Sorry They’ve Been So Mean To You, George
“If you can’t say something positive about someone, don’t say anything.”
This was drummed into me by my Irish grandmother and, as was the case with most of her admonishments, it has stood me in good stead. On occasion, though, it has been a real bother-as when I felt called to comment on George Tenet’s apologia, In the Center of the Storm, coming soon to a bookstore near you.
On the verge of despair, I ran into an old classmate of Tenet’s from PS 94 in Little Neck, Queens. Help at last. He 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.” George protests that his famous remark to President Bush on Dec. 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 readily enhanced to slam-dunk status in order to sell war on Iraq. Yesterday evening on CBS’ 60 Minutes Tenet explained what he meant when he uttered those words-the words he says have now been distorted to blame him for the war in Iraq. 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 recent 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.”
Reluctant Scapegoat
George’s concern over being scapegoated is understandable. But could he not have seen it coming? Not even when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked him in the fall of 2002 whether he had created a system for tracking how good the intelligence was compared with what would be actually found in Iraq? The folks I know from Queens usually can tell when they’re being set up. Maybe Tenet was naive enough to believe that his friend the president (”President Bush and I are much alike,” he writes) would protect him from the likes of Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney even when-as was inevitable-someone would have to take the fall. Or did George actually believe Cheney’s insight that US forces would be greeted in Iraq as liberators, and that at that point, the absence of the weapons of mass destruction would not matter?
Now George is worried about his reputation. He told 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 Feb. 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 troops wounded, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians 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/policy fiasco, but Powell has tried to remain above the battle. He may, I suppose, be writing his own book.)
Saturday 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.
[What Tenet has said, both while writing his book and while hawking it on TV, is highly troubling-so much so that a number of us wrote him a letter yesterday to express our concern to him directly. I shall include a copy below.]
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. Do they take us for fools? And Tenet’s claims of success in extracting information via torture are no more deserving 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 informed policy making is at grave risk-trustworthiness. That is serious. He seems blissfully oblivious to the damage he has done-aware only of the damage he accuses others of doing to his “personal honor.”
Lessons
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 malleable 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-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. When he was nominated for the job, outside observers deemed it a good sign that, as a congressional staffer, Tenet had been equally popular on both sides of the aisle. But for intelligence professionals, this raised a huge red flag.
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 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 president will respect an independent intelligence director. The latter must resist the temptation to be “part of the team” in the same way that 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 Sept. 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 like the CIA, significant, enduring improvement requires vision, courage, and integrity at the top. It has been almost three decades since the CIA has been led by such a person.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. His responsibilities during his 27-year service as a CIA analyst included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Ray McGovern, I have great admiration for you, but from what I know of CIA doings throughout the decades, we seem to be looking at two separate institutions. Of course, I do agree it has been dreadfuly politicized and demoralized (by which I refer to internal relationships, since on an activity level it has always been amoral), but I cannot name a single governmental agency that has escaped that fate from the Bush administraton.
What I don’t understand is how anyone who appears to be as upstanding as you do can work for and care about an agency responsible for so many assassinations and tortures throughout the world, and always to support US and corporate interests opposing people trying to be free.
If all it did was gather intelligence without resorting to vicious behavior, I would have a different view of the CIA. I’m guessing the director you refers to at the end of your essay is Stansfield Turner, who is reputed to have considerably cut back on covert operations. Which was dramatically reversed by Reagan’s appointee, William Casey. These Republicans do love their covert ooperations, assassinations and torture. It’s one thing to be a control freak, it’s another to enjoy inflicting pain. What’s wrong with these people?
Thank you for an interesting and illuminating article, you are one of my favorite writers.
Once you start sacrificing the truth, you get lost in lies.
George Tenet and Colin Powell are at least as responsible for the war as the rest of the gang, and even more so in a way (especially Powell), because they knew they were taking part in a crime and did nothing to stop it. They are war criminals.
Bless,
I agree
Thank you for your comments which are always on the mark.
I think Tenet and Powell as well as Bush and Cheney are war criminals for starting this war based on lies to Congress, our people and to the world. The war is a debacle, a quagmire, responsible for so many American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, all for nothing.
As for the CIA, gathering intelligence is one thing, but taking part in destroying foreign governments, assassinating leaders and teaching foreign military personnel how best to torture (school of the Americas and its descendent) their own people seem to me beyond the pale and ALSO criminal acts.
The GOP led House was correct to renamed the CIA headquarters campus as “The George Bush Center for Intelligence”–a very appropriate oxymoron and an indicator of where the real problems of this organization lie.
fccm–Touche!
It’s interesting to see how many sociopaths have gotten into government since Bush took power. Very much like Stalin’s coterie. It will be interesting to count them as they crawl whining into the public spotlight to sell their books and cast blame on anyone or anything other than themselves for the horror and destruction they have wreaked on the world.
I was thinking about the level of corruption and the fact that they kept adding incompetent idiots, and concluded that they had no choice. When a crime is committed, and you start a cover up of a cover up, you don’t want people with integrity around you. In addition, of course, the incompetent bastards don’t want anybody competent near them.
George Tenet is the lowest piece of human filth possible. First he not only goes along with but actively promotes fascist policy and then tries to weasel out of it with a mea culpa when the policy fails. He should be indicted for war crimes and spend the rest of his life in prison.
“Rather he meant that the argument that Saddam Hussein had such weapons could be readily enhanced to slam-dunk status in order to sell war on Iraq.”
Well then, maybe some giant pharmaceutical company will pick him up as their Director of Advertising and Sales, since that seems to be his area of expertise.
Tenet’s denial of but apologia for torture really chilled me as I watched him. That theatrical “look straight in the eye” while repeating “The US does not torture” was Academy Award material. But Tenet’s implicit claim that any qualms over torture is trumped by the intelligence that has “saved lives” just made my stomach turn. Apart from the blatant immorality, it is creating new generations of people who rightly hate our guts. I can see the average “ugly American” buying his claim that, in essence, we can debate this five years from now, but for now we don’t have the luxury to treat terror suspects like human beings. This will come back to haunt us like Hiroshima and the Japanese internment camps.
I am seriously beginning to question whether there are or ever have been any terrorists worthy of waging war against. Tenet makes some vague remarks about the CIA’s having stopped some terrorist activity in the US — oh really? And if Osama were all they say he is, why is he still out there? I mean come on. It’s all crap.
Here you have a confession in a book of war crimes, just like poor Powell did. Hello Congress, when are you going to charge the bastards and put them behind bars?
Why so much fuss about Tenet? What 60% of Americans are saying, if we are to believe polls at al, is that one breaks in somebody else’s house one should stay put. None of those Americans would do that if it were about their neighbor’s house, but if house or better still 10 million houses are somewhere beyond the horizon, that will be OK with those 60%. That inability to grasp reality is nothing new and well documented by modern neuropsychology; it is widely used by advertisers, both commercial and political. Are we doomed? Unlike armybrat, I don’t think so. I had already fled one totalitarian regime to find refuge in the bastion of democracy; I run for myself. That totalitarian regime went in smoke in almost no time and I now I feel myself as a traitor for what came instead is even worse. So will fall this one. But I will not flee this time around.
Understandably, Tenet’s recent comments cause us to associate him closely with Bush. But let’s not imagine that he is a creature of the Republican Party or of the neocons - it was Bill Clinton who appointed him head of the CIA, an extremely unfortunate appointment! Never mind the party associations: are there no better-qualified people available for crucial high positions in government?
Powell, too, is being let off too lightly. During his notorious appearance before the UN Security Council, he made ludicrous assertions about aerial reconnaisance concerning Iraq (among other things the bomb-carrying vans, which could have been - who knows - Coke or Pepsi trucks), assertions which any general officer in the military ought to have known were foolish. (Why should a general officer know that? Well, to put it simply, it is a case of knowing which objectives to target, how to find them, how to aim the artillery, the bombs, and the rockets, and where to concentrate one’s ground forces.) There are hundreds or thousands of us within the US who have experience with aerial photo interpretation, analysis of satellite images and the like - and we know that you cannot reach the conclusions Powell did on the basis of those data. For any of us watching that day, it was immediately clear that the noises about an atomic threat from Saddam Hussein were artificial, and that the rationale for the war which as being presented to us was totally hollow.
George Tenet and John Negroponte sat impassively behind Powell throughout this presentation. Their public presence seemed to lend credence to what Powell was saying.
So why did Powell allow himself to cave in like this? Had he never learned his basic lessons as an army officer (in which case, why is he so widely respected)? Was it simply a coincidence that Powell’s son was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (an organization which controls billions of dollars of private money each year, and leaves its chairman in a politically and financially advantageous position for years to come)?
Why isn’t George Tenent being charged with treason? Why aren’t the president and his cabinet being tried as war criminals? Why aren’t the Dems just saying ’screw it’, no funds - no war? Why should we pay taxes to allow the torture done in our names to continue? Why aren’t the president, vice president, cabinet, and the Senate/Congressional representatives who VOTED for this war required to PAY for it???? Spend THEIR money first. Send THEIR children first. Send George Tenet to Bhagdad, send Paul Bremer to the front lines, send Wolfowitz, Rice, and Rumsfeld to live outside the Green Zone for a year, and please, let Cheney get his next operation in a Bhagdad hospital. He deserves the best his war has to offer.
Onlooker, you wrote,
“George Tenet and John Negroponte sat impassively behind Powell throughout this presentation. Their public presence seemed to lend credence to what Powell was saying.”
I watched the man who covered up the Mai Lai massacre telling his lies to the UN backed by a weasel and a retread from Reagan’s Central American death squads - a real shit sandwich. Then I watched all those diplomats covering their total incredulity while I watched drooling American ‘commentators’ announcing the lie-fest like an American event at somebody else’s Olympics. Things have gone pretty much down hill ever since. Regrettably, America is still sucking shit through a straw and calling it a chocolate shake. Don’t mind the chunky bits, they’re the sunshine vitamins.
Peace.
On the subject of torture…when those british sailors were being tickled by Iranians into submitting on national TV that they crossed borders into Iran, our media got all excited reiterating Blair’s remarks about parading respectable brits for propaganda, while Condi goes on various shows (recently blitzer’s circus) and claimed interrogation of captives as proof for all the wrongdoings of this administration! Torture works doesnt it? Hypocrisy at various levels!
If the American people wish to clear their credibility to the rest of the world the simple and only righteous move would be to take the entire “crew” into custody, turn the higher level members over to the world court for trial as war criminals, with trials waiting for them here afterwards. The lower ranking criminals of the aministration would stand trial here and if convicted no pardons would be given, they would do their time in federal custody and learn the joys of incarceration.
Any proceeds from Mr. Tenet’s publication as well as those of any other member of the criminal endeavor would be confiscated and disbursed to the legal next of kin to the slain armed forces members, and the more than 50K wounded, with a scale pursuant to the severity of their wounds and disability.
Without this action I cannot imagine the rest of the world tolerating the USA much longer, and the USA could not stand against the world.
Try not to forget the lessons of history as the current administration has. The world knows that the USA has WMDs and has used them twice, on civilian populations.
On their way out of Iraq the American Generals who have participated in the atrocity as well as the staff grade officers, should be made to stop and apologize to every Iraqi they meet. Upon their return to the USA, they should be tried in federal courts first, NOT military the simple reason for this is they smeared the credibility of the American people with their own participation. If convicted they should be stripped of rank/grade, their retirement garnished as mentioned above for disbursement, and they should be made to serve their time in MAXIMUM
security federal prisons since they are some of the most dangerous criminals on earth.
Anyone in the future who does not learn from histories mistakes may certainly learn from these criminals. Hopefully nothing like this will ever occur again.