Panetta confirmed as new CIA chief

The US Senate unanimously confirmed former congressman and White House chief of staff Leon Panetta as director of the Central Intelligence Agency last night.

Panetta will be one of the senior officials to carry out executive orders President Obama signed last month that closed secret overseas prisons where terror suspects were held and directed all interrogators to ban torture.

In committee hearings last week, Panetta said he wouldn't send terrorist suspects to countries that might torture them, and that he would present unvarnished analysis to Obama that wouldn't be slanted by political considerations. Panetta will oversee an agency that has endured criticism for its treatment of terrorist suspects, a failure to thwart the Sept. 11 attacks, and the incorrect assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, a judgment used to justify the 2003 US invasion.

BLOOMBERG

WASHINGTON - John Holdren, the Harvard physicist nominated to be President Obama's top science adviser, promised yesterday to keep policy free from politics if he is confirmed to the post.

"I would consider this one of my greatest obligations," Holdren told the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee at his confirmation hearing.

Holdren said he would ensure the judgments of government scientists "are never censored or distorted for ideological reasons," and urged Congress to fund science and technology research to address climate change, national security, and education.

Holdren, 64, is best known for sounding warnings on climate change. His charts and graphs illustrating the threat of global warming helped Al Gore, former vice president, win an Oscar for his 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

But his critics say he has overstated the threat.

Holdren has predicted that global warming could cost a billion lives by 2020 due to rising seas and other climate-related catastrophes.

BLOOMBERG

WASHINGTON - President Obama has selected Seattle's police chief to be the nation's next drug czar, an administration official said yesterday.

Gil Kerlikowske will lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a position that has in past administrations been a Cabinet-level post, according to an official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no formal announcement has been made. The official didn't know if it would be a Cabinet post.

ASSOCIATED PRESS