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[Adventurer]

George Tenet: At The Center Of The Storm
Former CIA Director Breaks His Silence


Ex-CIA head George Tenet

WHAT DO YOU THINK?


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(CBS) As director of the CIA, George Tenet has kept America's most important secrets. And until now, his lips were sealed.

Tenet's CIA has been blamed for failing to stop 9/11, praised for the fall of the Taliban, and vilified for predicting that Iraq held chemical and biological weapons.

Now, three years after leaving the CIA, Tenet has written a book, aptly named, "At the Center of the Storm." This month, correspondent Scott Pelley sat down with Tenet. 60 Minutes wanted to know how he got "weapons of mass destruction" wrong. Are we using torture in the war on terror? And who was it at the White House who finally put the knife in his back?

60 Minutes found him passionate, combative, apologetic, defiant, and fiercely loyal to the people of the CIA and their fight against terrorism.


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"People don't understand us, you know, they think we're a bunch of faceless bureaucrats with no feelings, no families, no sense of what it�s like to be passionate about running these bastards down. There was nobody else in this government that felt what we felt before or after 9/11. Of course, after 9/11, everybody had that feeling. Nobody felt like we felt on that day. This was personal," Tenet tells Pelley.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/25/60minutes/main2728375.shtml

[Gopher]

Adventurer: Why do you always start new threads, scattering the information around, when other threads already exist and remain active? Why could you not have added this information to the existing thread?

I have observered you doing this frequently. Just curious.

[Milwaukiedave]

I watched the video this afternoon at work (or at least parts of it). My guess is the Bush Administration will go to work discrediting anything he says to make sure he's nothing more then a party joke after their done with him. It's too bad, he seems like a decent guy.

[Adventurer]

[Gopher]

Not really. Was looking for the vid myself. Thanks for posting it.

[ddeubel]

[Adventurer]

[ddeubel]

Adventurer,

I wasn't referring to the "torture" aspect though that does frighten me.....there was no mandate from the American people to advocate it nor like always, for him to continual to lie and joust around the facts....

What I found particularly awful was his admission that "they", the good old boys club of power (and Rice, is one), kept things from the American people. Like prisons overseas, like torture. Even more damaging is that he lied, covered up for the President, sat there behind Powell all the while knowing what was going on and also knowing (or he should or he is an idiot), that thousands of people, tens of thousands of people would die because of imaginary information. If he was so concerned, why didn't he turn ship then???????

He deserves to be condemned. He talks of "honour" but forgets he had no honour when he was on that ship....none whatsoever.

He deserves all the condemnation of people who think that war is a last resort and that "intelligence" should be "intelligence" and not a guesstimate. He is a lackey and deserves history's scorn -- further , he continues to shine his medal of freedom while having denied the freedom of so many innocents who in no way had any part in anything......horrid.

DD

[ddeubel]

Maureen Dowd says it very well about Mr. "slam dink". .... Plus the 4 million book deal, that says it all too...

He should give that money to all the families who have lost their most precious in his "Made up In Iraq".

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/05/maureen-dowd-better-never-than-late.html

[Adventurer]

[Adventurer]

George Tenet: Loser, Yes. Sycophant, Yes. Fall Guy? Yes

Washington Dispatch: With all the gloating over the ex-CIA head's kiss-and-tell, let's not forget who else screwed up American intelligence.

By James Ridgeway

May 3, 2007


The last thing I want to do is defend George Tenet. The slick, self-serving, and stunningly unrepentant Tenet should at best have been fired on September 12, 2001; at worst, he should be in jail. Instead, he has a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a best-selling book, and an excuse for everything. Nonetheless, when the former CIA director suggests, as he has in numerous interviews over the last week, that he is a fall guy for the twin disasters of 9/11 and the Iraq War, he's right. He's a fall guy for the failings of two administrations�for the timidity of a scandal-ridden Clinton and for the far worse incompetence and perfidy of Bush & Co. He's also the perfect scapegoat for the longstanding and endemic problems of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the political system it serves.

The CIA's role in 9/11�the less discussed of the two intelligence disasters, but in many ways the more telling�began 20 years before the attacks. In the early 1980s, under Director William Casey, the agency took the lead in recruiting and equipping a guerrilla army to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan; it was during these years that Al Qaeda was born. Casey had dreams of not only pushing the Soviets out, but following them over the border and bringing open fighting to their own territory, in the Central Asian republics. The Soviets quit Afghanistan before things got to that point, and the CIA promptly exited as well, leaving behind thousands of revved up mujahedeen�some of whom, with support from the CIA's partner, the Pakistani Intelligence Service, were instrumental in forming the Taliban.

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/05/ridgeway_tenet.html?src=email&hed_20070504_ts1_georgetenet