Leon E. Panetta, in His Own Words

In two extensive interviews, Leon E. Panetta talked about his long career in Washington, his role as the C.I.A. director who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the challenges confronting him as President Obama’s new secretary of defense

On the unsolicited letter that first brought him to Washington in 1966:

¶“I wrote Joe Califano, who was at that time an assistant to Lyndon Johnson. And it wasn’t that I knew Califano, but I figured his name was Califano, and I was Panetta, and maybe he might, you know, help another Italian. So I wrote him out of the blue, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t call me and say, you know, ‘What are you interested in doing?’ ”

¶On learning that President Richard M. Nixon was firing him as director of the Office of Civil Rights:

¶A newspaper “had an article that I was resigning. And I went to the secretary, Secretary [Robert] Finch, and said — you know, and there had been other rumors that I was resigning or this kind of thing — and I just went to him and said, you know, I’m denying that. And he said, ‘No, no, go ahead. It’s just another story.’ But then Ron Ziegler, at a press conference at the White House, was asked the question, you know, did Panetta resign? And he confirmed that I resigned.”

¶On the raid that killed Bin Laden:

¶“There were a hell of a lot of risks. You’re going in, you know, 150 miles into Pakistan. Would the helicopters be detected? What if they go down? What if the Pakistanis open fire? What if you’re fighting a war in the middle of Pakistan — you know, what do you do, how do you rescue our guys? So there were a lot of risks involved.”

¶On voting against wars as a congressman in the 1980s and 1990s, but being more hawkish now:

¶“Some of the wars that I voted against, I didn’t think that that was — you know, that they were not — they did not make the case. But after 9/11, there was no question in my mind that we were dealing with a group that attacked America, killed a lot of Americans, and that it was important for us to take action.”

¶On his position on the Iraq war before it began:

¶“What I was concerned about is whether or not it was simply, you know, a political judgment to take advantage of the moment, as opposed to going after Al Qaeda. That concerned me. On the other hand, I have to tell you that I had been through the same briefings, I’m sure, that Bush got, that talked about weapons of mass destruction. And, you know, you always worry about those kinds of weapons being in the hands of the wrong people.”

¶On Iraq today:

¶“I’m on the other end of this thing now, and I want to make sure that Iraq becomes a, you know, stable country in a very important region. So that becomes a big job I’ve got here now, is to make sure that regardless of how we got into this war, that we get out of it with stability and with a sense that we’ve done the right thing.”

¶On his disputes with Dennis C. Blair, then the director of national intelligence:

¶“There was always an effort to kind of control the operations at C.I.A., as opposed to coordinating. So that bothered me, because the relationship was very demoralizing at C.I.A. Almost anything that we would do, you know, would run counter to D.N.I., and it was just creating an additional conflict that frankly was not healthy.”

¶On whether he has made up with Representative Nancy Pelosi after their dispute, when she was the Democratic speaker of the House, on whether the C.I.A. had misled her in the past:

¶“Nancy keeps telling me to run for president! No, Nancy and I are fine. I mean, we — as you know, that’s a long — that’s an old relationship.”

¶On whether he cursed when protesting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s decision to reopen investigations into C.I.A. officers:

¶“Very possible. I tend to do that.”