SCOT LEHIGH
Tenet's fall -- and those to followCIA DIRECTOR George Tenet wasn't forced to walk the plank, but instead resigned for personal reasons, the Bush administration insisted yesterday.
Whether that account is true remains to be seen, but this much is clear: If Tenet wasn't fired, he should have been -- and for professional reasons. Buttressing George W. Bush's account of a voluntary departure is the track record of an administration where loyalty has long trumped competence. There is also a suspicion in Washington that Tenet wanted to tender his resignation before June 17, when the Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to release a report expected to be highly critical about the use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. Although Tenet, a holdover from the Clinton administration, was well liked in Washington, the director and his agency had served the country poorly. Perhaps the best vignette demonstrating that comes from "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward's chronicle of the administration's decision to go to war with Iraq. According to Woodward, on Dec. 21, 2002, Tenet and John McLaughlin, his deputy, went to the Oval Office to run through the CIA's case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When it was done, Bush seemed unconvinced. " `Nice try,' Bush said. "I don't think this is quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from.' " The president wasn't the only one who thought so. According to Woodward, Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, also "worried that there might be no `there there.' " Bush then turned to Tenet. "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?" he asked. Tenet, Woodward writes, "rose up, threw his arms in the air. `It's a slam dunk case.' " President Bush pressed, asking Tenet again how confident he was. "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," Tenet responded. It hard to believe that Tenet would offer that assurance given what we now know about the sketchiness and dubious sourcing of the CIA's information. Or that Bush, given his own doubts about the issue that was his primary justification for the war, would let that simple reassurance overcome his reservations. Certainly that record renders risible the president's contention yesterday that Tenet had done a "superb job for the American people" during his time at the CIA. It's now known that Iraq had no advanced nuclear program, which was always the principal fear. Although a recently exploded artillery shell, rigged as a roadside bomb, contained Sarin gas, there has been no evidence of the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that the administration repeatedly alleged as a justification for war. And it has since become clear that key parts of the CIA information used in Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations came from highly questionable and self-interested sources around Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi has essentially shrugged his shoulders about the inaccurate information, telling England's Daily Telegraph, "We are heroes in error. . . . As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important." Yet it would be a mistake to think that Tenet's departure alone will solve the problems with US intelligence. "The problems go beyond any one person, and I don't think the administration has shown any real commitment to fixing it," said US Representative Marty Meehan. Indeed, we now know that our intelligence gathering operation is deeply dysfunctional, lacking reliable sources in volatile parts of the world, prone to manipulation by hustlers, and all too likely to misinterpret ambiguous information. We also know that the CIA and the FBI are so suspicious of each other that they don't share important information. To read "Against All Enemies," Richard Clarke's account of his days as counter-terrorism czar, is to shake one's head in dismay at the incompetence and bureaucratic infighting that apparently characterize the CIA and the FBI. Fixing those problems will take years of painstaking work. Politically, Tenet's resignation casts the issue of competence in high relief.
With the exception of Secretary of State Powell, this administration has been exceedingly reluctant to acknowledge any error. But however it came about, Tenet's departure can be read as a tacit admission that his own performance had made his continuation in office untenable. Based on that standard, he's hardly the only one who should depart. Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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