What THEY said

April 30th, 2007

Here’s some early blowback on George’s confessions … guess we’re not in a “forgiving” mood. On the other hand, and because everything is relative, what these journo’s and bloggers have to say is sooooooo much kinder than what the Right would have said, if positions were reversed. Although Tenent’s allegations place blame on those we consider culpable, it’s reasonable to carefully examine the spin — so with GT’s new, improved version of smoke ‘n mirrors, here are reads to put that into perspective too.

Clearly, as the administration was planning Hell in those ‘rush to war’ daze, we could have used a patriot or two to stand up. Most of us had our money on Colin Powell [there’s a tragedy, right there, and a tarnished reputation]. So George’s plaintive wail that he was a patriot, sorta [wasn’t I? doncha think so? buy my book!] and fall-guy means very little when the whole world will pay a price for his vanities for generations to come.

Or, as Einstein put it:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Jude

Tenet’s Version Doesn’t Have a Prayer
Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
April 30, 2007

George Tenet tried to rewrite his own role in history by going on 60 Minutes last night and calling the Iraq invasion “a national tragedy” that even he knew four years ago was unwarranted and unjustified.

But his own war-like words at the time put the lie to that claim. I’m not talking about his “slam-dunk” language. I’m quoting from his little-reported but highly public prayer a month before the invasion. Going public last night to promote his book, Tenet had this little colloquy with CBS’s Scott Pelley:

Pelley: “You said Iraq made no sense to you in that moment. Does it make any sense to you today?”

Tenet: “In terms of complicity with 9/11, absolutely none. It never made any sense. We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period.”

Let’s go back to early February 2003, a little more than a month before the unjustified invasion.

On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell made the Bush regime’s case for war at the U.N. Security Council, even (straight out of Jonny Quest) showing slides of cartoony drawings of mobile WMD labs racing across the Iraqi desert.

The next day, February 6, was the National Prayer Breakfast, where the blood lust was palpable.

The AP’s Ron Fournier wrote a perfunctory account of “the 51-year-old tradition that brings hundreds of lawmakers, military leaders, foreign heads of state, and spiritual leaders together in prayer.” The crowd, wrote Fournier, “included 56 senators, 240 House members, first lady Laura Bush, National Security Director Condoleezza Rice, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA Director George Tenet.”

Fournier dutifully quoted Bush:

“This is testing time for our country. At this hour, we have troops that are assembling in the Middle East. There’s oppressive regimes that seek terrible weapons. We face an ongoing threat of terror.”

Tenet also spoke at the prayer breakfast, as I previously noted, and nobody was more hawkish. His words didn’t make news. (C-SPAN last showed the event video on February 9, 2003.) But this is what he said, I kid you not. The CIA director walked to the podium and, with no introductory remarks, intoned his own cartoonish view of the world:

God teaches us to be resolute in the face of evil, using all of the weapons and armor that the word of God supplies.

In chapter six of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we’re told, Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stance against the devil’s schemes.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities, against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Therefore, put on the whole armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything to stand, stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of justice in place and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes with the gospel of peace.

Take up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and pray at all times.

Breastplates? And you wonder why Saracens have referred to Bush and his henchmen as “Crusaders”?

Leave aside the fact that the armor supplied by the Defense Department was inadequate — as soldiers told SecDeaf Don Rumsfeld to his face and as my colleague Tom Robbins wrote about in an October 2004 story about soldiers’ families.

You can also leave aside the rest of Tenet’s homily, which focused on “forgiveness and mercy.” That’s because Tenet sounded even more like an Old Testament character, condescending and patronizing — you know, slay your enemies but be charitable toward them:

At the same time, the word of God also calls us to a life of forgiveness and mercy. . . . We are told, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back, despairing of no one, and your reward will be great and you will be the sons and daughters of most high, because He is kind to the ungrateful and selfish.

Be merciful even as your father is merciful. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you give will be the measure you get back. The word of the Lord.

Tenet then sat down. Four years later, the war he supported and promoted has killed as many Americans in Iraq as the number killed in New York City on 9/11.

And now, having put down the good book and picked up his own, Tenet’s preaching a different tune.

“The hardest part of all of this has just been listening to this for almost three years,” he told Pelley, adding:

“Listening to the vice president go on Meet The Press on the fifth year of 9/11, and say, ‘Well, George Tenet said, “slam dunk.” ‘ As if he needed me to say slam dunk to go to war with Iraq. And they never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. You know, ‘Look at what the idiot told us, and we decided to go to war.’ Well, let’s not be so disingenuous. Let’s stand up. This is why we did it. This is why, this is how we did it. And let’s tell, let’s everybody tell the truth.”

Mr. T
Marc Kusnetz, HuffPo
04.30.2007

Watching George Tenet on 60 Minutes last night and then this morning on Today, I was reminded just how grotesque the technique of strategic contrition really is. Incongruously but aptly, I think, I remembered the day President Clinton landed at Kigali Airport, where he stepped to a microphone, bit his lower lip (such a touch!! such a touch!!) and apologized for the genocide. And then he got right back on the plane, without even visiting any of the genocide sites.

A parallel dynamic was in play with Tenet last night and this morning: the “owning up” amidst the self-cleansing. The “we got it wrong” amidst the “hey, we were honest folks doing the best we could do.” The “in retrospect, I could have done better” amidst the “but look at these OTHER guys….if I’m bad, think about THEM!”

The awful thing is, not only is Tenet factually correct in pointing out the unspeakable treachery of Bush/Cheney/Rumseld/Rice et al, he also knows that WE know all about that — and he’s counting on that calculus to carry him through. He really is beneath contempt. And to think there are others beneath him….. God, I could puke.

When it comes to the center not holding, Yeats had it right: “The best lack all conviction; while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” (And yes, of course I realize that I’m all passionate intensity in writing these words.)

Tenet’s Instinct to Please
Walter Isaacson, HuffPo
04.30.2007

As I was reading the excerpts and reports of George Tenet’s new book, I was reminded of a dinner I went to recently where I got to listen to Václav Havel, the playwright, former Czech president, prisoner, and human rights activist. He said that there were two types of people he had dealt with over the years: those with the soul of a collaborationist and those who were comfortable defying authority.

He was obviously in the latter category, and he was speaking of a European archbishop who had collaborated with the communists.

George Tenet’s woes, it seems to me, come from the very natural instinct to please rather than tell uncomfortable truths to those in authority. Watching Bill Moyers’s show on how the media failed to question the march to the war in Iraq, I reflected on how I, likewise, when I was at CNN, was too willing to accept what those in authority were telling me. And reading Bob Dallek’s new book on Nixon and Kissinger, I was reminded how Kissinger, someone I once wrote about, was too willing to cater to and collaborate with the darker impulses of Nixon.

It’s not always possible nor even a good thing to be defiant of authority, as I sometimes try to explain to my daughter. Yet Havel’s distinction seems, each day, to become more relevant to me as I watch folks like Tenet try to explain themselves. I think, in contrast, of a person like Brent Scowcroft, who repeatedly had the intellectual honesty to say publicly and privately when he disagreed with his former protégés in the Bush Administration, even at the cost of being excluded from the inner circle.

A rebellious willingness to defy authority is what I think most characterized Albert Einstein, my most recent biography subject. You see it in his politics, as he becomes the sole dissenter among the academic elite in Berlin to oppose German militarism during World War I and later to oppose the Nazis, communists, and then McCarthyites when he moved to America. In all cases, it was because he felt people should not be compelled to cater to authority. Likewise in his personal life; even as a young kid, he gets asked to leave school because his attitude is undermining authority, and as a yound patent examiner he learned to question every premise in front of him. And in his science, Einstein’s triumphs came from questioning the received wisdom about space and time and gravity that was handed down from Newton.

Not everyone is an Einstein, and many people who repeatedly defy authority are cranks rather than heroes. On the other hand, Havel is right to draw an interesting distinction between people like Einstein and people whose laudable respect for authority spills over into an overeagerness to cater to power.

Walter Isaacson, the president of the Aspen Institute, is the former managing editor of Time and chairman of CNN and the author of biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein.

Why Didn’t George Tenet Just Resign?
Arianna Huffington, HuffPo
04.29.2007

Does this sound familiar? A senior Bush administration official plays a key role in selling the Iraq war debacle to the American public, resigns a few years later, and then tries to distance himself from Bush and the war by writing a book or talking to Bob Woodward, portraying himself as a poor, hapless victim who knew the truth at the time and really, really wanted to tell it, but, somehow, just had no choice but to go along.

What else could he do?

Each version of this contemptible tale shares the same fatal flaw. It requires that the remedy that was readily available — resignation — did not exist.

The latest to trod this pathetic path is George Tenet.

Poor George Tenet. Flogging his book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, on 60 Minutes, Tenet tells Scott Pelley about how his phrase “slam dunk” was misused by the Bush administration. Tenet, you see, didn’t mean it was a “slam dunk” that Hussein actually had WMD, he only meant it was a “slam dunk” that a public case could be made that Hussein had WMD.

I can’t really see that the distinction matters, but Tenet apparently does. “I became campaign talk,” Tenet tells Pelley, “I was a talking point. ‘Look at what the idiot told us, and we decided to go to war.’ Well, let’s not be so disingenuous. Let’s stand up. This is why we did it. This is why, this is how we did it. And let’s tell, let’s everybody tell the truth.”

Great — except he’s about four years too late. Tenet seems to believe there’s a major distinction between lying and standing by silently while others lie, and then proudly receiving a Medal of Freedom from the liars.

He could have simply resigned and freed himself to “tell the truth.” Tenet acts as if resignation were not an option. But it was. And the passion and anger he displays now in the service of book sales could have been used then in the service of his country.

“It’s the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Tenet tells Pelley. “You don’t do this… You’re gonna throw somebody overboard just because it’s a deflection? Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me.”

The problem is, the honorable train left the station a long time ago, and Tenet wasn’t on board.

But others were. Like John Brady Kiesling, a career U.S. diplomat, who resigned from the State Department. As he wrote in his resignation letter to Colin Powell:

“I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.”

That, Mr. Tenet, is how it’s done.

It’s way too late for George Tenet to do the right thing. But can someone please remind Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales, as they are pathetically fighting tooth and nail to cling to their jobs, that there is another option.

And how long do you think it’s going to be after the end of the Bush administration before we are treated to General Petraeus’ memoir explaining how the surge would have worked “if only he had been given the troops he needed to implement it properly.”

So here is a plea to all Bush administration officials: Now is the time. If, like John Brady Kiesling, you’re finding it hard to reconcile what you see going on around you with what you know to be the truth, do the right thing and resign. While it matters.

As Tenet says on 60 Minutes: “At the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. It’s all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. And when you don’t have that anymore, well, there you go.”

George Tenet and I are both Greek and there is a great word for it: filotimo*.

There are still lives to be saved if a few administration officials have the guts to do what they know is right now — instead of five years from now while flogging their books.

Any takers?

[*Loosely, “love of honor” — go here. J]

Poor George Tenet; He Still Doesn’t Get It
Ray McGovern, t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Sunday 29 April 2007

“If you can’t say something positive about someone, don’t say anything.” This was drummed into me by my Irish grandmother and, as most of her admonishments, it has stood me in good stead. On occasion, though, it been a real bother - as when I felt called to comment on George Tenet’s apologia, “In the Center of the Storm,” coming to a bookstore near you tomorrow.

On the verge of despair, I ran into an old schoolmate of Tenet’s from PS 94 in Little Neck, Queens, who told me that George was more handsome than his twin brother Billy, and that his outgoing nature and consummate political skill got him elected president of the student body.

Positive enough, Grandma? Now let me add this.

George Tenet’s book shows that he remains, first and foremost, a politician - with no clue as to the proper role of intelligence work. He is unhappy about going down in history as “Slam Dunk Tenet.” But, George protests, his famous remark to President Bush on December 21, 2002 was not meant to assure the president that available intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk.” Rather he meant that the argument that Saddam Hussein had such weapons could be enhanced to slam-dunk status in order to sell war on Iraq. Those of you tuning in to CBS’s “60 Minutes” tonight will hear Tenet explain what he meant when he uttered the words he now says everyone misunderstood or distorted in order to blame him for the Iraq war. What he says he meant was simply: “We can put a better case together for a public case.” (sic)

Tenet still doesn’t get it. Those of us schooled in the craft and ethos of intelligence remain in wide-mouthed disbelief, perhaps best summed up by veteran operations officer Bob Baer’s quip:

“So, it is better that the ’slam dunk’ referred to the ease with which the war could be sold? I guess I missed that part of the National Security Act delineating the functions of the CIA - the part about CIA marketing a war. Guess that’s why I never made it into senior management.”

George’s concern over being scapegoated is touching. But could he not have seen it coming? Not even when Rumsfeld asked him in the fall of 2002 (that is, before the war) whether he had put in a system to track how good the intelligence was compared with what would be found in Iraq? The guys I know from Queens usually can tell when they’re being set up. Maybe Tenet was naive enough to believe that the president, whom he describes as a “kindred soul,” would protect him from thugs like Vice President Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, even when - as was inevitable - someone had to take the fall. Or did he perhaps actually believe the Cheney dictum that US forces would be greeted as liberators?

So now George is worried about his reputation. He tells “60 Minutes:”

At the end of the day, the only thing you have … is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor, and when you don’t have that anymore, well, there you go.”

I immediately thought back to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s response when he was asked if he regretted the lies he told at the UN on February 5, 2003. Powell said he regretted that speech because it was “a blot on my record.”

So we’ve got ruined reputations and blots on records. Poor boys. What about the 3,344 American soldiers already killed in a war that could not have happened had not these poor fellows deliberately distorted the evidence and led the cheering for war? What about the more than 50,000 wounded, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose deaths can be attributed directly to the invasion and its aftermath? There are blots, and there are blots. Why is it that Tenet and Powell seem to inhabit a different planet?

Despite all this, they still have their defenders … or at least Tenet does. (Powell’s closest associate, Col. Larry Wilkerson, decided long ago to turn state’s evidence and apologize for his and Powell’s role in the intelligence fiasco, but Powell has tried to remain above the battle. He may, I suppose, be writing his own book to explain everything.)

Yesterday on National Public Radio, Tenet’s deputy and partner in crime, John McLaughlin, went to ludicrous lengths reciting a carefully prepared list of “all the things that the CIA got right,” while conceding that it (not “we,” mind you, but “it”) performed “inadequately” in assessing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Picky, picky.

Defending Torture … Again

Hewing to the George W. Bush dictum of “catapulting the propaganda” by endlessly repeating the same claim (the formula used so successfully by Joseph Goebbels), Tenet manages to tell “60 Minutes” five times in five consecutive sentences: “We don’t torture people.” Like President Bush, however, he then goes on to show why it has been absolutely necessary to torture people. What do they take us for, fools? And Tenet’s claims of success in extracting information via torture are no more worthy of credulity than the rest of what he says.

His own credibility aside, Tenet has succeeded in destroying the asset without which an intelligence community cannot be effective. And that is serious. He seems blissfully oblivious to the damage he has done - aware only of the damage others have done to his “personal honor.”

Lessons Learned

If any good can come out of the intelligence/policy debacle regarding Iraq, it would be the clear lesson that intelligence crafted to dovetail with the predilections of policymakers can bring disaster. The role that Tenet, McLaughlin and their small coterie of senior managers played as willing accomplices in the corruption of intelligence has made a mockery of the verse chiseled into the marble at the entrance to CIA headquarters: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Had Tenet been tenaciously honest, his analysts would have risen to the occasion. And there is a good chance that they could have helped prevent what the Nuremburg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime” - a war of aggression, and a war that Tenet and his subordinates knew had nothing to do with the “intelligence” adduced to “justify” it, as Tenet now admits in his book.

No director of the CIA should come from the ranks of congressional staff, since those staffers work in a politicized ambience antithetical to substantive intelligence work. Tenet is Exhibit A. Outside of intelligence circles, it was considered a good sign that, as a Congressional staffer, Tenet had been equally popular on either side of the aisle. But this raised a red flag for seasoned intelligence professionals.

As we had learned early in our careers, if you consistently tell it like it is, you are certain to make enemies. Those enjoying universal popularity are ipso facto suspect of perfecting the political art of compromise - shading this and shaving that. However useful this may be on the Hill, it sounds the death knell for intelligence analysis. Tenet also lacked experience in managing a large, complicated organization. Such experience is a sine qua non.

Finally, it is a mischievous myth that the CIA director must cultivate a close personal relationship with the president. Nor should he/she try to do so, for it is a net minus. The White House is not a fraternity house; mutual respect is far more important than camaraderie. A mature, self-confident president will respect an independent intelligence director. The latter must resist the temptation to be “part of the team” in the way the president’s political advisers are part of the team. Overly close identification with “the team” can erode objectivity and cloud intelligence judgments. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, like Cheney a frequent visitor to CIA headquarters in 2002 to “help” with the analysis on Iraq, told the press that Tenet was “so grateful to the president [presumably for not firing him after September 11, 2001] that he would do anything for him.” That attitude is the antithesis of what is needed in senior intelligence officers.

Much is at stake, and it will be an uphill battle to bring back honesty and professionalism to the analysis process and impede efforts to politicize the intelligence product. In an institution such as the CIA, significant, enduring improvement requires vision, courage and integrity at the top. It has been three decades since the CIA has been led by such a person.

Letter to George Tenet
The following was sent to George Tenet today in care of his publisher. The letter, written by a group of former intelligence officers, reflects disgust with George Tenet’s effort to burnish his image with his new “tell all” book.
Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro and David MacMichael — t r u t h o u t | Report
28 April 2007

Mr. George Tenet
c/o Harper Collins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street 8th Floor
New York City, New York 10022
ATTN: Ms. Tina Andredis

Dear Mr. Tenet:

We write to you on the occasion of the release of your book, At the Center of the Storm. You are on the record complaining about the “damage to your reputation”. In our view the damage to your reputation is inconsequential compared to the harm your actions have caused for the U.S. soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq and the national security of the United States. We believe you have a moral obligation to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush. We also call for you to dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq.

We agree with you that Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials took the United States to war for flimsy reasons. We agree that the war of choice in Iraq was ill-advised and wrong headed. But your lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership. You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq.

You are not alone in failing to speak up and protest the twisting and shading of intelligence. Those who remained silent when they could have made a difference also share the blame for not protesting the abuse and misuse of intelligence that occurred under your watch. But ultimately you were in charge and you signed off on the CIA products and you briefed the President.

This is not a case of Monday morning quarterbacking. You helped send very mixed signals to the American people and their legislators in the fall of 2002. CIA field operatives produced solid intelligence in September 2002 that stated clearly there was no stockpile of any kind of WMD in Iraq. This intelligence was ignored and later misused. On October 1 you signed and gave to President Bush and senior policy makers a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) - which dovetailed with unsupported threats presented by Vice President Dick Cheney in an alarmist speech on August 26, 2002.

You were well aware that the White House tried to present as fact intelligence you knew was unreliable. And yet you tried to have it both ways. On October 7, just hours before the president gave a major speech in Cincinnati, you were successful in preventing him from using the fable about Iraq purchasing uranium in Africa, although that same claim appeared in the NIE you signed only six days before.

Although CIA officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered bin Laden an enemy of the Baghdad regime, you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda.

You showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as the Bush Administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its hands on uranium. You signed off on Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat behind him and visibly squandered CIA’s most precious asset - credibility.

You may now feel you were bullied and victimized but you were also one of the bullies. In the end you allowed suspect sources, like Curveball, to be used based on very limited reporting and evidence. Yet you were informed in no uncertain terms that Curveball was not reliable. You broke with CIA standard practice and insisted on voluminous evidence to refute this reporting rather than treat the information as suspect. You helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favored White House positions, while raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case for war being hawked by the president and vice president.

It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community - a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality. Decisions were made, you were in charge, but you have no idea how decisions were made even though you were in charge. Curiously, you focus your anger on the likes of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice, but you decline to criticize the President.

Mr. Tenet, as head of the intelligence community, you failed to use your position of power and influence to protect the intelligence process and, more importantly, the country. What should you have done? What could you have done?

For starters, during the critical summer and fall of 2002, you could have gone to key Republicans and Democrats in the Congress and warned them of the pressure. But you remained silent. Your candor during your one-on-one with Sir Richard Dearlove, then-head of British Intelligence, of July 20, 2002 provides documentary evidence that you knew exactly what you were doing; namely, “fixing” the intelligence to the policy.

By your silence you helped build the case for war. You betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States. Instead of resigning in protest, when it could have made a difference in the public debate, you remained silent and allowed the Bush Administration to cite your participation in these deliberations to justify their decision to go to war. Your silence contributed to the willingness of the public to support the disastrous war in Iraq, which has killed more than 3300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

If you are committed to correcting the record about your past failings then you should start by returning the Medal of Freedom you willingly received from President Bush in December 2004. You claim it was given only because of the war on terror, but you were standing next to General Tommy Franks and L. Paul Bremer, who also contributed to the disaster in Iraq. President Bush said that you “played pivotal roles in great events, and [your] efforts have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty.”

The reality of Iraq, however, has not made our nation more secure nor has the cause of human liberty been advanced. In fact, your tenure as head of the CIA has helped create a world that is more dangerous. The damage to the credibility of the CIA is serious but can eventually be repaired. Many of the U.S. soldiers maimed in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad cannot be fixed. Many will live the rest of their lives missing limbs, blinded, mentally disabled, or physically disfigured. And the dead have passed into history.

Mr. Tenet, you cannot undo what has been done. It is doubly sad that you seem still to lack an adequate appreciation of the enormous amount of death and carnage you have facilitated. If reflection on these matters serves to prick your conscience we encourage you to donate at least half of the royalties from your book sales to the veterans and their families, who have paid and are paying the price for your failure to speak up when you could have made a difference. That would be the decent and honorable thing to do.

Sincerely yours,

Phil Giraldi
Ray McGovern
Larry Johnson
Jim Marcinkowski
Vince Cannistraro
David MacMichael

Tenet and His Masters
Incompetence at the Top
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, CounterPunch
April 30, 2007

Every American who voted Republican shares responsibility for the great evil America has brought to the Middle East.

The evil that America brought to Iraq transcends the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and maimed in the conflict. The evil goes beyond the destruction of ancient historical artifacts and the civilian infrastructure of a secular state and the decimation of the lives, careers, and families of millions of Iraqis.

The violence and killing that Bush brought to Iraq has spread antagonism between Sunni and Shiite throughout the Middle East with potentially draconian consequences. Bush’s war has turned Muslim hearts and minds against America and made terrorism an acceptable means to resist American hegemony. With his mindless war, Bush has created more terrorism than the world has ever seen.

The reasons given for the American invasion of Iraq have been exposed as lies, revealing America as either a country of fools and idiots or of war criminals. Worldwide polls show that America is no longer regarded as a guiding light but is tied with Israel as the second greatest threat to world stability.

The nuclear-armed Russians, alarmed by America’s gratuitous aggression and interference in Russian and Middle Eastern internal affairs and by Bush’s aggressive withdrawal on June 13, 2002 from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty, no longer see the US as a partner in peace but as a dangerous militaristic aggressor. The chance for understanding and trust with Russia has been destroyed by the stupid Bush administration. The White House Moron, who cannot successfully occupy Baghdad, believes he can run over Russia.

Former CIA director George “Slam-Dunk” Tenet writes in a new book, At the Center of the Storm: My years at the CIA that Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives caused America to invade Iraq without ever holding a serious debate about whether Iraq was a threat. Tenet writes: “There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat.”

The 2003 American invasion of Iraq is a war crime under international law. The invasion caused sectarian violence far beyond anything Iraq had ever experienced under Saddam Hussein. Tenet writes that “sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that US forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence.”

Tenet says that Dick Cheney made him a scapegoat for the disastrous war by misrepresenting to media what he meant by “slam-dunk.” Interviewed by “60 Minutes,” Tenet said that the administration misrepresented his comment to mean that the case was air tight that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Tenet states that the Bush administration’s misrepresentation of what he said is “the most despicable thing that ever happened” to him.

The American people have never been told the real reasons that Bush-Cheney and the Republican Party rushed us to war in Iraq. Americans have only been fed a pack of transparent lies.

The war has brought no honor, no glory, and no tangible benefit. The war has brought shame upon America for routine torture of Iraqi detainees and for the routine slaughter of unarmed Iraqi civilians–mothers, fathers, children, grandparents–by trigger happy American troops. There are even reports of US mercenaries having fun riding around taking pot shots at Iraqi civilians.

Billions of dollars in “aid” are missing. The stench of corruption is heavy in the air. There are myriad investigations of Bush administration and contractor corruption. Who can keep up with them all? Cheney’s Halliburton, the greatest hog at the trough, has not been indicted. The missing suitcases of cash have not been recovered. The earnest efforts of Congress have taken on a pathetic, plodding life of their own.

In an article just published in the Armed Forces Journal, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, one of the commanders of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, condemns American generals as ” mild-mannered team players” who “are not worthy of their soldiers” and who “underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq’s government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq.”

Captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels are frustrated with the political cowardice of their general officers and are leaving the service in droves. The Army is trying to improve retention by offering $20,000 cash payments to the officers–another stupid Bush administration policy as any officer who sells his soul is demoralized.

Col. Yingling writes that Congress must step in and break up the way administrations use promotions to acquire compliant generals as accomplices in deceiving the American people.

The most frightening fact about the Bush administration is that not a single office is held by a competent or qualified person. Integrity is so rare among Bush appointees that integrity has been silenced.

That should concern all Americans. Even Republicans.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

At least George Tenet is not telling a flat-out lie
James Fallows
4/28/07

Which is a difference between him and White House counselor Dan Bartlett.

Tenet, as mentioned earlier, would have better served his country (and his reputation) by speaking up more promptly about the Bush Administration’s failure ever to have a “serious debate” about whether it was worth invading Iraq.

But his failing was telling the truth too late — not sticking to, well, a lie like the one Bartlett uttered yesterday (according to the AP) as part of the White House’s attempt to rebut Tenet:

“This president weighed all the various proposals, weighed all the various consequences before he did make a decision.”

I say plainly: that is a lie. To be precise about it, no account of the Administration’s deliberations, by anyone other than Bartlett just now, offers even the slightest evidence that this claim is true. Innumberable accounts offer ample evidence that it is false. I have asked this direct question to many interviewees who were in a position to know: was there ever such a meeting or discussion? The answer was always, No. The followup challenge to Bartlett should be: show us a memo, show us a policy paper, show us a scheduled meeting, show us notes taken at the time to substantiate the idea that the Administration ever seriously considered what the nation would gain or lose by invading Iraq, and what the alternatives might be. What the Administration actually considered, according to all known evidence, is how it would invade Iraq, and when.

As also mentioned earlier, I hate to sound harsh. But: come on, this is outrageous.

Consulting The Experts
by digby, Hullabaloo

Via Kevin, I see that James Fallows also noticed that Dan Bartlett told a little fib regarding one of Tenent’s accusations:

Tenet, as mentioned earlier, would have better served his country (and his reputation) by speaking up more promptly about the Bush Administration’s failure ever to have a “serious debate” about whether it was worth invading Iraq.

But his failing was telling the truth too late — not sticking to, well, a lie like the one Bartlett uttered yesterday (according to the AP) as part of the White House’s attempt to rebut Tenet:

“This president weighed all the various proposals, weighed all the various consequences before he did make a decision.”

I say plainly: that is a lie. To be precise about it, no account of the Administration’s deliberations, by anyone other than Bartlett just now, offers even the slightest evidence that this claim is true. Innumberable accounts offer ample evidence that it is false. I have asked this direct question to many interviewees who were in a position to know: was there ever such a meeting or discussion? The answer was always, No.

Actually, that’s not precisely true. It has been documented that Bush sought advice from some people:

According to “Plan of Attack,” Bush asked Rice and his longtime communications adviser, Karen Hughes, whether he should attack Iraq, but he did not specifically ask Powell or Rumsfeld. “I could tell what they thought,” the president said. “I didn’t need to ask their opinion about Saddam Hussein or how to deal with Saddam Hussein. If you were sitting where I sit, you could be pretty clear.”

And then there was the Big Kahuna:

Bush said he did not remember asking the question of his father, former president George H.W. Bush, who fought Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War…”You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to,” Bush said.

So it’s not really fair to claim that the president had just made up his mind without input or consideration — he consulted with Condi, Karen and God. He just didn’t weigh the options and consequences with his secretary of defense, State, the military or any experts.

Let’s not be unfair here.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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Entry Filed under: Political Waves

What THEY said

April 30th, 2007

Here’s some early blowback on George’s confessions … guess we’re not in a “forgiving” mood. On the other hand, and because everything is relative, what these journo’s and bloggers have to say is sooooooo much kinder than what the Right would have said, if positions were reversed. Although Tenent’s allegations place blame on those we consider culpable, it’s reasonable to carefully examine the spin — so with GT’s new, improved version of smoke ‘n mirrors, here are reads to put that into perspective too.

Clearly, as the administration was planning Hell in those ‘rush to war’ daze, we could have used a patriot or two to stand up. Most of us had our money on Colin Powell [there’s a tragedy, right there, and a tarnished reputation]. So George’s plaintive wail that he was a patriot, sorta [wasn’t I? doncha think so? buy my book!] and fall-guy means very little when the whole world will pay a price for his vanities for generations to come.

Or, as Einstein put it:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Jude

Tenet’s Version Doesn’t Have a Prayer
Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
April 30, 2007

George Tenet tried to rewrite his own role in history by going on 60 Minutes last night and calling the Iraq invasion “a national tragedy” that even he knew four years ago was unwarranted and unjustified.

But his own war-like words at the time put the lie to that claim. I’m not talking about his “slam-dunk” language. I’m quoting from his little-reported but highly public prayer a month before the invasion. Going public last night to promote his book, Tenet had this little colloquy with CBS’s Scott Pelley:

Pelley: “You said Iraq made no sense to you in that moment. Does it make any sense to you today?”

Tenet: “In terms of complicity with 9/11, absolutely none. It never made any sense. We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period.”

Let’s go back to early February 2003, a little more than a month before the unjustified invasion.

On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell made the Bush regime’s case for war at the U.N. Security Council, even (straight out of Jonny Quest) showing slides of cartoony drawings of mobile WMD labs racing across the Iraqi desert.

The next day, February 6, was the National Prayer Breakfast, where the blood lust was palpable.

The AP’s Ron Fournier wrote a perfunctory account of “the 51-year-old tradition that brings hundreds of lawmakers, military leaders, foreign heads of state, and spiritual leaders together in prayer.” The crowd, wrote Fournier, “included 56 senators, 240 House members, first lady Laura Bush, National Security Director Condoleezza Rice, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA Director George Tenet.”

Fournier dutifully quoted Bush:

“This is testing time for our country. At this hour, we have troops that are assembling in the Middle East. There’s oppressive regimes that seek terrible weapons. We face an ongoing threat of terror.”

Tenet also spoke at the prayer breakfast, as I previously noted, and nobody was more hawkish. His words didn’t make news. (C-SPAN last showed the event video on February 9, 2003.) But this is what he said, I kid you not. The CIA director walked to the podium and, with no introductory remarks, intoned his own cartoonish view of the world:

God teaches us to be resolute in the face of evil, using all of the weapons and armor that the word of God supplies.

In chapter six of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we’re told, Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stance against the devil’s schemes.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities, against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Therefore, put on the whole armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything to stand, stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of justice in place and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes with the gospel of peace.

Take up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and pray at all times.

Breastplates? And you wonder why Saracens have referred to Bush and his henchmen as “Crusaders”?

Leave aside the fact that the armor supplied by the Defense Department was inadequate — as soldiers told SecDeaf Don Rumsfeld to his face and as my colleague Tom Robbins wrote about in an October 2004 story about soldiers’ families.

You can also leave aside the rest of Tenet’s homily, which focused on “forgiveness and mercy.” That’s because Tenet sounded even more like an Old Testament character, condescending and patronizing — you know, slay your enemies but be charitable toward them:

At the same time, the word of God also calls us to a life of forgiveness and mercy. . . . We are told, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back, despairing of no one, and your reward will be great and you will be the sons and daughters of most high, because He is kind to the ungrateful and selfish.

Be merciful even as your father is merciful. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you give will be the measure you get back. The word of the Lord.

Tenet then sat down. Four years later, the war he supported and promoted has killed as many Americans in Iraq as the number killed in New York City on 9/11.

And now, having put down the good book and picked up his own, Tenet’s preaching a different tune.

“The hardest part of all of this has just been listening to this for almost three years,” he told Pelley, adding:

“Listening to the vice president go on Meet The Press on the fifth year of 9/11, and say, ‘Well, George Tenet said, “slam dunk.” ‘ As if he needed me to say slam dunk to go to war with Iraq. And they never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. You know, ‘Look at what the idiot told us, and we decided to go to war.’ Well, let’s not be so disingenuous. Let’s stand up. This is why we did it. This is why, this is how we did it. And let’s tell, let’s everybody tell the truth.”

Mr. T
Marc Kusnetz, HuffPo
04.30.2007

Watching George Tenet on 60 Minutes last night and then this morning on Today, I was reminded just how grotesque the technique of strategic contrition really is. Incongruously but aptly, I think, I remembered the day President Clinton landed at Kigali Airport, where he stepped to a microphone, bit his lower lip (such a touch!! such a touch!!) and apologized for the genocide. And then he got right back on the plane, without even visiting any of the genocide sites.

A parallel dynamic was in play with Tenet last night and this morning: the “owning up” amidst the self-cleansing. The “we got it wrong” amidst the “hey, we were honest folks doing the best we could do.” The “in retrospect, I could have done better” amidst the “but look at these OTHER guys….if I’m bad, think about THEM!”

The awful thing is, not only is Tenet factually correct in pointing out the unspeakable treachery of Bush/Cheney/Rumseld/Rice et al, he also knows that WE know all about that — and he’s counting on that calculus to carry him through. He really is beneath contempt. And to think there are others beneath him….. God, I could puke.

When it comes to the center not holding, Yeats had it right: “The best lack all conviction; while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” (And yes, of course I realize that I’m all passionate intensity in writing these words.)

Tenet’s Instinct to Please
Walter Isaacson, HuffPo
04.30.2007

As I was reading the excerpts and reports of George Tenet’s new book, I was reminded of a dinner I went to recently where I got to listen to Václav Havel, the playwright, former Czech president, prisoner, and human rights activist. He said that there were two types of people he had dealt with over the years: those with the soul of a collaborationist and those who were comfortable defying authority.

He was obviously in the latter category, and he was speaking of a European archbishop who had collaborated with the communists.

George Tenet’s woes, it seems to me, come from the very natural instinct to please rather than tell uncomfortable truths to those in authority. Watching Bill Moyers’s show on how the media failed to question the march to the war in Iraq, I reflected on how I, likewise, when I was at CNN, was too willing to accept what those in authority were telling me. And reading Bob Dallek’s new book on Nixon and Kissinger, I was reminded how Kissinger, someone I once wrote about, was too willing to cater to and collaborate with the darker impulses of Nixon.

It’s not always possible nor even a good thing to be defiant of authority, as I sometimes try to explain to my daughter. Yet Havel’s distinction seems, each day, to become more relevant to me as I watch folks like Tenet try to explain themselves. I think, in contrast, of a person like Brent Scowcroft, who repeatedly had the intellectual honesty to say publicly and privately when he disagreed with his former protégés in the Bush Administration, even at the cost of being excluded from the inner circle.

A rebellious willingness to defy authority is what I think most characterized Albert Einstein, my most recent biography subject. You see it in his politics, as he becomes the sole dissenter among the academic elite in Berlin to oppose German militarism during World War I and later to oppose the Nazis, communists, and then McCarthyites when he moved to America. In all cases, it was because he felt people should not be compelled to cater to authority. Likewise in his personal life; even as a young kid, he gets asked to leave school because his attitude is undermining authority, and as a yound patent examiner he learned to question every premise in front of him. And in his science, Einstein’s triumphs came from questioning the received wisdom about space and time and gravity that was handed down from Newton.

Not everyone is an Einstein, and many people who repeatedly defy authority are cranks rather than heroes. On the other hand, Havel is right to draw an interesting distinction between people like Einstein and people whose laudable respect for authority spills over into an overeagerness to cater to power.

Walter Isaacson, the president of the Aspen Institute, is the former managing editor of Time and chairman of CNN and the author of biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein.

Why Didn’t George Tenet Just Resign?
Arianna Huffington, HuffPo
04.29.2007

Does this sound familiar? A senior Bush administration official plays a key role in selling the Iraq war debacle to the American public, resigns a few years later, and then tries to distance himself from Bush and the war by writing a book or talking to Bob Woodward, portraying himself as a poor, hapless victim who knew the truth at the time and really, really wanted to tell it, but, somehow, just had no choice but to go along.

What else could he do?

Each version of this contemptible tale shares the same fatal flaw. It requires that the remedy that was readily available — resignation — did not exist.

The latest to trod this pathetic path is George Tenet.

Poor George Tenet. Flogging his book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, on 60 Minutes, Tenet tells Scott Pelley about how his phrase “slam dunk” was misused by the Bush administration. Tenet, you see, didn’t mean it was a “slam dunk” that Hussein actually had WMD, he only meant it was a “slam dunk” that a public case could be made that Hussein had WMD.

I can’t really see that the distinction matters, but Tenet apparently does. “I became campaign talk,” Tenet tells Pelley, “I was a talking point. ‘Look at what the idiot told us, and we decided to go to war.’ Well, let’s not be so disingenuous. Let’s stand up. This is why we did it. This is why, this is how we did it. And let’s tell, let’s everybody tell the truth.”

Great — except he’s about four years too late. Tenet seems to believe there’s a major distinction between lying and standing by silently while others lie, and then proudly receiving a Medal of Freedom from the liars.

He could have simply resigned and freed himself to “tell the truth.” Tenet acts as if resignation were not an option. But it was. And the passion and anger he displays now in the service of book sales could have been used then in the service of his country.

“It’s the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Tenet tells Pelley. “You don’t do this… You’re gonna throw somebody overboard just because it’s a deflection? Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me.”

The problem is, the honorable train left the station a long time ago, and Tenet wasn’t on board.

But others were. Like John Brady Kiesling, a career U.S. diplomat, who resigned from the State Department. As he wrote in his resignation letter to Colin Powell:

“I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.”

That, Mr. Tenet, is how it’s done.

It’s way too late for George Tenet to do the right thing. But can someone please remind Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales, as they are pathetically fighting tooth and nail to cling to their jobs, that there is another option.

And how long do you think it’s going to be after the end of the Bush administration before we are treated to General Petraeus’ memoir explaining how the surge would have worked “if only he had been given the troops he needed to implement it properly.”

So here is a plea to all Bush administration officials: Now is the time. If, like John Brady Kiesling, you’re finding it hard to reconcile what you see going on around you with what you know to be the truth, do the right thing and resign. While it matters.

As Tenet says on 60 Minutes: “At the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. It’s all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. And when you don’t have that anymore, well, there you go.”

George Tenet and I are both Greek and there is a great word for it: filotimo*.

There are still lives to be saved if a few administration officials have the guts to do what they know is right now — instead of five years from now while flogging their books.

Any takers?

[*Loosely, “love of honor” — go here. J]

Poor George Tenet; He Still Doesn’t Get It
Ray McGovern, t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Sunday 29 April 2007

“If you can’t say something positive about someone, don’t say anything.” This was drummed into me by my Irish grandmother and, as most of her admonishments, it has stood me in good stead. On occasion, though, it been a real bother - as when I felt called to comment on George Tenet’s apologia, “In the Center of the Storm,” coming to a bookstore near you tomorrow.

On the verge of despair, I ran into an old schoolmate of Tenet’s from PS 94 in Little Neck, Queens, who told me that George was more handsome than his twin brother Billy, and that his outgoing nature and consummate political skill got him elected president of the student body.

Positive enough, Grandma? Now let me add this.

George Tenet’s book shows that he remains, first and foremost, a politician - with no clue as to the proper role of intelligence work. He is unhappy about going down in history as “Slam Dunk Tenet.” But, George protests, his famous remark to President Bush on December 21, 2002 was not meant to assure the president that available intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk.” Rather he meant that the argument that Saddam Hussein had such weapons could be enhanced to slam-dunk status in order to sell war on Iraq. Those of you tuning in to CBS’s “60 Minutes” tonight will hear Tenet explain what he meant when he uttered the words he now says everyone misunderstood or distorted in order to blame him for the Iraq war. What he says he meant was simply: “We can put a better case together for a public case.” (sic)

Tenet still doesn’t get it. Those of us schooled in the craft and ethos of intelligence remain in wide-mouthed disbelief, perhaps best summed up by veteran operations officer Bob Baer’s quip:

“So, it is better that the ’slam dunk’ referred to the ease with which the war could be sold? I guess I missed that part of the National Security Act delineating the functions of the CIA - the part about CIA marketing a war. Guess that’s why I never made it into senior management.”

George’s concern over being scapegoated is touching. But could he not have seen it coming? Not even when Rumsfeld asked him in the fall of 2002 (that is, before the war) whether he had put in a system to track how good the intelligence was compared with what would be found in Iraq? The guys I know from Queens usually can tell when they’re being set up. Maybe Tenet was naive enough to believe that the president, whom he describes as a “kindred soul,” would protect him from thugs like Vice President Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, even when - as was inevitable - someone had to take the fall. Or did he perhaps actually believe the Cheney dictum that US forces would be greeted as liberators?

So now George is worried about his reputation. He tells “60 Minutes:”

At the end of the day, the only thing you have … is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor, and when you don’t have that anymore, well, there you go.”

I immediately thought back to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s response when he was asked if he regretted the lies he told at the UN on February 5, 2003. Powell said he regretted that speech because it was “a blot on my record.”

So we’ve got ruined reputations and blots on records. Poor boys. What about the 3,344 American soldiers already killed in a war that could not have happened had not these poor fellows deliberately distorted the evidence and led the cheering for war? What about the more than 50,000 wounded, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose deaths can be attributed directly to the invasion and its aftermath? There are blots, and there are blots. Why is it that Tenet and Powell seem to inhabit a different planet?

Despite all this, they still have their defenders … or at least Tenet does. (Powell’s closest associate, Col. Larry Wilkerson, decided long ago to turn state’s evidence and apologize for his and Powell’s role in the intelligence fiasco, but Powell has tried to remain above the battle. He may, I suppose, be writing his own book to explain everything.)

Yesterday on National Public Radio, Tenet’s deputy and partner in crime, John McLaughlin, went to ludicrous lengths reciting a carefully prepared list of “all the things that the CIA got right,” while conceding that it (not “we,” mind you, but “it”) performed “inadequately” in assessing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Picky, picky.

Defending Torture … Again

Hewing to the George W. Bush dictum of “catapulting the propaganda” by endlessly repeating the same claim (the formula used so successfully by Joseph Goebbels), Tenet manages to tell “60 Minutes” five times in five consecutive sentences: “We don’t torture people.” Like President Bush, however, he then goes on to show why it has been absolutely necessary to torture people. What do they take us for, fools? And Tenet’s claims of success in extracting information via torture are no more worthy of credulity than the rest of what he says.

His own credibility aside, Tenet has succeeded in destroying the asset without which an intelligence community cannot be effective. And that is serious. He seems blissfully oblivious to the damage he has done - aware only of the damage others have done to his “personal honor.”

Lessons Learned

If any good can come out of the intelligence/policy debacle regarding Iraq, it would be the clear lesson that intelligence crafted to dovetail with the predilections of policymakers can bring disaster. The role that Tenet, McLaughlin and their small coterie of senior managers played as willing accomplices in the corruption of intelligence has made a mockery of the verse chiseled into the marble at the entrance to CIA headquarters: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Had Tenet been tenaciously honest, his analysts would have risen to the occasion. And there is a good chance that they could have helped prevent what the Nuremburg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime” - a war of aggression, and a war that Tenet and his subordinates knew had nothing to do with the “intelligence” adduced to “justify” it, as Tenet now admits in his book.

No director of the CIA should come from the ranks of congressional staff, since those staffers work in a politicized ambience antithetical to substantive intelligence work. Tenet is Exhibit A. Outside of intelligence circles, it was considered a good sign that, as a Congressional staffer, Tenet had been equally popular on either side of the aisle. But this raised a red flag for seasoned intelligence professionals.

As we had learned early in our careers, if you consistently tell it like it is, you are certain to make enemies. Those enjoying universal popularity are ipso facto suspect of perfecting the political art of compromise - shading this and shaving that. However useful this may be on the Hill, it sounds the death knell for intelligence analysis. Tenet also lacked experience in managing a large, complicated organization. Such experience is a sine qua non.

Finally, it is a mischievous myth that the CIA director must cultivate a close personal relationship with the president. Nor should he/she try to do so, for it is a net minus. The White House is not a fraternity house; mutual respect is far more important than camaraderie. A mature, self-confident president will respect an independent intelligence director. The latter must resist the temptation to be “part of the team” in the way the president’s political advisers are part of the team. Overly close identification with “the t