TENET’S DEFENSE OF THE INDEFENSIBLE
By Larry Johnson on May 8, 2007 at 10:50 AM in Current Affairs
by
Melvin Goodman
George 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, Tenet did not share the convictions of such hardliners in the administration as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but he facilitated the path to war by providing intelligence to the White House and the Congress that presented a false picture of Iraq’s intentions and capabilities. Tenet was not a driver of the campaign to go to war but, along with senior CIA leaders, he was complicit.
Tenet’s major obligation in the run-up to war was making sure 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, Tenet and the Agency violated the norms of ethical tradecraft. CIA used flawed intelligence in its belated National Intelligence Estimate and unclassified White Paper in October 2002. Tenet himself wrote a letter to the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee affirming the existence of ties between Iraqi and al Qaeda. 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 (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Later in the month, Tenet participated in the preparation of Secretary of State Cohn Powell’s phony case for war to the United Nations in February 2003.
In his book, 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, Tenet, knowing
in the summer of 2002 that the administration was marching towards war
with Iraq, should have demanded an estimate from his National
Intelligence Council. He should not have waited until September, when
Senators Durbin and Graham demanded an estimate. Secondly, there is no
reason to accept Tenet’s implication 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 UN four months later.
Furthermore, Tenet and his managers publicly made the case for the
estimate after its flaws had been revealed.
It is particularly troubling that 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,
Tenet’s obligation was to make sure the administration haathe
intelligence it required to debate a decision to go to war. This
obligation is particularly important in the case of a preemptive war,
which requires strong intelligence if it is to be justified. 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.
Since Tenet lacked a background in intelligence analysis, he relied
heavily on a deputy, John McLaughlin, who was a career intelligence
analyst. Instead of guiding Tenet through the analytical process and
tradecraft, McLaughlin failed to observe these. He 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 sole source for nuclear reconstitution was an intelligence
fabrication. The sole source for mobile biological laboratories was
unstable and untrustworthy. The sole source for links between Iraq and
al Qaeda had been tortured and abused in his interrogations and
eventually recanted. Tenet and 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 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 Qaeda. The congressional
oversight process failed to do its job of scrutinizing this
intelligence, and 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 the creation an
office for the director of national intelligence, greater
centralization of the intelligence process, or placing the management
of the intelligence community in the hands of the military. We are
witnessing a terrible loss of blood and treasure in Iraq and, 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, is a former CIA intelligence analyst.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
by 
* (Included in the 
* 
.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
