They Knew All Along
The American Spectator
July 1998 On the Prowl
Not for commercial use. For educational and open discussion purposes only.
CIA director George Tenet - according to a source close to the intelligence chief - was "enraged" by the White House's contention that the agency failed to pick up signs India was readying nuclear tests.
In a closed-door session with the Senate Intelligence committee, Tenet angrily defended the CIA, and blamed the White House for the PR debacle.
In the hours leading up to his Senate testimony, Tenet is said to have vented at colleagues and advisers, telling them his staff had warned the White House for a month in daily briefings that the Indians were preparing for nuclear tests. "We were simply ignored," Tenet reportedly told an acquaintance.
More stunning, according to a former U.S. military and intelligence official, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the weeks leading up to the first test sent a letter to the White House outlining plans to conduct nuclear tests in the near future.
According to this former intelligence official, the White House has been making the CIA's job more difficult on many fronts. In spring 1997, CIA operatives detected preparations for a nuclear test in India and presented the White House NSC staff with evidence. The NSC staff in turn confronted the Indian government with the evidence - by showing it raw intelligence data!
"The Indians saw what the U.S. had, were able to figure out how we got the material, and then were able to map out procedures so that future test preparations were better concealed," says this source. "The White House basically handed them a blueprint of how to pull off a successful test."
India is not the first country that has been aided by the Clinton White House in this regard. Previously, the White House has provided Russia and China with incriminating intelligence material that the foreign powers were able to use to their advantage in blunting further U.S. intelligence gathering.
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