Leon Panetta | featured news

The Defense Secretary Leon Panetta promised on Wednesday to let India buy America's best weapons technology and jointly produce and develop equipment in a bid to increase trade with the world's top arms importer.

Panetta won't dispute a report that he believes Israel may attack Iran this spring in an attempt to set back Iran's nuclear program.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Sunday that Iran is only one year away from producing a nuclear weapon. In an interview on the CBS show "60 Minutes," Panetta said that “the consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has condemned a video that apparently shows U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghan men, promising to punish those involved. Earlier, an Afghan Taliban spokesman said the video will not affect efforts to broker peace talks.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta marked on Thursday the end of the U.S. war in Iraq, with the last American troops withdrawing nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who arrived in Kabul on Saturday, also said the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing key leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

A day after stepping down as CIA director, Leon Panetta was sworn in Friday as secretary of defense. He began settling into the job by telling members of the military and their families they are "at the top of my agenda."...

With the departure of Robert Gates at the Pentagon, the pending shakeup of the national security team would move Gen. David Petraeus to the CIA. Lt. Gen. John Allen would then replace Petraeus, officials say. President Obama is expected to name CIA Director Leon Panetta as his new Defense secretary and is expected to make David Petraeus, the general now commanding troops in Afghanistan, head of the CIA, according to U.S.

Leon Panetta cites governance problems, drug trafficking and the Taliban insurgency. Progress is "slower than I think anyone anticipated," he says.