Tenet's shocker hits Bush, CIA at crucial time

By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

George Tenet

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His departure, announced by President Bush just before Bush left on a European trip, comes at a crucial moment, with U.S. troops battling persistent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, worries about North Korea's nuclear-weapons program and a range of congressional and independent investigations into intelligence-related matters, including a grand-jury probe into the leak of a CIA officer's name.

Adding to the upheaval in the upper echelons of the U.S. intelligence community was word that the head of the CIA's clandestine service, James Pavitt, will retire this summer. A 31-year veteran of the agency, Pavitt has been in charge of the nation's spies for the past five years. A CIA official said Pavitt's retirement was planned before Tenet's resignation.

Bush said Tenet would be replaced temporarily by Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin. It was uncertain when the president might tap a permanent replacement for Tenet, who will leave his post July 11, the seventh anniversary of his appointment.

Many in Washington speculated that Bush would wait until after the November election rather than begin a process that would allow Democrats to use Senate confirmation hearings to pillory the president's foreign policy, especially the war in Iraq, which has cost the lives of more than 800 U.S. troops.

But a senior administration official, citing the urgency of the war in Iraq and the looming threat of terrorism, said that Bush may name a high-profile director quickly and that a leading candidate was Rep. Porter Goss, a Republican and a former CIA officer from Florida who heads the House Intelligence Committee.

Praise from Bush

Tenet, 51, the first member of Bush's national-security team to quit, told the president of his decision in a hastily arranged meeting Wednesday night, the White House said. The White House and Tenet said the departure of the career intelligence official was for personal reasons.

A longtime friend, who asked not to be identified, said Tenet began telling close acquaintances about two months ago that he planned to resign because he was exhausted.

By leaving now rather than closer to the presidential election, Tenet hoped to minimize the political fallout for Bush, said two senior officials who are close to the CIA director and spoke on condition they not be named.

Tenet told CIA employees of his resignation in an emotional speech at CIA headquarters also attended by his wife, Stephanie, and his high-school-age son, John Michael. He said his resignation was "a personal decision and had only one basis in fact: the well-being of my wonderful family. Nothing more, nothing less." Tenet noted that during his tenure, the CIA had begun making up for serious shortfalls in funding and personnel, stepping up recruitment, especially in its clandestine service.
 
Hailing the CIA for seriously hurting al-Qaida, Tenet told his staff members: "What you have achieved in this fight ... will for most Americans be forever unknown and uncounted."

Bush called Tenet "a strong leader in the war on terror," and White House officials said he had wanted Tenet to stay on.

Legislators from both parties generally praised Tenet for his efforts to bolster U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities and for the CIA's role in fighting al-Qaida. But many also said his departure was fitting after what they called a series of intelligence mistakes that included the CIA's mishandling of information that might have averted the Sept. 11 attacks and faulty appraisals of Iraqi weapons.

Tenet was expected to take even more heat over soon-to-be released reports on Iraq intelligence by the Senate Intelligence Committee and on the Sept. 11 attacks by a special bipartisan commission of inquiry.

"Director Tenet's resignation is long overdue," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., a former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman and an outspoken critic of the CIA chief. "There were more failures of intelligence on his watch ... than any other DCI (director of central intelligence) in our history."

Tainted by failures

Tenet, the second-longest-serving CIA director and a registered Democrat, has presided over many trying moments for the intelligence community since President Clinton appointed him in 1997. They included:

• The 1998 cruise-missile attack against what turned out to be a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, retaliation for al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

• The CIA's failure to detect preparations for a nuclear-weapons test by India the same year.

• The mistaken 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the NATO-led air war against Yugoslavia.

• The failure to put on a watch list two al-Qaida operatives who entered the United States and took part in the Sept. 11 attacks.

According to a new book by journalist Bob Woodward, Tenet told Bush in December 2002 that the evidence that Iraq had banned-weapons programs was "a slam-dunk," a basketball expression meaning a sure thing. No chemical- or biological-weapons stockpiles or evidence of a nuclear-weapons program have been found in Iraq. Tenet also has been touched by the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.

The CIA is conducting internal investigations into the deaths of two Iraqi prisoners while undergoing interrogation and whether any CIA officers were involved in the abuses depicted in photographs of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

Democrats said that while Tenet shared responsibility for the intelligence failures, Bush and his top aides shouldn't be absolved of their roles, especially their use of exaggerated, unproven or fabricated intelligence in making the case for invading Iraq. "The misuse and exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq extends far beyond the intelligence community to the senior levels of the executive branch," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"There is no question ... that there have been significant intelligence failures, and this administration has to accept responsibility for those failures," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Bush's presumed challenger in the November election.

Complaints from within

Tenet also had critics within the CIA. Some subordinates said he hadn't fought hard enough against efforts by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to link former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida when there was no compelling proof they were working together.

And some CIA officers complained that Tenet had skewed analyses to please his political bosses.

"He did not stand up for his people when it mattered most," said a CIA officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He was a political animal, and he's leaving behind a mess that somebody else is going to have to clean up."

It was Tenet, however, who requested a CIA investigation last year into who in the Bush administration leaked the name of CIA undercover officer Valerie Plame to a newspaper columnist.

Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, has charged that the leak was retaliation for his opposition to Bush's policy in Iraq.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied Tenet's resignation was related to any intelligence investigations. "It was Director Tenet's decision," McClellan said. "The president was very clear in saying he was sorry to see him leave."