StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

It is simply time for our Nation’s intelligence agencies to stop trying to figure out who is to blame the September 11th attacks, and to start concentrating on preventing a repeat. When the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created, I had truly hoped that the internal and cross-agency bickering that was unquestionably one of the contributing factors to those attacks would abate. It is still happening…and it is one of the most critical issues facing our Nation.

A few hours ago, I was about to write about George Tenet’s book ("At the Center of the Storm") and his appearance on CBS Sixty Minutes. Maybe George Tenet is making a final try to retrieve his reputation (I think he would have been alot better off keeping his mouth shut). So we have Secretary Rice disputing his claims that that the administration never had a serious debate about whether Iraq
posed an imminent threat or whether to tighten existing sanctions
before its 2003 invasion.

Tenet’s comments on Sixty Minutes include:

Tenet also tells 60 Minutes the way the Bush administration has used his now famous "slam dunk" comment — which he admits saying in reference to making the public case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — is both disingenuous and dishonorable.

"It’s the most despicable thing that ever happened to me," Tenet says. "You don’t do this. You don’t throw somebody overboard just because it’s a deflection. Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me."

Tenet says to have the president base his entire decision to go to war on such a remark is unbelievable.

It is simply time to stop re-living the past of our Nation’s experiences with Islamic terrorism, and even the War in Iraq, and get on with the business of protecting the American people from another terrorist attack on our soil or against U.S. assets or property overseas.

From Michael Scheuer’s article in the Washington Post, Tenet Tries to Shift the Blame. Don’t Buy It. Scheuer writes:

George Tenet has a story to tell. With his appearance tonight on "60 Minutes" and the publication of his new memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," the former director of central intelligence is out to absolve himself of the failings of 9/11 and Iraq. He’ll sell a lot of books, of course, but we shouldn’t buy his attempts to let himself off the hook…

…At a time when clear direction and moral courage were needed, Tenet
shifted course to follow the prevailing winds, under President Bill
Clinton and then President Bush — and he provided distraught officers
at Langley a shoulder to cry on when his politically expedient tacking
sailed the United States into disaster.

Scheuer’s is a scathing, and yet deserved indictment of George Tenet’s lack of leadership. As Scheuer observes of Tenet, "…he may have been the ideal CIA leader for Clinton and Bush –
denigrating good intelligence to sate the former’s cowardly pacifism
and accepting bad intelligence to please the latter’s Wilsonian
militarism. Sadly but fittingly, "At the Center of the Storm" is likely
to remind us that sometimes what lies at the center of a storm is a
deafening silence."

Andrew McCarthy of NRO makes it sound even worse in Tenet Does 60 Minutes. I don’t agree with all of McCarthy’s points however.

Now there is a letter from former CIA officers Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro and David MacMichael (see letter here) make the following points:

that Bush administration officials took the nation to war "for flimsy
reasons," and that it has proved "ill-advised and wrong-headed."

Tenet’s "lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is
self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an
admission of failed leadership.

that Tenet was "a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an
unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George
Bush for the debacle in Iraq."

Tenet "showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as
the Bush administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let
them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its
hands on uranium."

"You signed off on Colin Powell’s
presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat
behind him and visibly squandered CIA’s most precious asset -
credibility."

This is quite upsetting when you consider that the credibility and quality of our Nation’s intelligence is at the root of future decisions. Read about Secretary Rice’s position that the "’Slam dunk’ comment didn’t lead to war"

Having written all of this, I still also wish that Secretary Rice would cooperate with Senator Waxman’s request to appear before his committee and testify regarding the claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger and other issues. Executive privilege. See: General Carlton Fulford

Moving on, in my opinion, is getting beyond the blame game…it is
owning up to the mistakes that were made and taking responsibility, even if (and they were) based on the then
currently available intelligence and the analysis provided…It is time
that our Nation’s leaders start acting like leaders…and in my
opinion, leadership is not asserting that electing the other political party will make us more vulnerable. I am tired of this partisan sniping…I am tired of all of this crap frankly. I’m hoping that some of our politicians are more like Joe Lieberman than Rudy Giuliani.

Also read my friend Moon’s entry on the otherside of this very blog, George Tenet - At the Center of the Storm

You can read another person’s take on this at BTC News, The George Tenet edition of “Why don’t their heads explode?”