Tenet's Departure

I don't subscribe to some of these conspiracy theories about Tenet's departure that have to do with Chalabi. Instead, I suspect that Bob Dreyfus views are a little closer to the truth.

First, he points out that Tenet is responsible for his own problems by caving into the neo-cons who wanted distorted intelligence. He writes, “His own CIA analysts didn’t believe that Iraq was a threat (nor did they believe that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda or WMD), but Tenet added the White House’s preferred political spin onto his agency’s estimates. And he sat stony-faced behind Colin Powell during the latter’s ill-fated (and lie-filled) UN speech in February 2003, effectively giving CIA endorsement to the misinformation that Powell spewed forth. So Tenet was caught in his own web.”

“But when the going got rough, Bush and Co. pointed their fingers at Tenet and the CIA, blaming that agency for the errors, even though those “errors” were forced on it by Cheney, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and the White House itself. When the finger-pointing got bad, Tenet hit back, giving a speech  in which he declared that the CIA never said that the threat from Iraq was “imminent.” In other words, Bush had rushed into a war that could well have waited.”

He concludes, “So, in my opinion, Tenet was just sick and tired of battling the White House, the neocons and the Congress—and he’d lost support inside the agency because of his decision to abandon principle and sign on to the Big Lie over Iraq.”

That, I think, is right on the mark. I’m less sure whether or not Tenet’s departure will either hurt or help Bush. Bush needs somebody to go, and a new face, but with the upcoming reports and investigations, it going to take a lot more than Tenet’s departure to restore confidence in this administration.