WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- With his recent media blitz, former CIA chief George Tenet seems to have two goals: sell books and salvage his legacy, in spite of serious intelligence failings during his tenure that included the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraq war.
Accomplishing the first of those goals seems sure-fire (or, given the topic at hand, a "slam dunk"). The other is up for debate.
Tenet's memoir, aptly titled "At the Center of the Storm," generated plenty of media hype before it even reached the shelves Monday. Some early reviews commended the candor of Tenet's account of pre-Iraq war deliberations, or lack thereof. "(There) was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," he wrote.
However, others fault Tenet for what they say is a ploy to profit while others, especially U.S. soldiers and their families, continue to pay for the administration's mistakes and to divert blame from himself.
A letter written by six former CIA officers called for Tenet to return his Presidential Medal of Freedom and donate a portion of the royalties from his book to families of U.S. soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq.
The authors of the letter took issue in particular with Tenet's portrayal of the intelligence community as a scapegoat for missteps in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
In his book, Tenet writes that "rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration's message was: Don't blame us. George Tenet and the CIA got us into this mess."
The former CIA officers found this depiction to be disingenuous. "Your lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership," they wrote in the letter.
"You are not alone in failing to speak up and protest the twisting and shading of intelligence," they wrote. "But ultimately you were in charge and you signed off on the CIA products and you briefed the president."
Tenet dismissed the criticism by saying that none of the six former CIA officers worked for the agency while he was at its helm. On National Public Radio, Tenet called the CIA officers "people who were not within 100 miles of me."
Denunciation from Michael Scheuer, a CIA veteran who established the Osama Bin Laden unit at the agency under Tenet, seemed more difficult to brush off.
In an article that appeared in The Washington Post over the weekend, Scheuer wrote that Tenet was "a man who never went from cheerleader to leader."
"At a time when clear direction and moral courage were needed, Tenet shifted course to follow the prevailing winds, under President Bill Clinton and then President Bush," Scheuer wrote.
If Tenet had had this "moral courage," he would have resigned from his post at the CIA to protest the continued use of questionable intelligence assessments to justify a war that Tenet said his analysts warned could end in disaster.
Tenet simply responded to Scheuer by saying that everyone is entitled to his own opinion.
Tenet has said that his commitment to fighting the war on terrorism and halting al-Qaida compelled him to stay at the CIA. But if his recommendations to the president's inner circle were indeed as blatantly and consistently disregarded as Tenet now claims, it is difficult to understand what he thought he could accomplish by soldiering on. At the very least, that decision would suggest poor leadership skills.
A CIA spokesperson stood by the agency's longtime leader.
"This (book) is Mr. Tenet's account of his service and leadership at the CIA during challenging and momentous times. Through it all, he never wavered in his concern for the mission of the agency or in his dedication to its people," said CIA spokesperson George Little to UPI.
"Mr. Tenet's book is obviously of interest to many people at the CIA, but the focus of the agency today is exactly where he would want it to be -- on the nation's current and future security challenges," Little said.
The official word from the Bush camp is that Tenet's story is nothing new. To downplay the book's newsworthiness, White House spokesman Tony Snow said that the president himself has admitted his administration's shortcomings.
But nowadays, there are not many people left at the White House to defend against Tenet's indictments. Tenet avoided accusing Bush personally, and the officials still part of the administration -- namely, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney -- have been widely criticized from Democrats and Republicans alike.
But even if Tenet's depiction is old news, there is intrinsic value in hearing it straight from the source.
Another member of the inner war-plotting circle, this time from British Prime Minister Tony Blair's camp, came forward this week with revelations about the lack of planning.
In an interview with London newspaper The Guardian, former British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon corroborated Tenet's claim that the Bush team plowed into war without much deference for alternate hypothetical outcomes.
"Sometimes ... Tony made his point with the president, and I'd made my point with Don (Rumsfeld), and Jack (Straw) had made his point with Colin (Powell) and the decision actually came out of a different place. And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed Cheney," Hoon was quoted as saying.
Unfortunately, this candor from top officials will leave many people asking why: Why wait to reveal this incriminating information for four years? And given what these officials now say about the blind determination of key hawks to start this war, why is the U.S.-led coalition truly in Iraq?
Tenet may have tried, as he claims, to discourage Bush and Cheney from drawing a direct connection between the al-Qaida-orchestrated Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq War. But unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that they are linked now. True, al-Qaida wasn't in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, but they certainly are six years later.
If anyone close to the president could have prevented the current debacle, it was probably Tenet.
Whether or not the memoir will restore Tenet's image is debatable, but his personalized angle on the Iraq war story will certainly make for an interesting, if highly depressing, read. If only it were fiction.
