the Osama bin Laden shooter to Hollywood writer Mark Boal and Hollywood producer Kathryn Bigelow — never charged with a crime.”[3]