Tenet is Resigning

Great Debates
41

My take, for whatever the hell it’s worth, is that Tenet most likely resigned as a defensive move. See, there are a few things that don’t add up with the official story. Here we have Tenet, in December 2002, informing a skeptical President Bush that the case against Hussein is a “slam dunk.” But wait. In October 2002 Bush was scaring us with cracks like the “smoking gun” on Saddam being “a mushroom cloud.” And Bush had been publically going on about Saddam for months. Well then, how come he’s a skeptic all of a sudden in December? Furthermore, it has been well documented that Tenet tried to warn President Bush about Osama bin Laden in the earliest days of the administration. Here’s a quote from an article from TomPaine.com: http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10160

“The 9/11 staff records that CIA briefed President-elect Bush and his national security officials on covert action programs in Afghanistan. Operations directorate chief James L. Pavitt told the commission that he and Tenet indeed covered Al Qaeda during their presentation, and that George Bush asked whether killing bin Laden would solve the problem. Tenet, according to Pavitt, answered that the terrorist leader’s death would have an impact but would not end the threat. The clear implication was that a plan was necessary.”

Of course, Tenet’s advice was ignored.

Now, I don’t know how many of you folks remember this but in the run-up to the war, the Vice President and the Pentagon started their own intelligence-gathering operations because the information coming from the CIA was considered insuficiently damning. In other words, to make their case that the war was necessary they deliberately went around George Tenet’s CIA for not being alarmist enough.

Yet, somehow according to Woodward’s authorized telling, Tenet winds up being responsible for leading the nation into war with phony intelligence by calling the evidence supporting the invasion “a slam dunk.”

I mean, that really smells, doesn’t it?

So here’s my read: Tenet is the guy who was right. The Bushies, being vindictive bastards who can never admit error, decide to get even by cooking up a fake story that makes him the fall guy which they then pass along to Woodward. This is humiliating but Tenet plays along for a while because, although he’s being stabbed in the back, he doesn’t want to have to look for a new job and, besides, his professional reputation rest in no small part on the idea that he is a team player. But the heat is on so bad that even pals like Al Gore are calling for his resignation and he knows he’s about as much on the outs as a person still inside can possibly be. So, he resigns. This figures to be his own decision because it happened on a Thursday instead of a Friday so it’s going to be a big story for at least one more day.

OK, that’s a theory. How will we know if it’s true? As LBJ once remarked, it’s better to have a disenchanted person on the inside pissing out rather than on the outside pissing in. Five months is too short to put out a book. So, look for Tenet to look for plenty of cheap and easy venues for pissing in. If my theory is right, he’s bound to have a huge bug up his ass right about now. I think GWB better get out his umbrella. He’s going to need it. :eek:

42

You mean Mahavishnu John McLaughlin? A mean jazz/rock guitar also. :slight_smile:

Everyone resigns for “personal reasons.” The interesting question is whether he jumped or got pushed. It is amazing that he lasted so long. However, the fact that this was announced during the week makes me think he left on his own. This could be because something is going to blow, but it seems more likely that it is because Cheney/Rummy were in the process of blaming the CIA for their mistakes.

43

Tenet’s Official Farewell

44

Maybe Tenet will say he was wrong about Chalabi being a spy for Iran. Maybe Chalabi will turn out to be a stand-up guy; Rumsfeld will reinstate him as Most Favored Iraqi Exile, put him back on the Pentagon payroll, and we (the USA) will back him to become the new and exalted all supreme Ruler of Iraq. That will extend our occupation out to 2020, thereby enabling Haliburton to pocket multi billions instead of a paltry several. Bush will smile fondly on Rumsfeld and say “What a guy.”

45

Chalabi has wasted no time jumping on the “Blame Tenant” bandwagon. It’s almost as if he had advanced warning of the resignation.

Curiouser and curiouser…

46

In a related note, Condoleeza Rice says, with a straight face, that history will judge GeeDubya to be a great statesman, a collossus on the order to FDR and Churchill,

http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2189429,00.html

“…that he will one day rank alongside such towering pillars of 20th century statecraft as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill…”

You can’t make shit like this up.

47

Hey, maybe the administration will do all that other stuff that Gore said.:smiley:

48

Dean must be green with envy. “Why didn’t my ranting get the same response? YEEAAAH!”

49

My guess as to how this came about:

Tenet has taken many a bullet for the administration, always ready to take the blame for something that really wasn’t his fault. Had done so out of duty to the office, but has never been thrilled about it. Then, this week it is reported that Chalabi told the Iranians that we broke their code. Tenet, and the rest of the intelligence community, is livid and demands a complete investigation as to who leaked the information. Bush, but most likely Cheney, realizes that someone high in the pentagon is going to have to go and severely reprimands Tenet. Tenet, finally having enough of politics, decides to resign.

Only speculation at this point, but it’s my guess. :cool:

50

I more or less agree with your post, and I do remember the CIA being less than enthusiastic about the Iraq war. But I just don’t see a “tell all” book coming out from Tenet. As the former head of the CIA, I can’t see that he will be able, legally, to get into anything of real substance.

51

Man, I don’t know what to think now. Back when Tenet took the blame for the “yellowcake” scandal (sort of), I figured he made some sort of deal with Bush to be the fall guy so he wouldn’t get fired. Apparently I missed the mark on that.

52

Not exactly a cite, butt…

53

Given that Tenet asserted that this was for personal reasons, I have to agree that the best guess, if you believe him, is that the stress of the job was just eating him alive, and he had been having some real problems dealing with the Bush administration, taking the fall for them so many times, and probably getting chewed out in the midst of all the very vicious internal politics going on now over things like Chalabi.

That whole Gore ranting thing has to be the biggest joke in punditry in years. All these pundits knew exactly what script to run with: Gore is crazy! but after claiming that he was hollering and screaming, their producers played clips that had Gore droning on in a quiet monotone. To which they said things like “uh, yeah, but he’s just getting warmed up there, or something.” Why does America have to put up with such comically misinformed and just downright LAZY pundits?

54

I doubt they’d even try. It’s public record that’s not how any of that went down- and more significantly, it wouldn’t help them. To begin with, a scapegoat would require admitting screwups, and they don’t do that. And nobody would admit to starting a war based on bad intelligence. Blaming Tenet for everything makes the CIA look incompetent and the administration look stupid. Not much help there. Regardless of the intelligence issues, I think for most people this ultimately rests on Bush, so the blame can’t be foisted off that way.

I’m a little surprised by the timing. Why would they wait this long to get rid of him, and why would he wait so long to quit?

55

What about the TV show?

56

You mean The John McLaughlin, the king of the sound bite?

To be fair, his reports will be one page or less, yet comprehensible

57

Dunno who’s taking bets, but my money is on Tenet being pushed out of office.

Odds are 3-1 against a tell-all book coming in the next six months.

58

There’s something I don’t get, in this thread. The fact that a lot of posters seem to be puzzled by this resignation, because it didn’t surprised me, and the explanations appeared vey straightforward to me. It wouldn’t have occured to me that his resignation could be related to some new dramatical and still secret failure. So, perhaps there’s a difference in the political habbits here and in the US.
Tenet is involved in / responsible for a lot of major failures which has been very widely publicized (Iraki WMDs, torture in Iraki prisons, Chalabi, etc…). So, here, his resignations woudln’t surprise anybody since :

-He has to take responsability for his failures and for the failures of the administrations he’s heading.

-Since these failures have a negative impact on Bush, especially during an electoral year, he has to play his part as a scapegoat, endorse the failures and resign to “protect” the president (who also must show that he won’t keep people who demonstrately failed in their duties, or else he should be blamed for that too)

Now, perhaps the political culture is quite different in the USA, and the resignation of a cabinet member for these reasons aren’t common. So, that’s roughly my question. Is such a situation abnormal in the USA, and are the two reasons I mentionned usually not normal grounds for resignation of cabinet members?

59

There is less of a tradition here because we don’t have parliamentary government.

On the other hand, finding a scapegoat is a tradition in any bureaucracy–however, here, Tenet (by contrast with the sotu brouhaha) is not doing a mea culpa, I must go, which would necessarily undergird any heat drawing strategy.,

The consensus of the chatterati seems to take at face value that he goes “voluntarily”, partly because he really wants to be a better dad, and mostly because any further into the campaign season, with the attendant multiple investigations “maturing”, will be awkward. This way he splits before the application of flame to rear end.

60

Except that, to date, he hasn’t been implicated in those particular issues whatsoever.

All well and fine, but neither of these have happened. Everyone is pretending that Tenet just needs time with the missus. Which nobody believes, and is the cause of all the speculation.