http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Helgerson

John L. Helgerson is [...] currently the CIA Inspector General. Helgerson is a graduate of Saint Olaf College. His Masters and PhD are from Duke University in Political Science.

Prior to joining the CIA Helgerson was a research associate at the University of Zambia and a Professor at the University of Cincinnati.

Helgerson's tenure since he joined the CIA, in 1971, has been on the research-analytical side, rather than the operational side. His most recent post has been Inspector General.

Helgerson drafted a critical review of former director George Tenet's tenure, delivered to the US Congress in September 2005, that recommended "punitive sanctions". [...]

- - wikipedia

The cult of competence is itself an ideology.

NYTimes, Tuesday, December 9, 2008, page A25:

http://nytimes.com/2008/12/09/us/politics/09obama.html

[...] In assembling his team to date, Mr. Obama has largely passed over progressives

[...] But so far, [the deeply frustrated liberals] are mainly muting their protest [...] And they are banking on the idea that no matter whom he installs under him, Mr. Obama will be the driving force for the change they seek.

[...] “He ran on such a progressive agenda, if he’s not breaking away from that, if he’s getting centrists to implement it, we’ll take that,” said Robert L. Borosage, president of the Institute for America’s Future and once a top adviser to Jesse L. Jackson’s presidential campaign.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the influential Daily Kos site on the Internet, said it was way too early to begin judging Mr. Obama. “Some people may be nit-picky about his choices but at the end of the day, he’s going to make better choices than John McCain would have made,” Mr. Moulitsas said by telephone. “There will be a time to push him, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to wait to see what it means on a policy basis, not on personalities.”

Some bloggers have been less patient. “Why isn’t there a single member of Obama’s cabinet who will be advising him from the left?” asked Chris Bowers on his site, OpenLeft.com.

Kevin Drum, writing on the Web site of the liberal magazine Mother Jones, echoed that sentiment: “I mean, that is why most of us voted for him, right?”

In an opinion article for The Washington Post on Sunday, David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, wrote that “progressives are — depending on whom you ask — disappointed, irritated or fit to be tied.” But he added that “there’s no rebellion yet at hand” because the left still is hoping that Mr. Obama will hijack the establishment to advance liberal causes.

Mr. Obama’s loyalists have appealed for calm.

“This is not a time for the left wing of our party to draw conclusions about the cabinet and White House appointments that President-elect Obama is making,” Steve Hildebrand, one of his top campaign aides, wrote on The Huffington Post in a message to progressives on Sunday. “Some believe the appointments generally aren’t progressive enough. Having worked with former Senator Obama for the last two years, I can tell you, that isn’t the way he thinks and it’s not likely the way he will lead.”

[...]

Some liberals said they would have only themselves to blame if their expectations were not met. “So many progressives were misled about what Obama is and what he believes,” Glenn Greenwald wrote in the online magazine Salon. “But it wasn’t Obama who misled them. It was their own desires, their eagerness to see what they wanted to see rather than what reality offered.”

At the same time, Mr. Obama arrives in office at a moment when the political dialogue has shifted to the left. Ideas that used to be considered on the fringe are now much more centrist, including heavy government spending in the short term to lift the economy and addressing energy and climate change through green technology. The debate over Iraq no longer is whether to withdraw troops but how quickly.

Even some of his appointees have evolved in their views. Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary chosen to be Mr. Obama’s chief White House economic adviser, talks much more about income inequality, financial industry regulation and other favorite causes of the left. “The Larry Summers of 2008 is not the Larry Summers of 1993 or 1999,” said Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, a liberal magazine.

Ms. vanden Heuvel has been more critical of the national security team [...] In her magazine, Ms. vanden Heuvel asked why those who had opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, as Mr. Obama did, do not seem to have a place on the team. [...]

- - NYTimes, Tuesday, December 9, 2008, page A25

Glenn, I share your views on these appointments almost completely.

I think it is a tactic of the right to frame the issue in terms of ideology, that is it is "leftists" who are objecting to anyone involved in constitutional infringements. What really matters is Constitutional principles, not political ideology. There are some true conservatives who have been opposed to these things all along.

........I actually voted for Obama! Yikes. Glad I found out that he is really a turncoat wingnut.

ha ha

Ondelette said "Pillar"!

so now we know she is really a man, right Holly?

:) -- nuf said

Yes! YES! Precisely. And every person of note who speaks of the Netroots as a monolithic army of malleable footsoldierettes likewise confers his ardent wish upon them, henceforth and forevermore.

See now: The New York Times has dubbed Glenn a "Liberal" and so it MUST be!!

All hail the Invincible Power of Persuasion!!!!!!

Do you suppose any of MSM or DC elite will ever have the wit to regard the opinions of the little people as something fearsome enough to elicit respect? That someday an over-reliance on IPPs may be seen as OOPs?

Ah! Silly question. I reckon I truly must be BONE STUPID.

Several people were known to be under consideration for Sec of Veteran's Affairs and until NBC decided to build the ratings for MTP by revealing Shinseki was the pick, no one mentioned him.

We may be overly concerned about a pick that won't happen. Not that there is any problem with being concerned.