President-elect Barack Obama plans to nominate President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff Leon Panetta to serve as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, according to major news organizations. After years away from inside-the-beltway politics, Panetta would be President Obama's top adviser on intelligence matters related to national security as the CIA director.

President-elect Obama chose Panetta, who has little experience in national security measures, to head an organization that has faced criticism for harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects and use of secret overseas prisons. If confirmed by Congress, he would report to the director of national intelligence, rumored to be Navy Adm. Dennis Blair.

Panetta, 71, served in the U.S. Army and represented the Monterey Bay area in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1983. He was one of ten members of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that in December 2006 recommended a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq, an assessment that President George Bush rejected, opting instead to send more U.S. troops to Iraq.

“I think we performed a very important role in providing some sense of direction,” Panetta said of the ISG as quoted by a profile in the San Jose Magazine. “The basic message was, ‘Wake up you guys. If you’re willing to set aside your political sound bites and work together, we can get out of this quagmire.'”

While the choice of Panetta may appease liberal activists unhappy with his picks for other security posts, such as retired Marine Gen. James Jones as national security adviser and President Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, top Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee were surprised by the selection, said Amy Walter, editor-in-chief of National Journal's the Hotline.

"Trying to find somebody who didn't come from that world -- the pushback, of course is that Leon Panetta does not have that experience and doesn't come from that world and that outsiders in the past haven't done all that well handling the CIA," Walter said on the NewsHour.

As President Bill Clinton's chief of staff from 1994 to 1997, Panetta helped negotiate the 1996 budget compromise. After his stint in the White House, he returned to his alma mater California State University in Monterey where he created The Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy.

From 1977 to 1993, Panetta was a United States Representative from California's 16th, now the 17th, Congressional District. He served eight full terms and had begun serving his ninth when he became director of the Office of Management and Budget.

From 1989 to 1993, Panetta was chairman of the House Committee on the Budget. He served on the Committee from 1979 to 1985. He chaired the House Agriculture Committee's Subcommittee on Domestic Marketing, Consumer Relations, and Nutrition, the House Administration Committee's Subcommittee on Personnel and Police, and the Select Committee on Hunger's Task Force on Domestic Hunger.

Panetta authored the Hunger Prevention Act of 1988, the Fair Employment Practices Resolution that extended civil rights protections to House employees for the first time, numerous measures to protect the California coast from offshore oil and gas drilling, bills that established Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement of hospice care for the terminally ill, and other measures on a variety of education, health and defense issues. He was a key participant in the 1990 Budget Summit, as well as other budget summits of the 1980s.

Born in Monterrey, Calif., on June 28, 1938, Panetta received his B.A. magna cum laude, from Santa Clara University where he was part of the school's Reserve Officer's Training Corp program. In 1963, he received his J.D. from Santa Clara University Law School, where he was an editor of the Law Review.

Panetta served in the U.S. Army from 1964 to 1966, and received the Army Commendation Medal. He was honorably discharged in 1966.

In 1966, Panetta served in Washington as legislative assistant to Senate Minority Whip Thomas Kuchel, a Republican from California. In 1969, he became the special assistant to the secretary of health, education and welfare and then director of the U.S. Office of Civil Rights, where he was responsible for school desegregation orders. In 1971, Panetta returned to California, where he practiced law with the Monterrey firm of Panetta, Thompson and Panetta until he was elected to Congress in 1976.

Panetta is the author of Bring Us Together, published in 1971, an account of his service as director of the Office of Civil Rights.

Panetta and his wife have three grown sons and five grandchildren.

-- Compiled from wire reports and other media sources