1. Leon Edward Panetta was born on June 28,1938 and is an American retired politician and government official who has served under several Democratic administrations as secretary of defense, director of the CIA, White House chief of staff, director of the Office of Management and Budget, as well as a US representative from California.
Leon Panetta served under President Bill Clinton as director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1994 and as White House chief of staff from 1994 to 1997.
Leon Panetta cofounded the Panetta Institute for Public Policy in 1997 and served as a distinguished scholar to chancellor Charles B Reed of the California State University System and as a professor of public policy at Santa Clara University.
In January 2009, newly elected president Barack Obama nominated Leon Panetta to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Since retiring as secretary of defense in 2013, Leon Panetta has served as chairman of the Leon Panetta Institute for Public Policy, located at California State University, Monterey Bay, a campus of the California State University that he helped establish during his tenure as congressman.
Leon Panetta serves on a number of boards and commissions and frequently writes and lectures on public-policy issues.
Leon Panetta was born in Monterey, California, the son of Carmelina Maria and Carmelo Frank Leon Panetta, Italian immigrants from Siderno in Calabria, Italy.
Leon Panetta attended Monterey High School, where he became involved in student politics, and was a member of the Junior Statesmen of America.
Leon Panetta chose to enforce civil rights and equal-education laws over the objection of Richard Nixon, who wanted enforcement to move slowly in keeping with his strategy to gain political support among Southern whites.
Robert Finch and assistant secretary John Veneman supported Leon Panetta and refused to fire him, threatening to resign if forced to do so.
Leon Panetta wrote about his Nixon administration experience in his 1971 book Bring Us Together.
Leon Panetta switched to the Democratic Party in 1971, citing his belief that the Republican Party was moving away from the political center.
Leon Panetta wrote the Hunger Prevention Act of 1988 and the Fair Employment Practices Resolution.
Leon Panetta was the author of legislation establishing the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, and legislation providing Medicare coverage for hospice care.
Leon Panetta attempted to form the Big Sur National Scenic Area with senator Alan Cranston.
Local residents mocked the plan as "Leon Panetta's Pave 'n' Save" and raised a fund of more than $100,000 to lobby against the proposal.
Leon Panetta was a member of the House Committee on the Budget from 1979 to 1989, and its chairman from 1989 to 1993, Leon Panetta played a key role in the 1990 budget summit.
Clinton, who had vowed to run a professional operation, asked Leon Panetta to become his new chief of staff, replacing Mack McLarty.
Leon Panetta was a key negotiator of the 1996 budget, which was another important step toward bringing the budget into balance.
On January 5,2009, President-elect Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Leon Panetta to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Former CIA officer Ishmael Jones stated that Leon Panetta was a wise choice, because of his close personal connection to the president and lack of exposure to the CIA bureaucracy.
Also, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius said that Leon Panetta did have exposure to intelligence operations as director of the OMB and as chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, where he "sat in on the daily intelligence briefings as chief of staff, and he reviewed the nation's most secret intelligence-collection and covert-action programs in his previous post as director of the Office of Management and Budget".
On February 12,2009, Leon Panetta was confirmed in the full Senate by voice vote.
On February 19,2009, Leon Panetta was sworn in as director of the Central Intelligence Agency by vice president Joe Biden before an audience of CIA employees.
Leon Panetta reportedly received a "rock star welcome" from his new subordinates.
The review, which came to be known by 2014 as the Leon Panetta Review, yielded a series of memoranda that, according to The New York Times, "cast a particularly harsh light" on the Bush-era interrogation program.
Leon Panetta supported the Obama administration's campaign of US drone strikes in Pakistan, which he identified as the "most effective weapon" against senior al-Qaeda leadership.
Leon Panetta said that Iran would not be allowed to block the Straits of Hormuz.
Leon Panetta has since returned to the institute in the role of chairman, while his wife serves as co-chair and CEO, supervising the institute's day-to-day operations.
The institute is located at California State University, Monterey Bay, a campus Leon Panetta was instrumental in creating on the site of the decommissioned Fort Ord Army base when he was a Congressman.
Coincidentally, Leon Panetta was stationed at Fort Ord in the 1960s during his service as an Army intelligence officer.
Leon Panetta served on the board of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation, as a Distinguished Scholar to the Chancellor of California State University and as a Presidential Professor at Santa Clara University.
Leon Panetta was urged to consider running for Governor of California during the recall election in 2003 but declined in part because of the short time available to raise the necessary campaign funds.
Leon Panetta has long been an advocate for the world's oceans.
Leon Panetta serves as an advocate and information source for other ocean organizations, including the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
In 2006, Leon Panetta was part of the presidentially-appointed Iraq Study Group, or Baker Commission, which studied potential changes in US policy in Iraq.
In 2014, Leon Panetta published his memoir Worthy Fights, in which he recounted his long career in public service.
Leon Panetta regularly obtains fees for speaking engagements, including from the Carlyle Group.
Leon Panetta was a speaker on the third day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in which Hillary Clinton was nominated to run as the Democratic candidate in the presidential election that year.
Leon Panetta's speech was booed by antiwar supporters of Bernie Sanders who protested his war record.
Leon Panetta told CBS News that Congress releasing the Nunes Memo, which purported to provide intelligence about the open Russia probe, could cause damage to national security.
Leon Panetta serves as an advisor to the COVID-19 Technology Task Force, a technology industry coalition founded in March 2020 collaborating on solutions to respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In September 2024, Leon Panetta referred to Israel's pager attack in Lebanon as an act of terrorism.
Leon Panetta has held positions within a number of institutions and corporations, including:.
Leon Panetta is a member of the Partnership for a Secure America's bipartisan advisory board.
Leon Panetta serves on the Advisory Board of the Committee to Investigate Russia.
Leon Panetta is married to Sylvia Marie Varni, who administered his home district offices during his terms in Congress.