Dowd: "Head Spook (Tenet) Sputters"

[DeepModem Mom]

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Head Spook Sputters
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: April 15, 2004

WASHINGTON


....Only a couple of weeks after the endlessly vacationing President Bush got his Aug. 6, 2001, briefing with the shivery headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," the C.I.A. chief, George Tenet, and other top agency officials received a briefing about the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui after his suspicious behavior in a Minnesota flight school. And that had another shivery headline: "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly."....

***

Asked by the commission member Timothy Roemer about whether he had shared this amazing news at a Sept. 4 meeting with Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Clarke — the meeting on Al Qaeda that Mr. Clarke had been urgently begging for since January — Mr. Tenet said no. Asked if he had ever mentioned it to Mr. Bush in August, during a month of "high chatter and huge warnings," Mr. Tenet said no.

The Man Whose Hair Was Allegedly on Fire told the commissioners that he had not talked to the president at all in August. Mr. Bush was in Texas, and he was in Washington. Or he was on vacation, and the president was in Texas. Quel high alert.

("Aides to Tenet" later called reporters to say Tenet had "misspoken": he met with Bush 8/17 in Crawford, and 8/31 in Washingon.)

I'm not sure whether Mr. Tenet — a mystifyingly beloved figure even though he was in charge during the two biggest intelligence failures since Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs — has a faulty memory, which is scary. Or if he's fuzzing things up because he told the president more specifics than he wants to admit. But in a town where careers are made on face time with the president, it's fishy that the head spook can't remember a six-hour trip to Crawford for some....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/opinion/15DOWD.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. Tenet needs to go back to the 9-11 Commission

and again testify publicly under oath as to why did he denied meeting with the pResident in August and what exactly were those meetings about.

He purposely perjured himself to avoid answering these questions. Time to put him back on the witness stand.

[aquart]

2. I hadn't thought of it that way.

Now I do. Get him back.