(Note from Larry C Johnson: I received the following tonight from Tyler Drumheller, a recently retired CIA officer. His book, On the Brink, is an important contribution to the history of our misguided war in Iraq. Tyler has first hand knowledge of George Tenet's self-delusion and dissembling about his role in helping lead the march to war. It provides an important correction to the spin of George Tenet)
Correcting the Record
by
Tyler Drumheller
As people read through George Tenet's "At the Center of the Storm" I hope the basic errors and misstatements of fact do not detract from the most important point, that the Bush administration came into office with the idea of attacking Iraq and they proceeded to misuse and manipulate intelligence to support their preconceived views, both before and after 9/11.
The problem for George is that he was not a peripheral player, he was"at the center of the storm" but apparently stood by as the Vice President, Secretary of Defense and others led the country into an ill conceived, ill planned war of choice. He was, after all DCI and as such had the responsibility for how intelligence was being used. I will not pretend to understand why he stood by when he knew what was at stake and had his own questions about the entire affair. In the end, although he served in many senior staff jobs, he was ill prepared to deal with the great crisis of his professional career. Taking lines out of individual presidential speeches and stopping one of many questionable speeches by the Vice President, simply does cut it when balanced against standing by as the country moved toward war.
Through his actions and inaction, George allowed the administration to pick and chose intelligence to fit their views, and to make matters worse he and his deputy, John Mclaughlin, were aware of the fact that key pieces of intelligence were flawed and should not be used in the decision making process. This includes not only the now infamous Curveball case, but other pieces of intelligence that are still classified and can not be openly discussed. As you have said, Larry, the standard for reporting to support the administration position was extremely low, while anything questioning the administration position was held to an extremely high standard of proof.
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http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/correcting_a_ge.html
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