Two Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA.

Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world.

An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public.

Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California.

He served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for the reversing course in the Iraq war.

The officials also said that retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who formerly headed the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command, will be tapped as director of national intelligence.

Panetta, 70, has had a long political career, beginning in 1966 when he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel, R-California.

Panetta was elected to the House of Representatives in 1977, serving California’s 16th (now 17th) Congressional District until Clinton appointed him to head the Office of Budget and Management in 1993. He was chief of staff from 1994 to 1997.

Panetta and his wife, Sylvia, founded and co-direct the Leon and Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy at California State University, which provides study opportunities for students there and at several other schools. He serves on several boards and committees, and lectures internationally on economics.

Panetta has a strong background in economics but little hands-on experience in intelligence. However, he is known as a strong manager with solid organizational skills.

Blair, 61, was a 1968 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and attended Oxford University in Britain as a Rhodes scholar at the same time as Clinton. Blair retired from the Navy in 2002.

He was the CIA’s first associate director of military support and served on the National Security Council.

He has been sharply critical of U.S. policy in terms of strategic long-term planning.

“I am in awe of the sophisticated strategies that American politicians can devise and pursue over many years,” he told a House panel in July. “They involve very public activities — speeches, programs, alliances — but also backroom deals, and stratagems, tactical flexibility but strategic constancy, investment in intellectual and organizational capabilities that will not pay off for years.

“I have yet to see these same brilliant politicians come up with similar strategies to advance the national interest when they come into national office.

Our national strategies show little of the depth, brilliance and effectiveness of the domestic political strategies this country produces.”

Blair also is known in Navy circles for once trying to water-ski behind the destroyer he skippered, the USS Cochrane.