Bu$h kept Tenet on after 9/11. His error in judgement by retaining Tenet after 9/11 ultimately resulted in the CIA (allegedly) giving Bu$h and members of the Bu$h administration false information. Bu$h does not get a pass on this one. As Commander-in-Chief, he is responsible for appointing the advisors and officials whose decisions he relies on. At the very least, Bu$h has once again demonstrated that he is unfit for the Office of pResident, by retaining a CIA Director who did not provide the intelligence to prevent the attack on 9/11.
Check this out:
09/24/2001 - Updated 01:50 AM ET
CIA recovering after failure to prevent attacks
By Barbara Slavin and Susan Page, USA TODAY
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"He's the best we've had in a long time," says Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington for 2 decades. He said Tenet developed close contacts with security services in the Middle East as he tried to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, and those contacts could be crucial in the new U.S. campaign against terrorism.
"President Bush has developed confidence in him in a very short period of time," Bandar says. "I doubt very much that he will be made a scapegoat."
A former deputy director of the CIA, he got the top job 4 years ago after
President Clinton's first choice, Anthony Lake, withdrew his nomination under grilling by Shelby's committee. When Bush took over, he asked Tenet to stay in the job. Influential figures from Boren to
Bush's father urged the new president to keep Tenet.After the attacks, Bush went out of his way to offer Tenet private reassurances, a White House official says. When
Vice President Cheney was later asked whether Tenet should stay on, he said he had "great confidence" in Tenet. "It would be a tragedy if somehow we were to go back now in the search for scapegoats and say that George Tenet or any other official ought to be eliminated at this point," Cheney said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/24/tenet.htmHowever, the SSCI report is not complete. IMO, the second phase of the review, which will deal with the Bu$h administration's manipulation of intelligence agencies, will not be completed or reported upon until after the election. The recent SSCI report is the first phase of a a two-phase review and report, and did not take into account crucial information, and this incomplete report has been released at this time so that it could be used as a media propaganda device to make Bu$h look better before the Nov. election:
Senate report cites CIA for ‘failures’ on Iraq
'Mischaracterization' of data on weapons of mass destruction
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 2:10 p.m. ET July 09, 2004
snip----
The Senate report is the first part of a two-phase review, which at times polarized the usually bipartisan Intelligence Committee. Democrats wanted to see the investigation handled in a broad, single phase that would include other issues such as whether senior Bush administration officials misrepresented the analysis provided by the nation’s intelligence apparatus as they made the case for war.
Democratic senators reflected that concern in “alternative views” attached to the report. In one, Rockefeller, Levin and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., claimed the report "paints an incomplete picture of what occurred during this period of time."
http://msnbc.msn.com/ID/5395999 It is well documented that the Bu$h administration, particularly Cheney, put relentless pressure on the CIA to produce evidence which supported the Bu$h administrations desire to invade Iraq. Cheney even went as far as to go to Langley at least twice in order to demand that the CIA produce some type of evidence so that he could make a case for war.
SUMMER, 2002 – CIA WARNINGS TO WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED: "In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments.
But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes."
LATE 2002-EARLY 2003 – CHENEY PRESSURES CIA TO CHANGE INTELLIGENCE: "Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed." Additionally, CIA officials "charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions."
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=24889
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