FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

President-elect Obama and his staff defended Obama’s pick for CIA director yesterday. Word of the nomination apparently leaked before the transition team notified senior senators.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, Dianne Feinstein said she learned about it from the New York Times and made it very clear she was not happy about not being notified. Incoming Vice President Joe Biden called the lack of notification a mistake and today Feinstein said she plans to support Panetta’s nomination.

But it’s not just how it happened that’s a problem. Leon Panetta is an outsider. Critics are quick to point out that he has no intelligence experience.

Obama was on damage control apologizing for not letting Feinstein know in advance. He said Panetta will change the practices at the CIA that have tarnished the agency. He also pointed out Panetta had to evaluate intelligence daily during his 2 years in the White House during the Clinton Administration.

Whether to pick someone from within the agency or an outsider for the post is not a new dilemma for an incoming President.

Many past CIA directors have risen through the ranks within the agency– but President Kennedy picked an outsider for the job, without spelling the end of the CIA.

Here’s my question to you: Should the director of the CIA come from within the agency or be installed from outside?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

No testimony without immunity. That’s the word to Congress from the former CIA official who’s said to have ordered the destruction of tapes showing controversial interrogations.

Jose Rodriguez was asked to testify before the House Intelligence Committee next week, but his lawyer wants to play “Let’s Make a Deal” first.

Several high-ranking officials inside the Bush Administration, including the President’s counsel, Harriet Miers, as well as a federal judge ordered the tapes not to be destroyed. They reportedly showed two key al Qaeda terror suspects being subjected to controversial interrogation techniques including waterboarding, which is considered torture by many.

Another CIA official, John Rizzo, who opposed the destruction of the tapes, has agreed to testify freely before the committee. The CIA, both houses of Congress and the Justice Department have all launched their own investigations.

Meanwhile, in a ruling yesterday, that U.S. district judge put off an inquiry into allegations that the Bush administration defied his order to preserve evidence which may have included those tapes.

Here’s my question to you: The former head of the CIA’s covert service, Jose Rodriguez, wants immunity in the destroyed tapes investigation. Should he get it?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

President Bush doesn’t want Congress and the courts investigating those destroyed CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations. What a surprise.

Nonetheless, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee is pledging to move forward with his panel’s probe. Congressman Peter Hoekstra says it’s important to hold the CIA accountable, adding, “You’ve got a community that’s incompetent. They are arrogant. And they are political.”

On Friday, the CIA asked the Intelligence Committee to halt its investigation, saying that inquiry would interfere with an ongoing probe by the Justice Department in collaboration with the CIA.

This after Attorney General Michael Mukasey rejected demands from Congress for information about the Justice Department’s inquiry. He said turning over the information might be seen as bowing to “political influence.”

Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman agrees with Hoekstra that congressional inquiries should continue. She says parallel investigations have happened many times, adding, “It smells like the cover-up of the cover-up.”

And, it’s not just about Congress. The Justice Department is also telling a federal judge not to start his own inquiry. U.S District Judge Henry Kennedy had ordered the administration back in June 2005 to preserve evidence regarding detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. But the administration insists the CIA tapes weren’t covered by that order because the detainees weren’t being held at Gitmo. They were being held at a secret CIA prison overseas.

Here’s my question to you: Why would the Bush administration ask the courts and Congress to stay out of investigating those destroyed CIA tapes?

Interested to know which ones made it on air:

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FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

A former CIA officer says that waterboarding has “probably saved lives” but he now considers the tactic torture.

John Kiriakou participated in the capture and questioning of Abu Zabaydah, the first al Qaeda suspect who was waterboarded. Kiriakou says he didn’t witness the waterboarding, but described Abu Zabaydah as defiant and uncooperative until the day it happened. He says after just 35 seconds of waterboarding, the terror suspect broke down and the next day told his American captors he’d tell them whatever they wanted.

Kiriakou says the technique probably disrupted “dozens” of planned al Qaeda attacks, led to the capture of other suspects and indirectly led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed. But now he has mixed feelings about it, telling the Washington Post quote:

“Americans are better than that… Maybe that’s inconsistent, but that’s how I feel. It was an ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we’ve moved beyond that.” unquote.

Meanwhile, CIA chief Michael Hayden is appearing before congressional intelligence committees today and tomorrow to answer questions about the agency’s destruction of those videotapes showing the use of so-called “alternative” interrogation techniques of two al Qaeda suspects.

The New York Times reports that CIA lawyers gave written approval in advance for the destruction in 2005 of hundreds of hours of these videotapes.

Here’s my question to you: Are there any circumstances under which waterboarding or enhanced interrogation techniques are justified?

Interested to know which ones made it on air:

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