Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta hasn’t been known for being shy in his long and diverse Washington career, which took him from working as a Republican congressional aide to a Democratic budget hawk to President Obama’s CIA director and finally Pentagon chief.
His memoir, Worthy Fights, released Oct. 7, is one of the hottest properties in town, following on the heels of similar tell-alls from his predecessor at the Pentagon, Robert Gates, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
It doesn’t disappoint. The book has drawn media attention, not just because of his criticism of Obama, but also because of the backstories that fill in details of events already reported.
Here are seven important takeaways from the book:
1. He’s not disloyal.
In spite of his highly publicized criticisms on Iraq and Syria, Panetta defends Obama through most of the book. He expresses his strong support for the president’s social initiatives at the Pentagon, including the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and efforts to increase opportunities for women, including in combat jobs.
And though he disagreed with then-CIA Director David Petraeus’ assessment that the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks were the result of a protest, he strongly defends the administration’s handling of the crisis.
“The case for action in Libya was compelling: [Moammar Gadhafi] was demonstrably vicious, and the international community was solidly aligned against him, with NATO, the U.N. Security Council, and Arab leaders all united in calling for his ouster,” he writes. “If force could not be used under those circumstances, it raised the question of whether force could ever be used.
“Any suggestion that anyone, from the president on down, delayed or was indifferent to the ambassador and his staff in Benghazi is simply false.”
2. He felt left out in the cold on the budget debate.
No one who followed Panetta’s career at the Pentagon would think he was a silent bystander on the debate over cuts to military spending, especially the $50 million-a-year sequestration cuts required by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
He would invent terms to describe sequestration, like “goofy meat-axe” and “shooting ourselves in the head,” and not only say them publicly, but also make sure his press secretary let reporters know he said them. Reporters wondered why he was the only one making that point.
Here’s how Panetta tells the story:
“As my efforts to fight the sequester began to get some attention, a few congressional Democrats, including Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, urged me to emphasize the danger of cuts to domestic programs, not just defense. To my amazement, the rest of the Cabinet, including the members responsible for those parts of the budget, largely stayed out of the debate. That left me to argue for all of us, which I tried to do, even when I found myself frustratingly alone.”
3. He needed his taxpayer-funded trips home.
Probably the biggest scandal in Panetta’s tenure as defense secretary was the cost of his frequent flights back home to California in a military jet, which was required for security and access to communications. Though he reimbursed the government the cost of commercial travel — $630 — for each flight, the actual cost to taxpayers was $3,200 an hour.
At the time, Panetta told reporters he had reimbursed the government all he had been asked to pay.
“That seemed to satisfy everyone and thank God it did,” he writes. “I’m not sure I could have been CIA director or secretary of defense without being able to go home at regular intervals.”
4. He opposed an earlier swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on the same terms that led to his freedom.
In early 2012, when the Taliban first made the offer to trade captured Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five senior Taliban leaders held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Panetta dismissed the idea.
“I did not believe it was fair to trade five for one. I might have considered one for one, but not five for one,” he writes, noting that he also did not believe Qatar’s assurances on the released prisoners would satisfy U.S. legal requirements that they not be able to rejoin the fight.
Those concerns, which he says were supported by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, led to the deal breaking down, he writes.
5. He almost ordered a civilian plane shot down.
Panetta writes that one of his most unhappy jobs as defense secretary was overseeing the program designed to keep civilian aircraft out of restricted airspace, because those mishaps were so frequent he feared one of those planes would eventually be shot down.
That nearly happened during the 2012 presidential campaign during a trip out West, he writes, when a pilot accidentally strayed into restricted airspace around Obama’s location, and didn’t respond to warnings until just before Panetta was about to give the order to shoot him down.
“I’ve long wondered whether he realizes that he came within seconds of our shooting down his plane,” Panetta writes.
6. Finding Osama bin Laden wasn’t as hard as identifying him.
Panetta notes that U.S. officials weren’t sure bin Laden was in a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, right up to the moment U.S. Navy SEALs landed there and killed him early on May 2, 2011.
CIA analysts considered and rejected dozens of ideas to try to find out who was in the compound, including throwing a stink bomb over the wall and photographing who came out, he writes.
In the end, bin Laden’s body was identified partly by having one of the raiders lie down beside it to gauge his height. Bin Laden was tall — at least 6-foot-4.
“No one had thought to bring along a tape measure — proof that no matter how much anyone plans, something is always forgotten,” he writes.
7. The favorite punch line he didn’t get to deliver.
Panetta had prepared a joke for the 2012 Gridiron dinner that got pulled at the last minute:
“Looking back on my career, I’ve been a Republican, a congressman and White House chief of staff, and a defense secretary. Come to think of it, I’ve done everything that Dick Cheney has done. Except the guy I made sure got shot in the face was Osama bin Laden.”
Why was it pulled? Just before Panetta was set to speak he heard that Cheney had been hospitalized for a heart transplant.
Are these stories true? Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby, who served Panetta in a similar role, declined to confirm or deny anything in the book.
“One of the things that makes for longevity as a spokesman is knowing when not to speak,” Kirby told Pentagon reporters on Wednesday.
“I’m not going to detail private conversations that — that I was party to when he was the defense secretary or meetings that I attended. And I certainly won’t speak for the content of his book. I mean, former Secretary Panetta has written this memoir, and I know he’s talking about it. I’m going to leave it to him to speak to his views while he was in office.”
