PROFILE: Panetta, new US defence secretary, led hunt for bin Laden

Jul 2, 2011, 20:35 GMT

Washington - Leon Panetta, the man who as CIA director led the hunt for Osama bin Laden, became the 23rd US secretary of defence after taking the oath of office on Friday.

At the age of 73, he will be the oldest person to assume the post.

Panetta, a California native and long-time Washington veteran, had been serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency since February 2009, where he oversaw the expanded use of unmanned, armed drones in the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He succeeds Robert Gates, who retired from decades of government service on Thursday. Panetta's vacant CIA post will be filled by General David Petraeus, who will leave his position as commander of US and international forces in Afghanistan in September to start his new job.

Panetta's most notable achievement at the helm of the CIA was the agency-led effort to track down and kill bin Laden, a mission that succeeded on May 2 when US special forces stormed his hideout in Pakistan and shot dead the al-Qaeda leader.

The son of Italian immigrants, Panetta was born in the California coastal city of Monterey. He went on to study law and work as a lawyer before joining the military for two years.

Panetta's political experience began when he worked for a Republican senator in 1966 and served in a senior position at the Department of Health and Human Services under the Richard Nixon presidency. In 1971, he switched to the Democratic party.

Panetta would later launch his own political career, winning a seat from his home state in the House of Representatives in 1976. He held the seat until 1993, when he left Congress to become director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget for then-president Bill Clinton.

From 1994-97 he served as Clinton's chief of staff, and was credited with bringing stability to a White House operation that was previously considered undisciplined and poorly managed.

After leaving the White House, he kept a mostly low profile but later came back into government by joining the Iraq Study Group, a temporary commission set up to examine the war.

After winning the 2008 presidential election, President Barack Obama nominated him to head the CIA. On June 21, the Senate voted 100-0 to confirm Panetta as defence secretary.

One of his top priorities will be overseeing Obama's plans to withdraw 33,000 of the 100,000 soldiers in Afghanistan by September 2012.