WATCH: CNN Trots Out 'Retired' CIA Director to Trash Intel Leaker and MTG at Same Time

Two birds, one stone.

Obama-appointed “retired” CIA Director Leon Panetta, who made the seamless and well-trodden transition from Deep State top spook to cable news actor extraordinaire, was brought onto CNN by Jim Acosta recently. There, he performed his predictable brand of national security fearmongering in an effort to drum up public bloodlust for the head of the young intelligence leaker who embarrassed the Biden administration by exposing its many lies and spying efforts against purported allies.

“How much damage has been done?” Acosta prompted Panetta.

“Any time there is a leak of highly classified information, it is going to damage our national security.… If you’re going to have intelligence relationships with others, there has to be a relationship of trust, and that’s been damaged,” the Deep State news actor lamented.

Trust?

What name so? What is this “trust” he speaks of?

On what planet does Panetta live where the intelligence community has any trust to be lost, either from the “allies” it’s been revealed that it spies on or from the public it purports to serve but refuses to share any information about its activities with?

These are people whom many suspect to this day (and no one should be surprised if intelligence is unearthed for the public at some point to confirm it) capable of killing a sitting U.S. president. They are probably hard at work at this very moment, plotting against his nephew, a candidate in the Democrat Primary.

And we are supposed to trust them?

Related: Deep State Sics Corporate Media on Intelligence Leaker

Leon Panetta, in this interview, in addition to servicing the Deep State, is also likely playing a classic D.C. CYA game. He knows that the next set of leaks just might contain his name, and it might not be pretty for his practiced image as a vaunted, august patriot. Who knows? Perhaps a leak might even blow his cover as a CNN “analyst” by exposing him as a plant who launders CIA propaganda through the avatar of a newsman.

In the CNN interview, Panetta also called for a reduction in the number of government agents granted access to classified materials of the sort the intelligence leaker exposed to public scrutiny. But the problem for a free society is not that too many government actors have access to classified information; it’s that all that information (millions of documents every year) is hidden from public view under the pretense of national security.