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Panetta's Kabuki?

ABC is reporting that Leon Panetta threatened to quit as CIA director:

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com. 

A White House spokesman calls the report "inaccurate"; a CIA spokesman goes even further calling it "wrong, inaccurate, bogus and false." That said, don't these sorts of reports actually help Panetta with his most important constituency--CIA employees--and, by extension, help Obama, since he needs a CIA director who has the support of the people working for him? I don't know if Panetta did or didn't blow his top, but the people telling ABC that he did would seem to be acting in Panetta's--and Obama's--interests.