John Hockenberry: So the President, as I’ve already alluded to, was all reassurance yesterday when we met with the CIA out at Langley, Virginia, CIA headquarters.

Barack Obama [on tape]: Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks. Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge that we’ve potentially made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be President of the United States, and that is why you should be proud to be members of the CIA.

John Hockenberry: A heartfelt pep-talk from the chief executive, the commander in chief. Out at Langley, talking to CIA officers, and really responding to the revelations of the so-called “torture memos” from the CIA during the George W. Bush administration, which talked about waterboarding and got explicit Department of Justice approval for certain, very harsh interrogation techniques. GOP and others have criticized the release of those memos, saying it undermines the CIA, but President Barack Obama has decided not to prosecute CIA employees. How reassuring was he yesterday? Art Keller joins us, he’s a former CIA case officer from 1999-2006. He joins us from Albuquerque, NM. Good morning, Art.

Art Keller: Good morning, John.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: How reassuring do you think this performance was yesterday? There was pretty wild screaming there in the background.

ART KELLER: I think it was very reassuring. You know, the vast majority of people at the CIA really are not field officers, and they have nothing to do with what goes on in the field. But nevertheless, I think everyone gets a certain amount of fatigue over being associated with an agency that gets tarred with a bad name through when things like this break in the press. So I think in a way it’s as much a relief to people who have nothing to do with field operations simply because you get tired of being associated with something that makes you look bad.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Alright, so let’s listen once again to the reception that Barack Obama and Leon Panetta for that matter got yesterday out at Langley.

Leon Panetta[on tape]:[Loud cheers] Thank you. Thank you very, very, very much.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: So Art, you can hear in that crowd of screaming that the case officers are probably very quietly not clapping and not jumping up and down and it’s just the administrative gang?

ART KELLER: No no no no no. I just say that because within the general body of the CIA, the Director of Operations or as now known that National Clandestine Service is a very small part. So the bulk of CIA people, the bulk of the people who would be at the speech, at the headquarters, are not the field officers ‘cause they’re out in the field.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Right. Of course, and they wouldn’t want their cover blown even if it is a chance to meet Barak Obama. Let’s talk a little about the George Tannet era, something you know very, very well. It seems to me that the CIA under George W. Bush, whatever people like Vice President Chenney say, was really caught between a political battle between the Pentagon and the White House over the quality of intelligence and the political intent of intelligence. Rumsfeld on the one side was gathering resources for his own intelligence agency, while it seems like the Vice President on the other side was pushing the agency to deliver results that met it’s political goals. First of all, can Obama dispel whatever consequences are left over from that era, and do you even buy my analysis to begin with?

ART KELLER: Oh no, I very much buy it. Firsthand I saw the results from it. Can he dispel it? Well, that will be a matter of time and trust, and I think part of his mission there, yesterday, was to reassure the agency and say hey, I’ve got your back, we’re going to back off, first of all I’m going to support you, which has not always been the case with the Bush administration. As you said they viewed the agency more as a tool to present them with conclusions, or foregoing conclusions that told them what they wanted to hear on larger political issues. And so yeah, I think Obama has a great opportunity to win the agency over to him, but that will depend on whether, you know, on the ground level people feel that influence is being exerted to shape analysis or to shape how raw intelligence is greeted.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: The new director of Central Intelligence, Leon Panetta, reportedly was critical of the Department of Justice decision to release the so-called “torture memos,” but there was none of that disagreement in evidence yesterday. What was Panetta’s view? And on the issue of prosecutions, is that really Barak Obama’s call? Can’t Congress proceed with prosecutions no matter what Barak Obama says?

ART KELLER: Well, not being a lawyer I can’t rule on that. I would say that because of the kind of authorization that it takes to undertake a major policy shift after a major change, that comes from something known as a Presidential Finding. So, you know, the President will issue a finding, then usually the, in this case, the Office of Legal Council will provide legal justification to back it up. So, to a certain extent if you have a problem with what the CIA is doing, you have to confront the people who are giving the orders and providing the justification, because I have yet to hear anyone say that engaging in these tactics was something that the CIA approached the White House about and said we need this authority. Rather, I believe it was pushed down from the White House who believe that that was the way the intelligence game was played. And historically in the U.S. that’s not the way it’s played.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Do you then suspect that Obama will attempt to prosecute individuals at a higher level, beyond the CIA, actually reaching into the Bush White House itself?

ART KELLER: My personal guess, and this is just kind of armchair quarterbacking the political scene, is that I doubt that he will because that would open a can of worms. Going after senior people in your predecessors administration, you leave yourself open to the same kind of attacks when you leave office.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Right. I think you’re right on that one. Let me just ask you--

ART KELLER: He might have a justification for going after him, but I don’t know if that will ever happen.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Let me shift gears here for a second. I mean, Barak Obama outlined, I mean he said something that I think was greeted, again, very warmly there at Langley. That the CIA is more important than ever before in the post-Cold War era, and he outlined a number of missions. Anti-terrorism of course, he even got to piracy. Now, some of the responsibility of the CIA and the intelligence mission monitoring all of those things. Is the CIA prepared for all of those missions at this period in time?

ART KELLER: Well, I can say at the time that I left in late 2006, it wasn’t. Not because the people weren’t capable, they were very capable, they were just stretched too thin. Especially because Iraq was eating up so many of the resources of the field officers, that when you have a major deployment there it pulls from everything else. And so hopefully as things stabilize a bit in Iraq, we can shift resources back to where they belong, which is to say the whole rest of the world, which we have to keep an eye on.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Are your former colleagues at the CIA telling you one way or another, and so far as you can confess to us, any impressions of Leon Panetta?

ART KELLER: You know, what’s interesting is that I’ve polled several of my colleagues and I haven’t gotten anything. In a case, it’s interesting, it’s the dog that didn’t bark. And I’m thinking back to when I was there in Porter Goss’ tenure, and even though he was a former CIA officer, he pretty much immediately caused strife within the agency. I have to say this for Panetta’s tenure: I haven’t heard a negative word out of them. And if he was really creating waves or alienating people, that would have made the news, so at the very least he’s doing a good job in a diplomatic sense of winning over people to the extent that he is not appearing in the press. That’s actually a good thing for the head of a secret agency.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: And, you know, Barak Obama described yesterday, before we go, that he’s really surrounded by former CIA folks in his national security team. I mean, you’ve got Robert Gates over at the Pentagon, right? And there are any number of people who are in the advisement staff on the national security council who come directly from the CIA. Does the CIA have a pretty good place at the table at this administration, based on your view?

ART KELLER: I think a better place than it did in the previous administration, simply because there seemed to be, at some level, some distrust within the Bush administration of the CIA, for reasons that have been in the news many times, and a refusal to shape intelligence to say exactly the conclusion the administration wanted.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Well, we will see, the page seems to be turned at least on the surface, but there is a lot that remains to happen between now and the end of the administration. Art Keller, former CIA case officer from 1999-2006, assessing whether Barak Obama can turn the page at Langley. He certainly had a great reception yesterday. Thanks, Art.