US Senate confirms Panetta as Pentagon chief

CIA Director Leon Panetta testifies at his Senate confirmation hearings to become US Secretary of Defence on Capitol Hill Washington in this June 9, 2011 file photograph. The US Senate voted unanimously on June 21, 2011 to confirm Panetta as the new secretary of defence.


The US Senate voted unanimously yesterday to confirm outgoing Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta as the new secretary of defence, replacing the retiring Robert Gates.

Panetta, 72, who has held a variety of senior posts in Washington dating back decades, was nominated by President Barack Obama to head the Pentagon. Panetta is expected to start his new job on July 1.

The rare 100-0 vote followed a debate that saw praise for Panetta and anxiety about the challenges he will face to push defence budgets lower and oversee the start of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

The troop pullout is due to begin next month and Obama is expected to present a blueprint for it in a prime-time speech to Americans today.

“The next secretary of defence will have to struggle with the competing demands on our forces while Washington struggles with an extremely challenging fiscal environment,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said.



He said Panetta’s lengthy experience made him the right man for the job. As CIA director since February 2009, Panetta had been “intimately” involved in the most pressing national security issues, Levin said — personally overseeing the manhunt that ended in last month’s covert operation to kill Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda.

During his confirmation hearing, Panetta broadly signaled his alignment with Gates, saying they tended to “walk hand in hand” on many issues. Gates has warned against hasty troop drawdowns in Afghanistan.

Senators of both parties lauded Gates, who is stepping down after four and a half years as Pentagon chief, first under former President George W. Bush and then Obama.

Debate over Afghanistan

While there was no argument about Panetta’s qualifications, his confirmation did produce Senate debate on Afghanistan.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said the United States could not afford the war any longer as it “drowns in a sea of debt.” Manchin urged Obama to “end the scope of our current mission well before 2014,” when the lead in Afghanistan’s security is due to be turned over to Afghan forces.

“I believe it is time for President Obama to begin a substantial and responsible reduction of our military presence in Afghanistan,” Manchin told the Senate. “I believe it is time for us to rebuild America, not Afghanistan.”

Senator John McCain called Manchin’s comments isolationist, while fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said it was important not to leave faster than Afghan security forces are able to fight militants without the help of US troops.

Panetta told Congress he would ensure fiscal discipline in the US military, saying the days of “unlimited” defence budgets were over.

Panetta was budget director for former President Bill Clinton and helped shape decisions that led to budget surpluses of the late 1990s, Levin said. Panetta is also a former member of Congress and once chaired the House budget committee.

Decades ago, Panetta headed the Office of Civil Rights in the administration of Republican President Richard Nixon. But he won election to the House of Representatives as a Democrat and worked for Democratic administrations after that.

Pentagon proposes huge sale of warplanes to Saudis

The Obama administration is seeking a go-ahead from Congress to sell up to $60 billion worth of sophisticated warplanes to Saudi Arabia and could add another $30 billion worth of naval arms in a deal designed to counter the rise of Iran as a regional power.

The deal would apparently represent the largest single U.S. arms sale ever approved. It would allow Saudi Arabia, the most militarily advanced of the Arab Gulf states and one of the richest countries in the world, to buy top-line U.S.-made helicopters and fighter jets with ranges that would span the Middle East and beyond.

Unlike some previous sales to Saudi Arabia, this one is not expected to be derailed by opposition in Congress or from U.S. backers of Israel, who have worried in the past about blunting Israel's military edge over its Arab neighbors.



Pentagon proposes huge sale of warplanes to Saudis

Iran is now seen by Israel, the Gulf Arab states and the West as a significant and unpredictable threat that has changed the old calculus of the region's balance of power.

The U.S. is realigning its defense policies in the Persian Gulf as Iran improves the range and accuracy of missiles and other weapons that could threaten Israel or U.S. allies in Europe. Besides the Saudi deal, the U.S. has pending or proposed arms sales to Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, and has repositioned some U.S. forces and military assets around the Gulf.

The Pentagon plans to notify Congress of the proposed Saudi sale within about a week, spokesman Col. David Lapan said Monday. Lapan would not confirm details of the Saudi shopping list pending congressional notification, but two senior defense officials said it includes up to 84 new F-15 fighter jets and three types of helicopters including the sleek Black Hawk and the missile-toting Apache.

The Saudi sale has been in the works for months, and U.S. officials have acknowledged its rough outline for months. Full details of the numbers and types of aircraft were reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday.

The defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Congress has not yet seen the entire proposal, said the Pentagon expects that Saudi Arabia would initially select about $30 billion worth of aircraft. Approval of the larger proposal would give the kingdom room to buy more warplanes later.

Congress could ask for changes or try to attach strings. U.S. and Israeli officials said they expect some members of Congress will object strongly to the sale, but not enough to block it.

Separately, the Pentagon is considering an additional request to sell up to roughly $30 billion in advanced naval technology to Saudi Arabia. The defense officials said that plan was still in the preliminary planning stage and would not come before Congress for months. It could include new patrol ships to defend Saudi coastal waters and counter the growing naval capability of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards.

The sales acknowledges the shift in U.S. and Israeli security priorities in the Gulf region, defense analyst Anthony Cordesman wrote recently.

"Strong U.S. security ties to Saudi Arabia offer Israel a far better alternative than Saudi Arabia turning to European or other suppliers and questioning U.S. support if it faces a crisis with Iran," Cordesman wrote in a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis.

The Obama administration has repeatedly assured Israel that it is committed to protecting the Jewish state's military advantage, said Jonathan Peled, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

"We have had a close, consistent dialogue about it," and Israel accepts the U.S. rationale for the sale "even though we are not thrilled about it," Peled said.

U.S. and other diplomats said Defense Secretary Robert Gates laid out the reasoning behind the proposed Saudi sale during meetings with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in recent months.

Washington plans to counterbalance the sales to Arab nations with $30 billion in military assistance to Israel over 10 years. Israel is buying about 20 advanced American F-35 fighter jets worth $4 billion, to be funded by U.S. military aid to the country.

"At the core of our policy is making sure that there is stability in the region and part of that stability is making sure that Israel has what it needs to be able to provide for its own security," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Monday. "So the United States would do nothing that would upset the current balance in the region."


               

       

Pentagon's warning to defiant WikiLeaks over new release of secret Afghan documents

'Irresponsible': Julian Assange, whose WikiLeaks website is preparing to release a further 15,000 sensitive files on the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan

The next leak of secret Afghan war documents being planned by the WikiLeaks website will be even more damaging than thousands already published, the Pentagon has warned.

The U.S. military believes it has identified the additional 15,000 classified files that WikiLeaks has vowed to release, said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

He would not identify the documents but stressed their exposure would be even more damaging to U.S. security and the war effort than the initial release of 76,000 war files.





Danger: Military chiefs warn Coalition troops, such as these British soldiers patrol in Kabul, could be at risk because of the leaks

Last month, WikiLeaks was accused of endangering the lives of soldiers and informants in the field after it published online the majority of an archive of 90,000 classified US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.

The extraordinary disclosure, which prompted a witch-hunt to find the insider who leaked the files, was claimed by some to expose human rights abuses across the Nato-led campaign.

The Pentagon demanded that WikiLeaks refrain from publishing any more secret data.

But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaking via videolink to London's Frontline Club, said he had no intention of withholding the sensitive documents in his possession.

He gave no specific time frame for their release, but said his organisation was about halfway through those 15,000 or so secret files previously held back from publication.

'We're about 7,000 reports in,' he said, adding that he would definitely publish them.

There was no indication as to whether he would give the documents to The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel - as he did before - or simply publish them on his website.

Assange is under pressure from U.S. authorities who have thrown the resources of the military and the FBI into investigating the source of his scoop.
The Pentagon has a task force of about 100 people reading the leaked documents to assess the damage done and working, for instance, to alert Afghans who might be identified by name and now could be in danger.

Other governments have also reportedly been urged to look into Assange and his international network of activists, but it is not clear how aggressive the U.S. has been in pursuing Assange.

Reporters Without Borders tonight criticised the planned leak of more documents, saying WikiLeaks was showing 'incredible irresponsibility'.

The international media watchdog said that while the whistleblower group had often played a useful role, revealing the identity of Afghan informants 'is highly dangerous'.

Assange acknowledged that some of the criticisms levelled at his group were legitimate.

But he also said many were parroting the Pentagon's attacks instead of focusing on the content of the reports themselves.

Pentagon to shut military command, cut jobs

The Pentagon, trying to free up cash in the face of a yawning US deficit, unveiled a series of cost-cutting measures tomorrow that will shed thousands of jobs and shut down an entire military command.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the shakeup would show Congress that the Pentagon would spend tax dollars wisely during tough economic times and address long-standing concerns about wasteful expenditure.

But Gates (picture) warned in some of his strongest language yet against any future effort to actually cut overall defence spending, which is still growing, but at a much slower rate than it did in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks.





“My greatest fear is that in economic tough times that people will see the defence budget as the place to solve the nation’s deficit problems,” Gates said.

“As I look around the world and see a more unstable world, more failed and failing states, countries that are investing heavily in their militaries ... I think that would be disastrous.”

The US budget gap hit a record US$1.41 trillion (RM4.5 trillion) in fiscal 2009 and is poised to grow wider this year, unnerving many Americans grappling with unemployment at a lofty 9.5 per cent.

But many of the proposed cuts are also almost certain to upset members of Congress, who face the potential loss of jobs in their home districts in an election year.

Beyond US fiscal constraints, Pentagon officials are also mindful that their budget will come under increased scrutiny as the United States winds down the war in Iraq. President Barack Obama has announced plans to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan starting in July 2011, conditions permitting.

Gates said it was important not to repeat past mistakes where economic troubles or “the winding down of a military campaign leads to steep and unwise reductions in defence.”

“If you were to graph the defence budget going back the last 40 or 50 years, it would look like the EKG of a fibrillating heart,” he said.

“What we need is modest, sustainable growth over a prolonged period of time that allows us to make sensible investment decisions.”

Pentagon officials declined to say how much the measures would save exactly but described them as part of a previously announced effort to free up more than US$100 billion to sustain US forces and upgrade its arsenal over the next five years.

The cost-cutting initiatives include scaling back the number of generals across the US military and slashing funds for Defence Department contractors by 10 per cent each year for the next three years — a potentially massive reduction involving thousands of people.

Obama, in a statement, praised the announcement as part of Gates’ efforts to “reform the way the Pentagon does business.”

“The funds saved will help us sustain the current force structure and make needed investments in modernisation in a fiscally responsible way,” Obama said.

Gates also asked the armed forces to identify US military bases for closure and said he was shutting down the US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), which has 2,800 US military and civilian staff and about 3,000 contractors.

Four-star General Ray Odierno, who is now overseeing the drawdown in Iraq, was slated to assume the helm of JFCOM after he leaves Baghdad in September.

“I told Ray that his assignment at JFCOM is essentially the same as his assignment in Iraq, and that is working himself out of a job,” Gates joked.

Senator Jim Webb, one of Obama’s Democrats and a prominent member of the Senate’s armed services committee, was critical of the effort to close down JFCOM, which is based in his home state of Virginia.

“It goes without saying that we should achieve efficiency in our nation’s defence budget,” Webb said.

“However doing so at the expense of the command that is leading the charge for the future of our military doctrine and training would be a step backward and could be harmful to the capabilities of the finest military in the world.”

Pentagon shooter had a history of mental illness-Pentagon shooter John Bedell's parents warned cops

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The man who opened fire in front of the Pentagon had a history of mental illness and had become so erratic that his parents reached out to local authorities weeks ago with a warning that he was unstable and might have a gun, authorities said Friday.

It's still unclear why John Patrick Bedell opened fire Thursday at the Pentagon entrance, wounding two police officers before he was fatally shot. The two officers were hospitalized briefly with minor injuries.

Bedell was diagnosed as bipolar, or manic depressive, and had been in and out of treatment programs for years. His psychiatrist, J. Michael Nelson, said Bedell tried to self-medicate with marijuana, inadvertently making his symptoms more pronounced.

"Without the stabilizing medication, the symptoms of his disinhibition, agitation and fearfullness complicated the lack of treatment," Nelson said.

His parents reported him missing Jan. 4, a day after a Texas Highway Patrol officer stopped him for speeding in Texarkana. Bedell told the highway patrolman he was heading to the East Coast, and began acting strangely — sitting on his knees by the side of the highway and turning off his cell phone when it would ring.

Bedell said it was his mother calling, prompting the patrolman to answer the phone and talk briefly with her. Family friend Reb Monaco said Kaye Bedell asked the officer to take him to a mental health facility, but that the son refused.

The patrolman let Bedell go after issuing a speeding ticket and a citation for possession of drug paraphernalia, including a pipe and a green plastic box with marijuana residue.

The next day, Kaye told deputies in California that her son had no reason to travel to the East Coast because he had no friends or family there and she and her husband were worried about his mental state, San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill said.

Hill also said Bedell's parents found an e-mail from their son that indicated he had made a $600 purchase from a shooting range in the Sacramento area that could have been a gun or ammunition.

The 36-year-old Bedell returned to his parent's home Jan. 18, telling them "not to ask any questions" about where he had been. But he left after that, and his parents didn't know where he went.

Little is known about his trip east, but authorities know he spent time in Reno, where Washoe County Sheriff Mike Haley said he was arrested on Feb. 1 with two ounces of marijuana in his car but no weapons.

The Bedell family put out a statement Friday saying they were "devastated as a family by the news."

"We may never know why he made this terrible decision," the statement said. "One thing is clear though — his actions were caused by an illness and not a defective character."

Investigators were trying to unravel a bizarre series of Internet postings that suggested Bedell was fascinated with conspiracy theories, computer programming, libertarian economics and the science of warfare.

Curiously, Bedell also proposed in 2004 that the Pentagon fund his own research on smart weapons. The 28-page proposal outlined his idea for DNA nanotechnology research that might "provide significant new capabilities for the Department of Defense and the individual warfighter."

That document is the first tangible link to surface connecting Bedell and the Pentagon.

On the day of the attack, Bedell left his green, 12-year-old Toyota in a nearby mall parking garage.

The six-foot tall, blue-eyed software devotee approached the Pentagon entrance Thursday evening wearing a jacket, dress shirt and pants, seeming like any other end-of-the-day commuter.

Bedell, the officials say, opened fire with a 9 mm handgun just five feet from the nearest officer, Marvin Carraway. Fellow officer Jeffery Amos ran out of a nearby guard booth to confront Bedell, as did a third, unidentified officer. All three officers gave chase and fired at Bedell, who was struck in the head and left arm.

Witness Dan Namisi said he had just emerged from the Metro station, headed for a bus home, when he heard a "pop." The Uganda native hit the ground, and the next thing he knew, officers swarmed over him and put handcuffs on him.

Namisi says he was searched repeatedly, but officers didn't ask him many questions during the three hours they held him. He said he may have attracted attention because he cut one of his hands when he dropped to the ground and the hand was bloody.

"I'm still very traumatized by it," Namisi said in a telephone interview. "In my experience they don't put you in a police car unless you're in trouble."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday called the two wounded officers to express his "appreciation for their service, their bravery and their professionalism," said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell.

Gates was not at the Pentagon at the time of the shooting because he was attending meetings at the White House.

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings.

Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself.

The shooting resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in return fire.


Alease Turner, far right, with Metro, welcomes people to a shuttle bus headed for the Pentagon at the Pentagon City Metro stop in Arlington, Va., Friday, March 5, 2010, after a shooting at the Pentagon Metro stop on Thursday temporarily closed down the stop.


In this image from video provided by WJLA-TV, a person on a stretcher is loaded into an ambulance outside the Pentagon Metro Station Thursday, March 4, 2010, in Washington. A gunman opened fire at the subway entrance to Pentagon complex Thursday evening, wounding two Pentagon police officers, a spokesman said


A Pentagon police office stands guard after a shooting at the Pentagon in Washington, Thursday, March 4, 2010. A gunman coolly drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at the teeming subway entrance to the Pentagon complex, wounding two police officers before being shot and critically wounded, officials said


Pentagon police patrol the Pentagon after a shooting in Washington, Thursday, March 4, 2010. A gunman coolly drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at the teeming subway entrance to the Pentagon complex Thursday evening, wounding two police officers before being shot and critically wounded, officials said.


People board a shuttle bus headed for the Pentagon at the Pentagon City Metro stop in Arlington, Va., Friday, March 5, 2010, after a shooting at the Pentagon Metro stop on Thursday temporarily closed down the stop.


In this image from video provided by WJLA-TV, a person on a stretcher is loaded into an ambulance outside the Pentagon Metro Station Thursday, March 4, 2010, in Washington. A gunman opened fire at the subway entrance to Pentagon complex Thursday evening, wounding two Pentagon police officers, a spokesman said.



Alease Turner, right, with Metro, welcomes people to a shuttle bus headed for the Pentagon at the Pentagon City Metro stop in Arlington, Va., Friday, March 5, 2010, after a shooting at the Pentagon Metro stop on Thursday temporarily closed down the stop.






This undated handout provided by the FBI shows John Patrick Bedell. Bedell who was killed in a shootout with Pentagon police on Thursday, drove cross-country and arrived outside the military headquarters armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday, March 5, 2010.


Pentagon Police Chief Richard Keevill speaks with reporters about a shooting at the Pentagon, Thursday, March 4, 2010, in Washington. A gunman coolly drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at the teeming subway entrance to the Pentagon complex, wounding two police officers before being shot and critically wounded, officials said.


Metro supervisor William Rheams, right, directs customers to their buses at the Pentagon City Metro stop in Arlington, Va., Friday, March 5, 2010. Shuttles were started to the Pentagon after a shooting at the Pentagon Metro stop Thursday, which temporarily closed down the stop.

Map locates shooting at a subway entrance at the Pentagon in Washington


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Man dies after shooting Pentagon security officers

The bus station outside of the Pentagon in Washington is seen after a shooting,


A police officer gets out of his car at a roadblock around the Pentagon in Washington


Pentagon Police Chief Richard Keevill talks to the media outside of the Pentagon in Washington,


A police officer directs traffic at a roadblock around the Pentagon in Washington,


Pentagon Police Chief Richard Keevill talks to the media outside of the Pentagon in Washington


A man apparently planning to enter the Pentagon walked up to police officers guarding the doors, pulled out a gun and opened fire Thursday evening, shooting two officers before being mortally wounded himself.

The gunfight took place about 6:40 p.m., yards from the entrance to the giant Defense Department installation as workers were heading home, police said. Employees were ordered back to their offices and the building was locked down for a time, with no one allowed in or out.

"He walked up, very cool. He had no distress, no emotion in his face," said Richard S. Keevill, chief of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, the civilian police agency that guards the five-sided building. "When he reached in his pocket, they assumed he was going to get his [building] pass out. He came out with a gun."

The gunman began firing, grazing the two officers, who returned fire. The officers and the shooter were taken to a local hospital. The officers' injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Early Friday, the D.C. medical examiner's office said the gunman had died, and it identified him as John Patrick Bedell, 36, the Associated Press said. He was reportedly from California.

The area just outside the Pentagon has a lot of commuters, serving as a transit hub for the Washington Metro railway system and many of the region's buses. The Metro station is one of the busiest in the Washington-area system, with thousands of commuters passing through, transferring from trains to buses.

The Metro entrance is just outside the doors of the Pentagon, meaning anyone can approach the building from the Metro. A force of officers guards the entrance during working hours, and people who work inside must flash badges before entering. Those without badges are ushered to a metal detector to be searched, then are escorted inside.

Officials did not identify the officers or, initially, the armed man.

"We have layers of security, and it worked," Keevill said. "He never got inside the building to hurt anyone."

The Associated Press said investigators were speaking with a second man who might have accompanied the shooter.

Keevill said the gunman was believed to be an American citizen. Officials refused to speculate on his motives.

"We just do not have enough information on the suspect to make those determinations this evening," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

But Whitman agreed with Keevill that the gunman was trying to get inside.

"He was obviously trying to gain entrance," Whitman said.

Police said no words were exchanged between the gunman and the officers before shots began flying, sending commuters screaming and scrambling for cover, witnesses told local television news stations.

Keevill said the officers were wearing protective vests. He would not describe the assailant's clothing. Keevill would not say whether the man was a Defense Department employee.

Police said a third officer was involved in the incident, but did not say in what way.

President Obama was closely following the case, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

The incident comes about four months after a gunman opened fire at Ft. Hood Army base in Texas, killing 13 and wounding dozens. The suspect in that case is an Army psychiatrist with links to radical Islam; he is in custody.

The only Pentagon police officer to die in the line of duty was James M. Feltis III, who in 2005 was struck by a stolen car driven by a man fleeing police.

Two Pentagon security officers were wounded on Thursday when a gunman shot them at the entrance to the giant U.S. Defense Department headquarters beside a commuter rail station, officials said.

The gunman, who was also shot and wounded, was apparently trying to gain entry to the building, Pentagon police chief Richard Keevill told reporters.

"He walked up very cool," Keevill said. "He had no real emotion on his face."

The Washington Post, citing two federal law enforcement sources, identified the shooting suspect as John Patrick Bedell, 36.

Instead of presenting a Pentagon pass, which is required to enter the Defense Department headquarters, the gunman pulled out a gun, Keevill said. Three Pentagon security officers exchanged fire with the suspect, and two were wounded.

The underground Metro station is adjacent to the main entrance of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington.

The security officers' wounds did not appear to be life-threatening, Pentagon officials said in a statement, adding that the suspect was in custody but his condition was not known.

All entrances to the five-sided building were closed after the shooting at 6:40 p.m. during the evening rush hour. The entrances were later reopened, except the one adjacent to the Metro station.