WP: Despite Scrutiny of Iraq Data, It's Business as Usual for Tenet

[kskiska]

Working Relationship With Bush Still Solid, Officials Say

By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest

The morning after President Bush announced he would empower a tough-minded commission to investigate the failings of U.S. intelligence agencies, the man who leads those agencies walked into the Oval Office.

CIA Director George J. Tenet sat down on the couch, cracked open a notebook and spent a half-hour yesterday describing threats to the United States -- as he has nearly every day since Bush took office in January 2001.

Faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq has put the CIA under scrutiny as never before in Tenet's nearly seven-year tenure. But White House officials point to yesterday's business-as-usual briefing as a sign that Tenet's working relationship with Bush remains solid.

Moreover, administration officials, Republican leaders and associates of Tenet's consider it highly unlikely that Tenet will resign anytime soon -- voluntarily or otherwise -- because of his relationship with the president and because the administration would find little political advantage in forcing him out in an election year.

(snip)

Tenet has presided over the intelligence community's most significant failures since 1989, when the CIA did not predict that the Soviet Union was about to fall apart. Tenet's watch included the 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole in a Yemeni port; the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and the creation of prewar intelligence estimates on Iraq that, in the words of chief weapons hunter David Kay, have turned out to be "all wrong."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10422-2004Feb3.html

[kskiska]

1. Kick!

:kick:

[pfitz59]

2. Good money after bad?

I wanna play poker with Shrubya!

[dusty64]

3. Sounds like another

good puppet to me. A puppet's puppet.

[joeunderdog]

4. "spent a half-hour yesterday describing threats to the United States ..."

"...as he has nearly every day since Bush took office in January 2001" Since January 2001? Maybe if he spent a few minutes on September 10th our war on terror wouldn't look like this.

Men of the 2000's--the 2 Georges. What a legacy.

[loudnclear]

5. Tenet and upper levels of CIA should resign in protest!

It would be honorable to do so in face of the slander by the administsration. Let Bush be responsible for losing the top intelligence minds in the country! He's already outed an agent and misued WMD intelligence.