Georges Tenet and Bush, CIA leaks and a private laywer

Posted by: starbuck on 03 June 2004

Just curious about the story that's breaking now regarding the resignation of George Tenet as the director of the CIA, apparantly for "personal reasons". Not wanting to start any new conspiracy theories, but I am curious to know others views as to whether this event is in anyway connected to the CIA leak case, and whether, in turn, it's also why George W. is consulting private lawyers in Washington.

Does anyone, particularly those in the states, have any thoughts or opinions on this at all?
Posted on: 03 June 2004 by ejl
The "personal reasons" excuse is, obviously, a pathetic foil. Tenet was famous for his intense loyalty to his organization, so the supposition that his desire to take a holiday (or whatever) suddenly got the better of him is silly.

The CIA is really in shambles, and everyone in D.C. right now seems intent on displacing blame. Today we have FBI officers giving polygraph tests to Pentagon officials to see who leaked information about cracking Iran's codes to Chalabi, and it may only be a matter of time before they turn to the CIA (Chalabi was their contact, after all). Yesterday there were numerous reports about the State Department demanding the CIA provide an explanation for all the false WMD information given to Powell. We have the ongoing investigations into the intelligence failures around 9-11. And it's increasingly looking like the CIA continued to underestimate the Korean nuclear threat -- new revelations emerged early this week about still further Libyan/Korean nuclear part exchanges.

You couldn't have written a bigger failure as farce.

The most sickening thing about all of this is that for all of its jabber about loyalty and responsiblility, none of the senior Bush Administration members have taken responsibility for any of their catastrophic foreign-policy failures. Not on missing WMDs, not on Chalabi, not on prison torture, not on 9-11 intelligence failures, not on anything. We are supposed to see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell as innocent but well-intentioned dupes of a faulty intelligence system.

It's a laughable supposition.
Posted on: 03 June 2004 by JonR
....yet it probably won't matter come November, unless Kerry gets his act together. For Bush to be re-elected in the face of everything described in the above post would be the biggest farce of all.

JonR
Posted on: 04 June 2004 by starbuck
It's an interesting story and one I shall be following fairly closely, I think - another CIA bod gone today, who knows who will go tomorrow?

quote:
We are supposed to see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell as innocent but well-intentioned dupes of a faulty intelligence system.


Sounds like those pesky intelligence services have been causing the same problems on both sides of the Atlantic.
Posted on: 05 June 2004 by MarkEJ
quote:
Originally posted by JonR:
...For Bush to be re-elected in the face of everything described...


Sorry to be a bit anal, Jon, but I think "re-election" is only possible if one was actually elected in the first place. Wink

Best;

Mark