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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (48225)	6/3/2004 8:16:49 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

tnr.com Preemptive by Spencer Ackerman Printer friendly Only at TNR Online \| Post date 06.03.04 Today's resignation of George Tenet--by far the most embattled senior official in the Bush administration--raises the obvious question of whether he jumped or was pushed. It's a question President Bush attempted to defuse in his announcement this morning that the CIA director would be leaving next month. "He told me he was leaving for personal reasons," Bush said. While it's doubtful that Bush would have pushed Tenet out--given the president's eroding poll numbers, the last thing he needs in an election year is to risk angering a man who knows the administration's secrets--that doesn't mean Tenet wasn't facing other, more institutional pressures. Namely, Tenet knew that this summer he was going to be hit with an onslaught of negative attention--reviving all the attacks, deserved and undeserved, on him and his CIA over Iraq and 9/11. His departure today is probably a preemptive move. The first attack will come from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. In the next few weeks, the committee will release its long-awaited report assessing the failure of prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the increasingly partisan committee, angered panel Democrats at the start of the investigation last year by limiting the probe to the intelligence community, neglecting to investigate how administration policymakers used the often-qualified intelligence to make the case for war to the public and Congress. He angered Tenet last fall by telling Dana Priest of The Washington Post that "the executive was ill-served by the intelligence community" and that his inquiry was "95 percent done" before committee investigators had interviewed Tenet or other senior intelligence officials. Even with Roberts relenting somewhat earlier this year on examining the administration's use of Iraq intelligence, congressional sources say the report will be "scathing" to the CIA. While the committee will apparently criticize the agency for having few human intelligence assets in Iraq, it is said to be especially harsh in its assessment of the agency's much-beleaguered analysts. Several of these analysts believe that Bush officials used their work selectively and that Tenet and other CIA leaders catered too much to the administration--contributing to what one senior analyst last winter called "incompetence and politicization" in intelligence policy. Then there is the 9/11 Commission. Later this summer, the Commission will deliver its final report detailing the story of the events leading up to the September 11 attacks. Judging from the Commission's staff statements and its grilling of Tenet earlier this year--he was the only Clinton or Bush official to publicly testify twice--both Tenet and the CIA will take a significant share of blame for the failure to prevent the attacks. In particular, the Commission is likely to fault the CIA's reliance on Afghan proxies for intelligence and covert action against Al Qaeda; the lack of clarity over whether CIA operatives were legally authorized to kill Osama bin Laden during the Clinton administration; and Tenet's reluctance to fly the Predator surveillance drone in the spring of 2001, before an armed version of the Predator was ready. Tenet and John McLaughlin--his deputy and soon-to-be interim successor--made clear during the hearings that they disagree with many of the Commission's initial findings, especially about the CIA's human intelligence capabilities. An indication of how seriously Tenet takes that anticipated criticism came today from his longtime confidant and mentor, former Oklahoma Senator David Boren. Tenet "has been the strongest advocate in the nation for rebuilding our human intelligence capability, which had been declining for two decades," Boren scolded in a four-sentence statement on Tenet's resignation. "I hate to think about where the U.S. would have been after 9-11 if George Tenet had not already greatly expanded education and training programs for human agents." Of course, Tenet--who will leave the CIA in July as its second longest-serving chief--has been seeking a graceful exit from his post for years. (According to a friend, Tenet seriously considered leaving during the spring of 2002, with the CIA riding high after its successes in the Afghan war and before the impending push to invade Iraq.) His overriding concern for his entire tenure has been to leave the CIA in better shape than he inherited it as interim director in 1996, unlike his predecessor John Deutch. After the devastation of 9/11 and the absence of WMD in Iraq, that was probably impossible, at least in terms of public confidence in the agency. Tenet's departure may have the effect of convincing the public that a source of the CIA's problems is gone. With two enormous strikes on the CIA set to hit in the weeks and months ahead, Tenet may well have decided to be the lightning rod that could spare his beloved agency an electrocution--and, perhaps, diminish any future shocks that he would have to absorb himself. Spencer Ackerman is an assistant editor at TNR