Tenet’s memoir

George Tenet, former head of the CIA, 'œhas a new job now,' said The Philadelphia Inquirer in an editorial. It's called covering your keister. In his new book, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet works full-time 'œtrying to shirk responsibility' for the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 and the disastrous war in Iraq. In Tenet's revisionist history, he says he repeatedly warned both the Clinton and Bush administrations about the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and al Qaida. In fact, on July 10, 2001, he says, he specifically told then'“National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that 'œa big event' was coming. During the run-up to Iraq, Tenet admits, the CIA provided flawed intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. But he says Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and other Bush administration neoconservatives were obsessed with toppling Saddam Hussein, and used the WMD merely as a pretext for a war they had already decided to launch.

But as these disasters unfolded, said USA Today in an editorial, the loyal Tenet kept 'œtelling his bosses what they wanted to hear.'' So why is he speaking up now? Simple: He's angry at Cheney. Cheney, you see, has publicly quoted Tenet as having assured the White House that the intelligence on Saddam's WMD was 'œa slam-dunk.' Sorry, said Christopher Hitchens in Slate.com, but 'œit's a bit late'' for Tenet'”a legendary master of the Washington 'œkiss up''”to distance himself from the decision to invade Iraq. When Secretary of State Colin Powell made his 'œill-starred presentation'' about Iraqi WMD at the United Nations, wasn't that the CIA chief sitting directly behind him, silently vouching for the information and 'œbeaming like an overfed cat'? Even more troubling is Tenet's failure to help head off Sept. 11, said Michael Scheuer in The Washington Post. As the founding head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, I worked directly under Tenet. 'œEach time we had intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts,' we would tell Tenet and recommend a pre-emptive attack. But he 'œconsistently denigrated' our information and worried aloud that civilians might also be killed in attacks on al Qaida training camps. That gave Clinton all the excuse he needed to let these golden opportunities pass.

The book does, however, perform a service in puncturing some widely accepted myths, said Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online. In his 'œsupposedly anti-Bush book,' Tenet says that the intelligence community collectively believed in 2002 that Saddam was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program. Tenet also says that if Saddam got his hands on fissile material, he'd probably have nukes today. The book also points out that the link between Iraq and al Qaida was real, said Thomas Joscelyn in The Weekly Standard. After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Tenet says, about 200 al Qaida fighters relocated to camps in northern Iraq. Others found safe haven in Baghdad, where, in the author's own words, they 'œfound a comfortable and secure environment' from which to direct their operations. As Tenet describes the Saddam-Osama connection, 'œthere was more than enough evidence to give us real concern.'

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Juan Cole

Salon.com