Local connection to missing pilot

By Jennifer J. Foster

Auburn, Ala., is making a cameo appearance in the national news today.

CNN.com has a story on that pilot who ditched his plane and parachuted out over central Alabama Monday, leaving the plane to crash near a residential area in the Florida Panhandle. The pilot appeared at a little motel in Harpersville, Ala., and ran into the woods. It seems that he ran to a mini-storage, where he had a motorcycle stashed.

OK ... weird.

But it gets stranger. It appears that this guy was trying to fake his death through this plane stunt because he was being investigated for trading irregularities related to his investment businesses.

That’s where the local connection comes in.

It seems that a fellow pilot—an Auburn resident named Joe Mazzone—is among those allegedly defrauded by the now-missing investment manager, Marcus Schrenker:

Two former commercial pilots named in an Indiana Department of Insurance complaint said Schrenker was a smooth talker who promised steady returns. They trusted him because he came highly recommended by other pilots.

“It was all word of mouth, and when you’re a pilot, you trust. That’s what you do and what you’re used to doing,“ said Joe Mazzone, 57, of Auburn, Alabama. “His modus operandi is, he flies into your city dressed up in a $1,000 suit and sits down with you, buys you lunch, and the next thing you know, he has you on his side, and you move your money to his Heritage Wealth Management.“

Joe also shows up in this AP story about Schrenker’s ties to Delta’s bankruptcy case and shows he’s good with a line, even under stress:

Joe Mazzone, another retired Delta pilot who invested retirement funds with Schrenker before finding out about his past from the deposition in the Delta case, said he likely lost thousands of dollars because of his involvement with Schrenker.

“I would have had to have a lobotomy to do business with this guy if I had known his background,“ said Mazzone, 57.

I’ve worked with Joe Mazzone; he’s a stand-up guy. I hope the U.S. Marshals find Schrenker soon—and that Joe gets his money back.

Obama, Panetta and the CIA

By Jennifer J. Foster

I just wanted to make a comment or two regarding Barack Obama’s nomination of Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

As you know, Panetta is a former chief of staff in the Clinton Administration. Panetta is the latest in a long, long line of former Clinton officials who will be coming back to the West Wing under Obama’s leadership.

The remarkable thing about his nomination to this post is that Panetta, for all his experience in Washington—and it’s extensive—Panetta has no experience whatsoever in the intelligence agency he has now been tapped to lead.

In this time of terrorism and a continuing need to sharpen American intelligence capability throughout the world, why would Obama go with someone like Panetta over someone who has spent a lifetime honing the skill set needed to run the country’s foremost intelligence agency?

The Los Angeles Times ventured a theory in its lead in the story about Panetta’s nomination:

In choosing Leon E. Panetta to be the next CIA director, President-elect Barack Obama appears to have concluded that a spy chief who understands politics may be better equipped to carry out the incoming administration’s national security agenda than one who understands espionage.

The surprise selection of Panetta, a former California congressman and chief of staff to President Clinton, would give Obama a CIA director with loyalty to the White House and an experienced managerial hand to steer the administration away from potential intelligence scandals.

Politics over experience. That’s what that lead says.

And let’s examine that second graph: Is the Times insinuating that with Panetta’s nomination, Obama is anticipating potential intelligence scandals in his administration?

Neither explanation is comforting.

As I alluded to in the previous post, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) chairs the committee that will hear Panetta’s nomination. Obama didn’t bother to check out his pick with her. This isn’t because he didn’t know that doing so is customary. Far from it. He made a calculated decision not to run it by Feinstein, because he probably knew that she would look upon it with disdain.

And she did:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.

“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,“ Feinstein said. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.“

An intelligence professional, running the Central Intelligence Agency?

What a novel idea!

But wait! There’s more!

A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the senator “would have concerns” about a Panetta nomination.

Rockefeller “thinks very highly of Panetta,“ the aide said. “But he’s puzzled by the selection. He has concerns because he has always believed that the director of CIA needs to be someone with significant operational intelligence experience and someone outside the political realm.“

In other words, everyone knows it’s a fool’s errand to put politics over experience when it comes to intelligence. That’s a no-brainer.

I’ll be really interested to see whether Senate Democrats hold up this principle in Panetta’s confirmation hearings. It will be their first real opportunity to stand up to the popular incoming president. But if they don’t—if they cave to politics over experience—will Republicans filibuster to demand an appropriate nominee?

This fight will likely delineate the battlelines between Republicans and Democrats on security and intelligence for at least the first two years of the Obama Administration. Republicans have blown it on fiscal conservatism and small government; strong national defense is one of the last remaining tenets of the GOP where they hold an advantage in public opinion over Democrats.

Democrats now have a chance to prove their claims that they can be tough on security and intelligence. By standing up to Obama’s bad nomination of Panetta, Democrats can take the first step toward stripping Republicans of their dominance in a policy area that is critical in every election.

Will they?

Hillary Clinton before the Senate

By Jennifer J. Foster

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton is appearing right now before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in her capacity as Secretary of State-designate.

It’s been an interesting hearing, even in the first little while.

It was interesting to watch Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) through his question-and-answer period. Kerry made no secret of his desire for the State position; he actively campaigned for it and all but insinuated that he deserved it because of his early support for Barack Obama’s candidacy. It was an extreme disappointment for Kerry when he was passed over—and passed over for a more junior senator who has only a fraction of the time in the Senate that he does. Kerry was less than enthusiastic when asked for his reaction to Clinton’s appointment. But he seems to have chilled out a little since then.

But just a little.

Kerry peppered Clinton with a polite—but definitely pressing—series of questions about the specifics of certain aspects of Obama’s foreign policy, from whether Obama plans to establish embassies in countries where America lacks a diplomatic presence, like Syria, to whether Clinton herself expects to be the administration official engaged in direct diplomacy with Iranian officials on their nuclear program. Clinton declined—politely but firmly—to answer those queries, hewing to the long-established Obama tradition of avoiding specifics when it comes to proposals and policies.

U.S. Sen. Russ Weingold (D-WI) asked Clinton about the role she anticipates State taking in the redeployment of troops in Iraq. Clinton again demurred. Feingold then asked about Darfur and how Clinton saw the Obama Administration getting involved there. Clinton gave a circuitous answer about again “raising the alarm” about Darfur, but remained vague and committed to nothing.

The strange thing about this hearing is that Republicans are asking the soft questions. It’s Democrats who are more sharply questioning the nominee of the Democratic president-to-be.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) opened his question-and-answer period with a surprisingly generous statement to Clinton, thanking her for her service and encouraging her regarding the “travelogue of opportunity” she will preside over as head of State. He asked her a couple of questions about the development function of the State Department. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think they were softball questions set up to give Clinton an opportunity to show off her considerable knowledge of the inner workings of and experience with the department.

This was interesting, because if it’s indicative of the tone of questioning that Clinton will face from Republicans, her confirmation will not only be easily achieved, it may well be near-unanimous.

The only explanation for all this is that Democrats in Congress are getting squeamish about Obama’s positions (like his softening rhetoric on immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq), and Senate Democrats are seeking to send him a signal that he doesn’t have a free pass in their chamber. Senate Democrats are already shaky on the tax cuts he’s pursuing as part of his economic stimulus package, and they couldn’t have been pleased with the precedent Obama set by announcing his nomination of Leon Panetta as CIA director without clearing it first with U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the powerful chairwoman of the committee that will have to confirm Panetta. Obama seems to be proceeding with an almost-cavalier attitude when it comes to Congress, counting on Democrats’ expanded majority in both chambers to shepherd his initiatives to passage.

Knowing their expanded majority will put more pressure on them to produce for their voters, congressional Democrats don’t want to give over that power to a new president—even if he is a Democrat.

You put your Burris in, you keep your Franken out ...

By Jennifer J. Foster

You put your lawyers together and you sue them all about ...

OK, end of the Hokey-Pokey parody.

Just as Roland Burris is celebrating his Senate appointment victory and making preparations to be sworn in to the Senate by Vice President Dick Cheney, the drama in Minnesota concerning that state’s second senator continues to develop.

A week after being certified as the winner of the supercontentious race in which he unseated GOP incumbent U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman by a mere 225 votes, former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Al Franken approached Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty for that much-vaunted certificate of election, which—as we learned last week—is a requirement for membership in the Senate.

Well, also as we learned last week, it’s not really a requirement. I mean, they can just ignore it if they want to, as they did with Burris. But that’s another story.

Anyway, Franken was turned down flat.

The short of it is that Coleman is contesting the results with a lawsuit that contends that more than 1,000 votes were improperly excluded from the recount process. Pawlenty, a Republican, and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat, maintain that state law precludes them from issuing the certificate until all legal matters surrounding the election have been resolved.

Franken’s lawyers say, in effect, that’s poppycock; federal election law entitles Franken to the certificate before Coleman’s lawsuit is resolved. And they’re thinking about—you got it—suing to get the certificate.

So basically you have a lawsuit that’s keeping Franken from getting the certificate, so Franken is threatening a lawsuit to get it.

If I lived in Minnesota, I’d be working on a campaign right now that would be based on little more than a promise not to sue anyone.

I think I’d have a decent shot at victory.