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| March 13, 2004 | ||||
Tenet's Timidity May Prove Suicidal |
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| by Christopher Deliso | ||||
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To put it simply, George Tenet is confusing us. The beleaguered CIA director has become a veritable sphinx regarding his knowledge, or lack thereof, of the neocon OSP cabal’s remarkable ability to filter bogus intelligence from its self-proclaimed "Batcave" in the Pentagon to the White House’s corridors of power. And this ambivalence may have fatal results for the remarkably long-lived CIA chief. A Plethora of Contradictions This whole long affair has been frustratingly confused. First of all, last summer, Tenet fell on his sword regarding the faulty data that was used to back up the Iraq war. He took "full responsibility" for the controversial assertions that wound their way into George W. Bush’s fateful 2003 State of the Union Address, and Colin Powell’s grave speech at the UN, both of which were patchworks of grandiose, imaginative fear-mongering, all stitched together with errors and lies. Yet now Tenet is also contradicting himself, claiming that he both knew about and objected to the OSP’s work at the time. Which is it, George? A Mystifying Reticence This reticence is especially dismaying considering that Tenet’s position should be bolstered by the turbulent trajectory of events since the "outing" of CIA employee Valerie Plame to the press. The past nine months have seen the neocons put under the hot glare of public criticism, and now a grand jury investigation. As the Iraq occupation has dragged on with no end in sight, and as the revelations of a massive deception continue to grow in number, Tenet has come under the gun again. After CIA chief weapons inspector David Kay admitted in January to having been "almost all wrong" regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities, Tenet was "immediately blamed" for the intelligence imbroglio. Tenet looked even worse last month when, says Jim Lobe, he made "a rousing defense" of the CIA’s professionalism: "…Tenet boasted to students at Georgetown University that he and only he was the sole purveyor of intelligence information to the president." Whoops! One marvels that Tenet would say such a thing, considering all that has emerged regarding the neocons’ role in disseminating faulty intelligence, directly to the president, vice-president, and secretary of defense. Yet Tenet’s mystifying tactics hadn’t yet reached their apogee. Just two days ago, Lobe continues, "…he admitted to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was unaware until just last week that officials based in the Pentagon's policy office had given intelligence briefings directly to the White House." "…Is That A Normal Thing To Happen?" This asinine statement raised more than a few eyebrows among committee members. We’ve known for a long time that President Bush is proud to say he doesn’t read the papers, trusting his top aides to give him an "objective" rundown of the news every day. But the head of the CIA? If Tenet seriously expects anyone to believe that he knew nothing about this massive story in which he is involved at almost every turn, he might as well nominate himself for the jury in the Michael Jackson trial. His lame excuse proved too much for the Senate inquisitors to bear. "Incredulous" Democratic senator Carl Levin, asked Tenet during the hearings, "…is that a normal thing to happen, that there [is] a formal analysis relative to intelligence that would be presented to the NSC [National Security Council] that way, without you even knowing about it?’ A Glutton for Punishment? "‘I don't know. I've never been in the situation,’ Tenet replied, insisting, ‘I have to tell you senator, I'm the president's chief intelligence officer; I have the definitive view about these subjects.’ ‘I know you feel that way,’ Levin said, betraying a hint of sarcasm." All things considered, we have to ask whether George Tenet is trying to protect someone—or is just a glutton for punishment. Now that neocon allies like Ahmad Chalabi are gleefully attesting to be "heroes in error" for pulling the wool over Americans’ eyes with the faulty data, and volunteering to take Tenet’s place in the crucifixion line, what good reason does the CIA director have for sacrificing himself, perhaps for nothing? Now, when the neocons are clearly on the chopping block, why would he want to keep sticking his neck out? Indeed, when all signs show that the Plame scandal and intel fraud lead directly back to the Naval Observatory and the office of Vice President Cheney, why should Tenet volunteer himself now? After all, Cheney practically admitted his bad-faith dealings himself, and relatively recently, the Guardian states, "…In a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Cheney had cited an article in The Weekly Standard magazine which was based in large part on a since-discredited—and classified—Defense Department document from the office of Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. That document contended there was a relationship between Saddam and the al-Qaeda organization." Killing an Immortal Allegiance It’s been argued that Tenet’s undying allegiance to George W. Bush lies behind his ambivalence. As Lobe comments, "…in his desperate attempt to walk a tightrope between his increasingly irreconcilable loyalties to the administration of President George W. Bush and to his own intelligence professionals, Tenet is suggesting that he really was in the dark about what was going on just a few miles down the Potomac River from CIA headquarters." Still more embarrassing for Tenet and the CIA is the fact that they are still being babysat by the Pentagon, which is still allowed to vet any "informants" supplied by Chalabi before they are interviewed by the CIA. And, on top of that, the Bush Administration is still paying Chalabi’s INC—even after he admits to having helped construct the lies that started a war—to the tune of $340,000 a month. Simultaneously, Tenet is allowing Chalabi to walk all over him regarding the intelligence failures. The latter told the New York Times recently that it wasn’t his fault: instead, "…intelligence people, who are supposed to do a better job for their country and their government, did not do such a good job." Why Didn’t They Ask? However, the main issue here is not what they knew or didn’t know, but why they didn’t ask many questions. We should not forgive our highest officials simply because they "didn’t know." That is no excuse for those who are, if not always America’s best and brightest, invested with the duty to serve the American people in a responsible and above-board manner. Indeed, we should wonder why those whose vision and wisdom American voters trust did not ask simple questions regarding the validity of the data. And not simply out of reference to damaged popular faith; after all, whole countries have been wrecked, and thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghans have died as a result of what is beginning to look like an entirely unreasoned policy of blind warmongering. Since it is increasingly looking like the Iraq invasion was planned well in advance and destined to occur, come hell or high water, the truth emerges that intelligence was treated as a mere formality. Impatient, reckless policy planners, most of them neoconservatives, had little interest in determining the veracity of information. Since they had already made up their minds about the severity of the Iraqi threat, nothing was going to deter them from following through on their quest for war. Throwing Caution to the Winds Voices of caution such as Colin Powell and Tenet were cast aside as weak and naïve regarding the Iraq threat. Yet George Tenet still has a chance to set the record straight. And that is the absolute least that should be expected. Like Colin Powell, perhaps he should have resigned long ago in protest of the Bush Administration’s amateurish, "faith-based" approach to intelligence-gathering, and the utter foolhardiness of its constant march to war. Powell, many believe, sacrificed his reputation and career in order to prevent a nuclear attack on Afghanistan and the invasion of who knows how many countries by now. The fact that his was one of the "cooler heads" in the bunch says a lot about the extreme, fanatical warmongering tendencies of the most influential members of the Bush Administration. Will Tenet’s Discretion Prove Fatal? In Tuesday’s hearing, Tenet was grilled by Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, who got to the heart of the matter right away regarding the chief spook’s waffling: "you can't have it both ways, can you, Mr. Tenet?" To which Tenet replied: "…I'm not going to sit here today and tell you what my interaction [with fraudulent intelligence gatherers] was. What I did, what I didn't do… When I believed that someone was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it. I don't stand up in public and do it." This admission is damning. For Tenet to argue that his job discretion means not publicly blowing the whistle on brazen liars who are simultaneously undercutting his authority and incurring the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqis, is more than irresponsible. It’s downright negligent. The tragedy here is that he really could have bagged them—publicly, not just in weak private interventions—and perhaps prevented a war. However, he didn’t. Whether out of loyalty or for other reasons, we may never know. Yet if George Tenet thinks that he will be able to get away with "not sitting here today and telling you" for much longer, then he is estranged from reality. But then again, that wouldn’t contradict the self-description that the perhaps fatally wounded CIA director has been giving us for the past year. |
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Christopher Deliso is an American journalist, travel writer and author concentrating on the Balkans and Southeast Europe, where he has lived and traveled for almost a decade. His criticisms of interventionist foreign policy can be found in his writings for Antiwar.com, and in his recent work on the West's failures to eradicate foreign-funded Muslim extremists in the Balkans, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West (Praeger Security International, 2007). Mr Deliso directs the Balkan-interest news and analysis website, Balkanalysis.com and is also the author of a travelogue, Hidden Macedonia (Haus Publishing, London). He holds an MPhil with distinction in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University.
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