Leon Panetta, who has no direct intelligence gathering or analysis experience, is set to become chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, with a powerful US Senate Committee voting unanimously on his nomination by President Barack Obama.
The Senate Intelligence Committee voted on Wednesday to send the nomination of Panetta as CIA Director to the full Senate for confirmation. If approved, Panetta, 70, would become the oldest person to head the US spy agency.
Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein hoped that Panetta would mark a "new beginning" for the CIA.
"He has the integrity, the drive and the judgement to ensure that the CIA fulfills its mission of producing information critical to our national security, without sacrificing our national values," she said.
Panetta was an eight-term Congressman from central California, who chaired the powerful House Budget Committee
before moving over to the Clinton White House as the Budget Director and later as the President's Chief of Staff.
He left government in 1997 and returned to California, where he and his wife created the Leon and Sylvia Panetta
Institute for Public Policy, a non-profit foundation.
