In quoting George Tenet's remark that the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a "slam dunk," President Bush wasn't trying to blame the former CIA director for faulty intelligence, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card tells me.
"I don't think he [Tenet] has to be as sensitive about it as it appears he is," Card said. "I don't think that the president did it to put blame on anybody," Card said, referring to the CIA's incorrect assessment that Saddam Hussein had WMD.
In his book At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, Tenet says that seeing his remark quoted in Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack made him realize that "the wheels had come off the train" and it was time to leave as director of Central Intelligence.
The comment led Tenet to write his book, laying out his frustrations with both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Card noted that the quote summarized what the CIA and almost everyone else believed. Besides the CIA, Saddam's own generals, all the major intelligence organizations in the world, and Bill Clinton when he was president thought that Saddam had WMD.
The "slam dunk" remark became so important largely because Woodward hyped it as representing a turning point in the decision to go to war. In fact, when Tenet made the comment, troops were already being sent to the Middle East for the invasion of Iraq.
Tenet served as director of Central Intelligence under Presidents Clinton and Bush and oversaw the country's intelligence response during the stormy days after Sept. 11 and the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Bill Harlow, Tenet's former director of public affairs, collaborated with him on the 549-page the book.
Despite criticisms Tenet levels against the Bush administration, "I happen to think he's a true patriot, as Dan Bartlett said, and of course that was a statement that I'd been using for a long time," Card said. "I thought George Tenet was very constructive, and he wasn't just trying to please people in the process. I thought that he was doing the job of a CIA director."
As for the CIA's wrong call on WMD, "Do they get it right every time? No," Card said. "Does anybody ever get it right every time? No."
In part, Card attributed the CIA's problems in failing to penetrate the 9/11 plot to budget cutbacks during the Clinton administration. As noted in an April 23 NewsMax story, George Tenet Targets Cheney, Clinton in New Book, the CIA's clandestine service, which was trying to penetrate al Qaeda, was cut by 25 percent during the Clinton years. The FBI had more agents in New York than the CIA had clandestine agents throughout the entire world.
In his book, Tenet writes that he sent personal letters to Clinton in 1998 and 1999 begging for "a massive infusion of funds" to "position the intelligence community where it needed to be in the fight of our lifetime."
Tenet says he finally went around the Clinton administration and obtained supplemental appropriations pushed through as a result of an "off-the-books alliance" with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican. However, Tenet writes, temporary additional funding was no way to rebuild an agency that had shriveled during the Clinton years.
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