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Tenet's Defense of the Indefensible
George J. Tenet's At the Center of the Storm is a self-serving and misleading account of his role in helping the Bush administration make its private and public case to go to war against Iraq. As the director of central intelligence, Mr. Tenet did not share the convictions of such hard-liners in the administration as Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, but he - along with senior CIA leaders - facilitated the path to war by providing intelligence to the White House and Congress that presented a false picture of Iraq's intentions and capabilities.
Mr. Tenet's major obligations in the run-up to war were making sure that assumptions on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and possible links to terrorism were rigorously examined and that challenges to assumptions were fully explored. By doing neither, Mr. Tenet and the agency violated the intelligence community's norms of ethical tradecraft.
The CIA used flawed intelligence in its belated National Intelligence Estimate and unclassified White Paper in October 2002. Mr. Tenet himself wrote a letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee affirming the existence of ties between Iraq and al-Qaida. In January 2003, the CIA failed to stop President Bush from making a false statement in his State of the Union speech, charging Saddam Hussein with trying to obtain uranium from Africa for a nuclear weapons program. Later in the month, Mr. Tenet participated in the preparation of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's phony case for war to the United Nations in February 2003.
In his book, Mr. Tenet argues that the estimate on Iraqi WMD was flawed because his agency lacked sufficient time to prepare a comprehensive document. This claim is specious on two levels. First, Mr. Tenet, knowing in summer 2002 that the administration was marching toward war with Iraq, should have demanded an estimate from his National Intelligence Council. He shouldn't have waited until September, when Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Bob Graham of Florida demanded an estimate. Second, there is no reason to accept Mr. Tenet's claim that lack of time was a factor. The flawed analysis that appeared in the estimate was used to make Secretary Powell's specious case to the United Nations four months later. Furthermore, Mr. Tenet and his managers publicly made the case for the estimate after its flaws had been revealed.
It is particularly troubling that Mr. Tenet interpreted his "slam dunk" remark to the president as an assurance that the CIA could "strengthen the public presentation" for war. As director of central intelligence, Mr. Tenet's obligation was to make sure the administration had the intelligence it required to debate a decision to go to war. This obligation is particularly important in the case of a pre-emptive war, which requires strong intelligence if it is to be justified. Mr. Tenet totally failed in his responsibility to scrutinize all the intelligence used to make the case for war. Furthermore, it is not the business of the CIA director to help make a public case for war.
Because Mr. Tenet lacked a background in intelligence analysis, he relied heavily on a deputy, John McLaughlin, who was a career intelligence analyst. But instead of giving Mr. Tenet proper guidance, Mr. McLaughlin relied on single-source and poorly sourced intelligence to make the case for war, and he ignored credible intelligence that pointed to an absence of WMD in Iraq.
The claim that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear capability was based upon a single source - an intelligence fabrication. Similarly, the sole source for claims about mobile biological laboratories was unstable and untrustworthy. And the sole source for links between Iraq and al-Qaida had been tortured and abused in his interrogations and eventually recanted.
Mr. Tenet and Mr. McLaughlin knew the United States lacked the intelligence case to go to war, but they were prepared to go along with the administration and even to provide the public case to do so.
As various congressional committees and presidential commissions have concluded, the CIA was egregiously wrong on virtually every aspect of Iraqi WMD: nuclear, chemical and biological. There was no credible intelligence on links between Iraq and al-Qaida. The congressional oversight process failed to do its job of scrutinizing this intelligence, and most of the media failed to permit contrarian voices to be heard.
The pattern of illicit tradecraft points to a larger problem within the intelligence community that will not be fixed by recent developments such as the creation of an office for the director of national intelligence, greater centralization of the intelligence process, and placing the management of the intelligence community in the hands of the military.
We are witnessing a terrible loss of life and resources in Iraq. Until we create a CIA that is willing to speak truth to power, we will continue to suffer terrible losses.
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, was an analyst at the CIA from 1966 to 1990. His e-mail is goody789@comcast.net.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun
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14 Comments so far
Show AllLYING WEASELS, the whole lot of them.
Agreed. The CIA was a right-wing Republican-controlled organization from the beginning. When it was renamed the CIA, Truman said suspiciously "We don't need another Gestapo". Even Eisenhower finally recognized this when he made his famous "Military Industrial Complex" speech. Kennedy recognized the inherent nastiness of the CIA and sought to shut it down, shortly before his assassination was arranged. Nearly every Republican admin gave it more power, and the CIA hid its secrets from the Democrats.... James Carter did his best to clean up the organization, only to see it arrange the Iran Hostage crisis to get even with him. Facts??? Read Johnathan Bloch's 'KGB/CIA', David Scheim's 'Contract on America', James Bennett's 'Control of Information in the United States' and you will see just what the CIA is and has been... just what Truman feared, 'another Gestapo', literally trained in its early years by Gestapo agents, and designed to keep conservative right-wing corporate pigs in power, whether in the United States or overseas.... and now being used rather extensively by the Bushes to neutralized all opposition to their neonazi agenda.
Give Tenent bashing a rest. Any one openly confronting the administration, be it Richard Clark, John Dean, Paul O'neiil or now George Tenet, immediately becomes the bad guy. Yeah, yeah, the CIA is a dysfunctional mammoth, but from what we have learned about the facts slowly immerging from the period before 911, Tenet went overboard warning Bush and Condi about the imminent attack. He was swept aside and ignored by none other than the same group who are making these guys out to be sooo bad. Here is something that not only makes the CIA look good, but points the finger exactly wear it belongs on this subject.http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/050607.html Tenet-Bush Pre-9/11 'Small Talk'
Tenet says he really believed there were WMD. I'm not sure I believe him. Ray McGovern and others in the letter to Tenet indicated that he knew there were no WMD. I think that he did know there were no WMD.
I'm not sure that he told the administration that this was the case although I think he did. I am entertaining the thought, be it somewhat conspiratorial, that Tenet's book was planned by the administration and him to give them cover. At least, it gives them another talking point that they didn't mislead us and they were just basing it on faulty intelligence. Their criticism of Tenet has been almost non-existent.
Tenet can assume the blame and claim it was an honest mistake and there goes the case for lying us into the war.
It is too nuanced for anyone to bring up that it was pretty clear after Powell's terrible imitation of Adlai Stevenson that there were no WMD. The WMD is this administration's version of The Maine.
No one ever discusses that even if there were WMD, a pre-emptive strike requires an immininent threat, not the desire to prevent another big surprise or the existence of a grave and gathering danger. Tenet hints at it but doesn't say it. Occasionally, we do hear that Hussein was contained.
Even if Tenet presented the intelligence that WMD existed, the adminisration needs to be held accountable financially and, possibly, criminally. Let them pay back the government and damages to our soldiers and the Iraqi people.
At this point, impeachment and conviction isn't enough. It will just get them out of office and they'll be free to cash in their chips.
Bill Clinton never liked Tenet and wanted to fire him, but was talked into keeping him. Tenet is one of the few people carried over from the Clinton administration to the Bush admin. He was incompetent, inept and would basically do anything and/or say anything to keep his job. He is pathetic to me.
Today it is Tenet. Forty years ago it was McNamara.
The more I see of Tenet on TV, the more he comes across as an alarmingly incompetant stumblebum bureaucrat, but a culprit nevertheless. Was he the best we could do? That's what's really scary.
The case for war was that Iraq imposed the threat of violence upon us. So, it is a slam dunk for Russia and America to go to war with each other now. Both are justified, each should launch a pre-emptive nuclear war.
How many times does the cooking of intelligence for the sake of launching this illegal war have to be exposed? We know already. Many of us knew when the Bush Reich took over that war was coming and nothing was going to stop them, least of all the truth.
If congress can't impeach this band of fascists after all the devastation they have brought upon the world, then I give up. There is no hope left for this country.
jp is right . America is already the Fourth Reich and most Americans like Germans in 1933 , don't care
Ronald:
"most Americans like Germans in 1933 , don't care." I add to it something worse: most Americans are ready to nuke any country not thankful enough to kiss a buttok of American "liberator". Just mention that "American national interests" are jeopardized in any point of our globe and, presto, land of free and brave is ready to nuke 'em.
Milton Mayer's "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45" should be required reading for anyone who desires to understand what's happening in America now.
Here at the brink it's hard to decide who's more contemptible, the neofascists in the Bush administration or their Democratic enablers, who lack the gumption to stand up and fight. Indeed, only a bare handful has been willing even to acknowledge the criminal nature of the administration's actions.
As far as I'm concerned the death knell of the Democratic Party was sounded during the first "debate", when not one candidate dared endorse Rep. Kucinich's impeachment bill. How long, I wonder, until the bell tolls for democracy itself.
Now two Georges are wearing dunce caps. Let's hear no more talk about pointy headed liberals. Putting business types in charge of political affairs is like putting the football team in charge of algebra classes. Sorry team. These stooges just aren't capable of sustained intellectual effort or honesty. I hear the knell of bells right now.
Mr. Tenet did not open his mouth publicy when the lies were being told about WMD. If he is capable of shame he is sure to be consumed by it. His apology cheapens the deaths of so many decent people as much as the madmen in Washington do with their trite and meaningless apologies.