WASHINGTON, 10 June 2004 — Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet said in a 45-minute private visit with President George W. Bush that he was resigning, effective on July 11, the seventh anniversary of his taking charge of the CIA. The next day President Bush was leaving for Europe to attend a series of events marking the liberation of Europe.
In the coming days there would have been at least three separate occasions when Tenet would have received scorching criticism from members of Congress. The Sept. 11 Commission’s report is due is due in mid-July.
Tenet has been the longest incumbent in the CIA position except for Allen Dulles, brother of the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Allen Dulles was fired because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. Before Tenet took over, four previous directors had departed in only six years.
George Tenet, the son of a Greek restaurant owner from New York, is married to Stephanie Glakas. He had been a Capitol Hill aide for both Republican and Democratic legislators in the Senate. His first employer in Congress was former Sen. David Boren of Oklahoma. He later worked at the Clinton White House as a national security aide. From there he worked at the CIA as the deputy director.
Tenet was originally appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997. Soon after, Tenet threatened to resign if Clinton allowed convicted spy for Israel Jonathan Jay Pollard to receive a pardon before it was clear that Pollard had not completely revealed all of the information that he might still have.
Impressed by Tenet’s patriotism and his willingness to lose his job over Pollard’s treachery, it was an easy decision to keep him, particularly because Bush bonded visibly with Tenet almost immediately. Clinton didn’t really pay that much attention to the CIA daily briefings. Apparently he sometimes didn’t attend the briefings or came in late. The job was particularly demanding under Bush because he expected a thorough daily briefing.
Tenet quickly established a close personal rapport with Bush. The president admired his broad sense of humor and his plain spokeness. But Tenet was perhaps too discreet in not expressing personal opinions when he should have.
Tenet was deeply alarmed at the Al-Queda phenomena and said in December 1998, “we are at war with Al-Qaeda.” He told the administration in the summer before 9/11 that his agency had developed enough evidence that Bin Laden was planning a major attack.
Bush didn’t pay much attention to the warning until the tragic 9/11 events forced him to. In two other matters, however, Tenet was not so effective. It was Vice President Richard Cheney and, to a lesser extent, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who kept bringing up the topic of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Tenet joined this chorus. It is this more than anything else that made it increasingly clear that Tenet had not been skeptical enough. This lack of proof of such weapons has made the rest of the world increasingly leery about the CIA.
In a way the big two — Cheney and Rumsfeld have often prevailed in administration councils. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Tenet were somewhat less influential. Powell, whether he admits it or not, feels that it was Tenet who convinced him that the WMDs actually existed. As it turned out Tenet never read the final draft of the Powell presentation to the UN. At that time Powell had put his personal credibility on the line and only later realized that Tenet had been insufficiently sure of his facts.
Since Powell now remains and Tenet will have left, it will help Powell receive renewed credibility in the future. Powell’s personal stature was hurt badly because of his speech to the United Nations which the rest of the world took at face value because of Powell’s credibility. In retrospect, Powell may restore some of his luster regardless of what happens in the 2004 presidential elections.
The gregarious Tenet, who ate in the CIA cafeteria with other employees, often invited colleagues for private chats and was seen holding an unlit cigar as he prowled through CIA corridors. He was universally admired inside the CIA building at Langley.
Tenet has told friends that he is proud of his agency’s collection of intelligence on Libya’s weapons programs. He also is proud of stemming the worldwide sales of weapons and nuclear equipment, and persuading Pakistan to stop exports by its leading scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. The CIA has also played a key role in capturing two-thirds of Osama Bin Laden’s original group of conspirators, although Bin Laden and his top aide, Ayman Zawahiri, are still at large.
In the long run Tenet may also be remembered for helping restore the CIA. In recent years the CIA had suffered dramatically from personnel cuts and bad leadership as indicated with the four previous CIA short-lived directors.
The CIA budget was expanded to $3 billion before the 9/11 attacks. Tenet got an additional $1.5 billion in the aftermath of the attacks. As a result the total for national security purposes has now reached about $40 billion, according to Steven Aftergood, an analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. Clearly Tenet can take credit for the CIA’s share of this dramatic turnaround from an agency that had low morale and was in budgetary shambles.
According to Washington Post writers Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, “Tenet was being made the scapegoat for Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq and for the Defense Department’s mishandling of the war’s aftermath.” Only days ago Tenet said, after reading the Senate report, “I’m not going to be chased out by a piece of paper.”
Deputy CIA Director John Edward McLaughlin, 61, will very likely become acting director prior to the 2004 election. McLaughlin is a career CIA professional who has served in the agency for 32 years. He is an expert in Slavic studies. He is a quiet and self-effacing man, totally different from the highly extroverted Tenet.
— Richard Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.
