Question: Was Tenet "in the know" about the Neo Cons' misleading to go into Iraq? I don't think so

[Ignacio Upton]

I'm reading The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind (a VERY interesting book that discloses a lot of stuff that people outside of a site like this wouldn't know) and there is a section explaining how Libby and Hadley kept resubmitting debunked bullshit on a Saddam-Al Qaida connection, and one of Tenet's staffers was crying and going into a conniption about how she was being told over and over to look into stuff that was already looked into. On page 191, Tenet said:

"She is not coming over," he shouted into the phone. "We are not rewriting this fucking report one more time. It is fucking over. Do you hear me! And don't you ever fucking treat my people this way again/ Ever!'

Suskind also says that Tenet may not have actually said "slam dunk" to describe the situation with WMD's and Saddam. CIA number two, John McLaughlin also couldn't remember Tenet saying it, or flailing his arms around as described by Bob Woodward in his book "Plan of Attack." And the meeting, according to Tenet and McLaughlin, was a "marketing meeting," dealing with presenting the intelligence in a general way, not about the actual research.


....While I can't forgive Tenet for helping to orchestrate the torture tactics, I don't see him as being as incompetent as he has been portrayed before. I don't think he was in on the Neo Cons and he was just doing his job (which doesn't excuse him entirely, but I don't think someone who was appointed and relied upon by President Clinton would collaborate knowingly with the Neo Cons.)

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Of Course He Knew

For Chrissakes, even Al Sharpton knew that this was BS - after St. Colin Powell's UN presentation, Sharpton said something like "look, we've had sattelites for 20 years that could pick out the numbers on license plates thousands of miles below. If that's all the evidence they got, then Iraq doesn't have WMDs." (That was the first time I got suspicious of WMD claims - I'm not a fan of Sharpton, but that made total sense)

I can't imagine that the head of the CIA was less knowledgeable than Al Sharpton. Either he knew, or was an utter fool.

[Ignacio Upton]

2. I think Tenet was a fool

If he was intentionally helping the administration to manipulate the intelligence, he wouldn't have exploded at Libby and Hadley for trying over and over to create an Al Qaida-Saddam connection.

[screembloodymurder]

3. He knew. Hell, I knew.

But what could he do to stop the neo-cons.

[endarkenment]

4. your very quoted text indicates full knowledge

"We are not rewriting this fucking report one more time" - and you conclude he was not in on it?

He was not directing the bullshit, he was a minion doing the bidding of others. That plus he got selected for ritual sword falling. Oh Tenet needs to go to prison for war crimes along with the rest of them, just perhaps for not quite so many years as the big guys.

[Hobarticus]

5. Oh no, he knew, and went along with it...that quote means nothing

Being a Clinton appointee doesn't mean he doesn't have feet of clay. I don't glean any sense of innocence from the quoted text; rather, I see it as a frustrated manager reacting to redundant tasks being forced on him and his staff.

Read "Fiasco" and "Assassin's Gate". Tenet was in on the fix, all along.

Worse, he knew it was a sham but did little or nothing to stop it. That's why the CIA lost so many intelligence analysis personnel in the last few years; who wants to work for a boss that's willing to let you twist in the breeze, when you were calling "bullshit" all along?