Administration's stand-up guy is allowed to take fall

WASHINGTON -- CIA Director George Tenet's resignation yesterday seemed less the result of outside criticism of the Bush administration than a fraying of its famous loyalty, an accumulation of internal pressure that pitted the leaders of different departments against one another.

Now, with five months until the presidential election, President Bush must confront looming challenges in Iraq and homeland security with a temporary CIA director, a defense secretary fending off calls for his own departure, a secretary of state who has distanced himself from key administration policies, and several departments riled up over ongoing criminal investigations.

It is a tough situation for an administration famed for its discipline and refusal to admit mistakes. And some of the pressures that squeezed Tenet -- particularly the investigation into who in the White House may have leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent, along with a new probe into who in the Defense Department may have leaked secrets to Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi -- seem more likely to increase than abate.

Democrats were quick to portray the resignation as a sign the administration is in trouble.

''It's too early to say it's the beginning of the end," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat who was a senior adviser to President Clinton. ''But if everything were going rosy, nobody would be quitting or dumping on any other agency."

Tenet was always the Bush administration's stand-up guy, maintaining a stoic front even as criticism, both fair and unfair, rained down over his agency's inability to prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and over the inaccuracy of its prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs.

At each juncture, administration leaders stood together through even the most disappointing news. But the wall of unity began to crumble early this spring.

Bob Woodward's book ''Plan of Attack," written with the cooperation of many people in the administration, disclosed that Tenet had soothed Bush's doubts about prewar intelligence by saying it was a ''slam-dunk" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell broke ranks and disclosed his own misgivings about some of the administration's Iraq policies.

Then came the firestorm over the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, with leaders of the regular Army pointing fingers at intelligence officers who work under Tenet.

He soon found himself at odds with several colleagues: with Powell over prewar intelligence; with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over abuses at Abu Ghraib; with other Pentagon leaders over the CIA's alleged discovery that Chalabi, a favorite source of information for many administration hawks, had shared lethal secrets with Iran; and ultimately, with members of his own agency for his perceived failure to represent their viewpoints in the White House.

''I think the White House tried to put the blame on [Tenet] for a lot of misjudgments that I think really came from the Pentagon," said retired General William Nash, the former US commander in Bosnia. ''I think the bureaucratic infighting has been very tough to handle."

A Bush loyalist by choice, not by party affiliation, Tenet, 51, developed a warm rapport with President Bush and his father that helped assure the former Democratic congressional staff member's reappointment as CIA director after the change of administrations in 2001. But his closeness to the president aroused suspicion in the CIA that Tenet was too eagerly acceding to the administration's suspicions about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Tenet tacitly accepted the Defense Department's decision to create a new intelligence branch, the Office of Special Plans, after neoconservatives -- particularly Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith -- insisted that the CIA was not properly assessing the dangers posed by Hussein.

The existence of the new office, which reportedly collected information from exiles, including Chalabi, infuriated many analysts in the CIA who had monitored Iraq for decades. But after the war, when members of Congress began demanding answers for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, White House leaders pointed to the CIA, not the Defense Department.

And when Woodward disclosed that Tenet had assured Bush that it was a slam-dunk that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, some in the CIA felt betrayed, as though their director had thrown away the more nuanced analyses and told Bush what he wanted to hear.

''Did he defend our analysis or go a little further?" an intelligence official said yesterday. The ''slam-dunk" comment, the official said, ''makes us a little suspicious of his access to the president and being a little too close to the policy makers."

Now, with Tenet having tendered his resignation, officials and outside political observers alike wonder whether the longtime spymaster will one day decide to tell his side of the story. The Bush team has had fewer resignations than most recent administrations, but two of them have stung: former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former National Security Council aide Richard A. Clarke made damaging disclosures in books earlier this year.

A weary Tenet, in his tearful announcement to colleagues yesterday, seemed more inclined to take rest than retribution.