rainesco
What is the tie that binds Bush and Tenet?
Sun Jul 13 13:04:28 2003
67.30.96.39

Jr. and Tenet have some sort of special relationship, so don't expect Bush to express dissatisfaction now. Though Republicans (more so than Democrats) are making noise about Tenet's liability, they will probably quietly be told to lay off. Tenet has some strategic importance in the Bush regime.

When Bush was campaigning for president, one of his criticisms of the Democratic administration was George Tenet. Yet as noted in the article, "He is the lone holdover from the Clinton administration and, while distrusted by some conservatives, has enjoyed Mr. Bush's confidence."

Not only were there multiple disasters under Tenet's watch during the Clinton period, for which he was not held accountable, but he came out of 911 unscathed. In fact, better than ever -- afterward, he and Bush were meeting almost every day.

Up till now, Tenet has been operating in a "hands off" environment. It is only since Bush himself got into hot water that the slightest criticism on Capitol Hill been raised.

Quite evidently, but unnoted, Tenet has a secure place in the cabal. It's hard to imagine who else could be brought in to replace him at this time, under the circumstances. Someone may step in with a nice private sector deal for him, to ease a transition for public consumption. The problem is getting someone else with quite the same ... "abilities".


"CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller noted that, 'While the White House denies it was looking for a fall guy, in various ways it had made clear it expected Tenet to accept responsibility for the presidential misstatement.'

"In a carefully scripted mea culpa, the White House on Friday blamed the CIA for its January misstep and Tenet finished the job hours later with a dramatic statement accepting responsibility. Mr. Bush had said that the CIA had reviewed his address and did not raise any alarms."

That certainly rewrites history. And even though Tenet knows which side his bread is buttered, lower level intelligence officers are extremely unhappy (raising the possibility of significant leaks coming out now).

It is unquestionable that *somebody* wanted to be sure the uranium claims were mentioned. The CIA had previously conveyed it's desire that the White House not use the information.

Other articles pointed out that the CIA did object to the speech mentioning it, and a compromise was reached by wording it precisely so that British intelligence was attributed -- not the CIA.

However, even with the adjustments to appear technically correct, there was another error in those 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein has recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"

That makes the assertion of a "recent" attempt, when in fact the intelligence was old (besides being forged).

Britain is still claiming that there was additional evidence which wasn't turned over to US intelligence. That doesn't mean much under the circumstances, however.

"The president is pleased that the director of Central Intelligence acknowledged what needed to be acknowledged, which was the circumstances surrounding the State of the Union speech," Fleischer continued. "The president said that line because it was based on information from the intelligence community, and the speech was vetted."

Looks like a Texas Two-Step.

Other notable fiascos are being danced around in Britain.

The Blair regime says the only "mistake" they made about the thesis paper which was heavily plagiarized in Blair's dossier consisted of not attributing it (going further, not getting permission from the author) so it would be clear that British intelligence had not done that assessment.

However, what was not discussed in the hearings is that the paper itself was some 12 years old, IIRC. It is certainly a material omission to present "evidence" of immediate threat which not only was not based on intelligence work but was totally out-of-date.

It's curious that none of the commission members went to that point.

During the same hearings, the Blair regime seems to have evaded the bullet over the "45-minute" claim as well.

While the BBC is being blamed for making the assertion that Blair "sexed up" the report, the person who used that term was a highly placed source in the British government/defense establishment.

They aren't too happy about Blair's role in the Two-Step, either.