Leon Panetta will be in Spokane this week. Former secretary of defense says U.S. leaders face stark choices

SEASIDE, Calif. – The son of Italian immigrants, Leon Panetta grew from humble beginnings on the shores of Monterey Bay to become one of the most influential public servants of his generation.

The walls of his California office are decorated with presidential letters, photos of him visiting with foreign dignitaries, and other mementos that commemorate decades of public service. For decades, his work has earned praise from across the political spectrum.

In many ways, Panetta’s story is one that is uniquely American.

“I used to ask my dad, ‘Why did he come to all of that distance to a strange land?’ ” Panetta recently told The Spokesman-Review. “And I’ve never forgotten his response, which was, ‘Your mother and I believed we could give our children a better life in this country, the American Dream.’ And I really had that opportunity to live the American dream.”

Known for his wit, Panetta served in Congress for 16 years, worked in two presidential administrations, and is now working to teach the next generation of America’s leaders.

But in recent years, he’s seen cause for concern.

“Today, and it’s gotten worse in the last 20 years, the divisions, the partisanship, the party politics, putting party over country, the inability to work together, the inability to get things done, the inability to listen to one another, to compromise, to find consensus, it’s really hurting our democracy,” Panetta said. “And it worries me.”

A student of history, the decline of American leadership is of great concern to Panetta. The country, he said, faces an inflection point, and must soon a choose a path.

“I believe we are at a point in our country’s history where we can go one of two directions,” he said. “We can either be a country in renaissance, an America in renaissance. Or we can be an America in decline.”

There’s reason for optimism, Panetta said, pointing to a strong economy, an abundance or creativity and innovation, and a strong commitment by some to “keeping America strong.”

“And the answer to those questions is going to be: what is the quality of leadership that we’re going to have?” Panetta said.

But he is not without pessimism. In the hourlong interview, Panetta criticized leaders in both parties. While he didn’t name President Donald Trump, he spoke at length about the deterioration of America’s political discourse.

“If we are a country that lives by our fears and our anger and our divisions, if we continue to discriminate against one another, if we continue to ignore the rule of law, if we continue not to tell the truth, then we’ll be a country in decline and we’ll go the way of past empires,” Panetta said.

Past empires, Panetta said, tend to take a latter path, a route that leads to the steady decline of civilization, governed by leaders who were unable, or unwilling, to rise to the occasion.

“And so, they tried to blunder their way through,” Panetta said. “And by blundering, they paid the price of bringing their empire to an end. And I think that could happen here in America.”

Throughout his career, he has received bipartisan praise for his work at each stop, and on Thursday, will be the recipient of the Thomas S. Foley Award for Distinguished Public Service from the Washington State University’s Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service.

During a wide-ranging interview at his office in California, The Spokesman-Review talked to Panetta about his career, public policy and the need for increased civic education and engagement from Americans.

“The only way that we’re going to change today is not from the top down, I wish that we could,” Panetta said. “But one of the problems is that there are no leaders like a Tom Foley. There’s no leaders like a Bob Dole. And so, because of that, it’s much tougher to be able to get the type of consensus you need to get things done. And that’s why I think there’s growing concern about whether or not our democracy can survive.”

Early political career

Panetta’s start in Washington came in the office of Sen. Thomas Kuchel, a moderate Republican from California known for working with Democrats to accomplish legislative priorities. The senator, Panetta said, “had a deep sense of what’s important about public service to our country.”

One day, while serving as Kuchel’s legislative assistant, the senator gathered his staff to warn them of the influence those in Washington would try to impose. Speaking to his staff, Kuchel told them of their duty to serve the interests of California and the country and told them to “always remember that in the morning you have to get up and look at yourself in the mirror.

“And I never forgot those words,” Panetta said. “Because it basically meant to me that you’ve got to operate with integrity, you’ve got to do what you believe is right.”

Once elected to Congress himself, Panetta soon developed a relationship with Foley. The pair bonded over their experiences at private Jesuit universities, Panetta a graduate of Santa Clara and Foley a graduate of Gonzaga.

Panetta was soon appointed to the agriculture committee, a committee Foley chaired.

“I could not have had a better person to learn from about how the system should work, how we could produce good legislation, how we can work together,” Panetta said. “I really saw in him someone whose primary interest was serving the public good, doing the job that he was elected to do, which was to serve his constituents and the American people. And he was that kind of guy.”

Foley served in Congress throughout each of Panetta’s eight terms, where he represented a district that hugs the coastline south of the San Francisco Bay and includes large swaths of prime agricultural land. During this time, Foley climbed into leadership, serving as majority whip, majority leader, and eventually, speaker of the house.

“In every job, and every responsibility that he assumed, he really rose to the occasion for one fundamental reason,” Panetta said. “He always kept his eye on the target, which was being able to produce good legislation that will help better the lives of people. That was his goal.”

Work to cut federal deficit

Government spending has dominated headlines in recent months. As he returned to office, President Donald Trump established the “Department of Government Efficiency Service,” an agency tasked with weeding out spending the president believes is either wasteful or otherwise a misuse of federal funds.

The issue of government overspending, though, isn’t new. For nearly three decades, regardless of the political party of the man in the White House, the federal government has spent more money than it collected.

“It’s a very difficult time right now because unfortunately, neither Democrats nor Republicans want to make the tough decisions that you have to make if you’re going to discipline the budget,” Panetta said.

The rising deficits of the 1980s and ’90s, Panetta said, brought both sides of the aisle together. While in Congress, Panetta worked with the George H.W. Bush White House to craft a deficit plan that called for equal parts in savings and tax increases. The plan, which received bipartisan support in Congress, was “not easy” to pass.

President Bill Clinton was the last president to adopt a balanced budget, with the yearly deficit declining each year of the first term of his presidency. During his second term, the country produced a budget surplus each year. Panetta served in two roles in Clinton’s first term, first as the director of the Office of Management and Budget and then as Clinton’s chief of staff. As management and budget director, Panetta worked to craft a similar package to reduce the deficit.

Part of the issue, Panetta said, is a failure by Congress to pass budget resolutions, a blueprint that guides spending over the year that he believes leads to more disciplined spending.

“The Tom Foleys of the world made it clear that we did that because it was what we were supposed to do,” Panetta said.

As they regained power, Republicans in Congress signaled that one of their top priorities would be passing a new suite of tax cuts, a move that could add more than $5 trillion to the national debt, and cause long-term problems, Panetta said .

“We’re worried about tariffs, let me tell you, we have to worry about the debt as well,” Panetta said. “Because that will undermine our economy.”

The Panetta Institute

After leaving the Clinton Administration Panetta returned to California, where he co-founded the Panetta Institute for Public Policy at California State University, Monterey Bay alongside his wife, Sylvia. The center, located in Seaside, California, teaches students on government, politics and public policy.

“We really wanted to have young people understand that they really can fulfill their role to our country through public service. We want to inspire them to lives in public service, because of what both of us felt about the importance of serving this country,” Panetta said.

But in recent years, Panetta has seen cause for concern, including in the results of a yearly poll the center conducts to gauge student concerns. The most recent poll, Panetta said, showed that a majority of students did not believe they could achieve a better life than their parents.

Another concern, Panetta said, is a decline in education students receive in how the country’s government functions, something the center looks to instill in it’s participants.

“What we try to do here is to basically build that next generation of leaders. It’s not easy; it would help if there were more models of statesmanship in Washington, people like Tom Foley,” Panetta said. “Because I think if we had more people who had integrity, and believed in the rule of law, and believed that our democracy could in fact deal with the challenges we face, young people would be more inspired to get involved in our democracy.”

Director of Central Intelligence Agency

Panetta’s return to the nation’s capital as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency was seen as somewhat of a surprise at the time of his selection. The role, however, piqued his interest partly due to a renewed effort to track down one of the world’s most wanted men.

Following 9/11, the attack’s mastermind Osama Bin Laden had seemingly disappeared. Officials believed they came close in December 2001, as they launched an operation in Tora Bora in the hills of Afghanistan.

The operation failed to capture or kill Bin Laden, and information on his whereabouts had waned in the years since. Most people, Panetta said, believed that Bin Laden was either deep in hiding or dead.

As he assumed the role, President Barack Obama “made it very clear” to Panetta that finding Bin Laden would be a focus.

With a renewed effort, intelligence officials made a breakthrough as they tracked the couriers they believed Bin Laden used to send and receive messages. Using drones, intelligence officials tracked the couriers to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a building that stood out due to its tall walls and “a mysterious family on the third floor that never came out.”

With around-the-clock surveillance, officials worked to identify the building’s residents. At times, Panetta said, an “elderly person” would walk in circles in the compound’s yard before quickly returning inside, though intelligence officials could not provide a closer look at the man’s identity.

“They could not get that clearer picture. So, here we are, we’re going to gather intelligence and we’re working other angles. We think we have a pretty good case to make that Bin Laden is located there. But we never had 100%,” Panetta said. “We never had 100%.”

As planning for a potential operation into the compound began, some senior officials were still unsure whether to proceed. Panetta recalled telling Obama a piece of advice he had used throughout his career when faced with a difficult decision: If the average citizen knew what you knew, what would they do?

“If I told the average citizen that we had the best evidence on the location of Bin Laden since Tora Bora, I think that citizen would say, ‘You’ve gotta go,’ ” Panetta told Obama. “And that’s what I’m telling you, Mr. President, you’ve gotta go.”

The following morning, Panetta received orders to proceed. In the early morning hours of May 2, 2011, two Black Hawk helicopters carrying teams of Navy Seals traveled 150 miles to the compound in a mission known as Operation Neptune Spear.

As military personnel entered the compound, gunfire quickly erupted, before silence. The silence, Panetta said, was “the longest 20 minutes of my life.” William McRaven, commander of the United States Special Operations Command, soon came on the radio to announce they had positively identified Geronimo, Bin Laden’s code name.

Bin Laden, the man who orchestrated an attack that killed nearly 3,000 citizens, was dead.

“It really restored faith in our ability to accomplish a mission that sent an important message to the world that nobody attacks us and gets away with it,” Panetta said.

Military career

Fresh out of law school, Panetta joined the armed forces as an officer in the Army Military Intelligence Corps., where he watched “people from everywhere in the world come together to accomplish a common mission and work together to accomplish that mission and really give back to the country.”

“And that was a great inspiration. And then there was a young president at the time who said ‘ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,’ ” Panetta said. “That’s really what inspired me to get involved.”

As he nominated Panetta to serve as the secretary of defense in April 2011, Obama called him a “great public servant of our time.” Panetta, Obama said, “knows how to lead,” highlighting his work in the Clinton Administration and in Congress.

“Just as Leon earned the trust and respect of our intelligence professionals at the CIA, by listening to them and fighting fiercely on their behalf, I know he’ll do the same for our armed forces and their families.”

The selection drew widespread support and praise in Congress, and Panetta was soon confirmed to the post in a unanimous vote.

In the role, Panetta oversaw nearly 2 million military personnel and traveled to battlefields throughout the world.

“And I met with young people and I always told myself, ‘These are young people who are willing to fight and die for the country,’ ” Panetta said. “And that always gave me a tremendous amount of inspiration about the importance of serving this country.”