U1D2-24 - Consider the traditional values and ethical issues that confronted George Tenet
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GeorgeTenetandtheLastGreatDaysoftheCIA.pdf
420 Public Administration Review • May | June 2008
George Tenet served as director of the Central Intelligence
Agency from 1997 to 2004, an intense period spanning
the administrations of Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush and covering
the terrorist attacks of September 11
and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Few
other central intelligence directors
have served for so long, so energeti-
cally, or amid so much controversy.
Th is profi le examines the steep tra-
jectory of Tenet’s career, his response
to the al-Qaeda threat, the role he
played during the invasion of Iraq,
and the eventual reorganization of
the nation’s intelligence community.
It describes a public servant caught
between the warring factions of the
White House decision-making process, his own agency’s
intelligence priorities, and, ultimately, his own conscience.
T he dreary little restaurant located in the
Virginia suburb just across the Potomac River
from the nation’s capital is worth mentioning
only for its beer-soaked chili dogs and for its wait-
resses who never give checks to the customers. After
diners fi nish their lunch, they walk up to the cash
register, tell the owner what they ate, and pay their
bill. Th is unusual honor system seems odd in today’s
untrusting world, but there is a good reason. Many of
the customers work nearby at the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) headquarters, and they cannot tell a lie.
Th e CIA ensures honesty by requiring its employees
to take unannounced polygraph tests to see whether
they have recently committed a crime. To the CIA
faithful, even shirking a lunch bill would be a crime,
and trying to lie about the misdeed would make the
polygraph needle go haywire. Th e super-secret envi-
ronment, in which the truth is sacrosanct and Big
Brother is always looking over one’s shoulder, creates
an organizational culture that few outsiders can com-
prehend, and it was into this clandestine world that
George Tenet immersed himself when he became the
director of central intelligence (DCI) in 1997.
As DCI, Tenet understood that managing a large and
complex government bureaucracy would be diffi cult
enough, but managing one that operates under a
shroud of secrecy would chal-
lenge even the most talented and
energetic leader. To complicate
his task, the CIA at the time was
really two separate agencies, each
with its own operating proce-
dures and organizational person-
ality. As the spy side of the
agency, the Directorate of Opera-
tions managed covert operations
and the collection of human
intelligence. Its offi cers were a
hard-nosed lot, and many were
ex-military who worked under-
cover around the world collect-
ing intelligence. Th e larger, less
secretive Directorate of Intelligence was the analytic
side that refi ned raw intelligence from many sources
and produced the nation’s two most important fi n-
ished intelligence products, the President’s Daily Brief
and the National Intelligence Estimate. Staff ed with
Richard D. White , Jr. Louisiana State University
George Tenet and the Last Great Days of the CIA
Richard D. White, Jr ., is the Marjory
Ourso Excellence in Teaching Professor at
Louisiana State University, where he
teaches in the Public Administration
Institute. He is the author of Kingfi sh: The Reign of Huey P. Long (Random House, 2005) and Roosevelt the Reformer: Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commission 1889 – 1895 (University of Alabama Press, 2003). His 24-year
government career includes service in the
White House, State Department, and
Central Intelligence Agency.
E-mail : [email protected]
Administrative Profile
Th e CIA ensures honesty by requiring its employees to take
unannounced polygraph tests to see whether they have recently
committed a crime. To the CIA faithful, even shirking a lunch
bill would be a crime, and trying to lie about the misdeed
would make the polygraph needle go haywire.
Administrative Profi le 421
academics and pipe-smoking PhDs, the Directorate of
Intelligence resembled a college campus, and it was
not unusual for an analyst to spend 30 years studying
the political situation of one particular country.
One of the bigger challenges of any DCI was to
ensure that the Directorate of Operations and the
Directorate of Intelligence communicated with each
other. Besides managing the CIA, the DCI served as
the president’s principal intelligence advisor, as well as
the head of the entire intelligence community, com-
posed of 15 agencies including
the National Security Agency,
the Defense Intelligence Agency,
and a couple of others so secret
that their existence was classifi ed.
Coordinating the nation’s intel-
ligence apparatus was like herd-
ing cats — blindfolded! Tenet
knew his responsibility was huge.
“A strong case can be made that
the three roles in which I served
were too much for any one per-
son,” he later wrote. “Perhaps so”
( Tenet 2007, 501 ). But he was
impressed with the CIA’s “streak
of eccentric genius,” as he put it, welcomed the chal-
lenge and the excitement of the job, and charged
ahead ( Coll 2004, 359 ). He had no idea at the time,
however, that he would play a major role, for better or
worse, in the abolition of the DCI and the demise of
the CIA as the world’s most powerful and prestigious
intelligence agency.
Blunt, Straightforward, and Totally Loyal George Tenet grew up in a two-story row house on
Marathon Parkway in Little Neck, Queens. His father
and mother had emigrated from Greece during the
Great Depression and later opened the Twentieth
Century Diner around the corner from their home.
Th ey worked 16-hour days at the diner, where she was
the baker and he was the chef, while George and his
brother bused tables ( Tenet 2007 , xx). As a kid,
George loved sports, playing stick ball in the street
and guard on the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox
Church basketball team. He was a loud, sloppy, and
boisterous kid, unlike his studious twin brother Bill,
who became a cardiologist ( Coll 2004, 355 ). Tenet
attended Georgetown University, where he received a
bachelor’s degree in foreign aff airs in 1976, and, two
years later, earned a master’s degree from Columbia.
After moving to Washington, D.C., Tenet spent four
years as a lobbyist. In 1982, he took his fi rst job on
Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant for Senator
John Heinz, a Pennsylvania Republican. In the sum-
mer of 1985, he began working for the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), where he moni-
tored Cold War arms control negotiations and
earned a reputation as an “eff ective and effi cient
staff er who served his bosses well” ( Isikoff and Corn
2006, 30 ). When Oklahoma senator David Boren
took over the SSCI, he found Tenet to be “very
blunt, straightforward, and totally loyal.” Impressed,
Boren appointed him staff director, one of the most
prized and infl uential positions on the Hill. As di-
rector of the SSCI’s 40 professionals, Tenet’s duties
included keeping track of the CIA’s budget and
operations. He was tough on the agency, tightening
oversight over covert operations and cutting its
funding ( Coll 2004, 357 ).
Senate staff ers remember Tenet
as a gregarious, comical, and
profane colleague but neverthe-
less a straight arrow, a high-
strung workaholic, and a sports
fanatic with season tickets to
Georgetown basketball games.
Th e cigar-smoking Tenet was a
natural coalition builder, a rare
commodity on the Hill, but,
according to a Senate staff er, he
was prone to oversimplifying
diffi cult issues. At the SSCI, he
rarely discussed politics and was so religiously nonpar-
tisan that his closest friends did not know his political
affi liation (a registered Democrat). Bulky and a little
overweight from junk food, he “could have been a
longshoreman,” a staff er remarked ( Coll 2004 , 254,
354 – 58; Isikoff and Corn 2006 , 30; Woodward 2002 ,
2; Woodward 2004, 117).
Soon after the presidential election of 1992, Tenet
joined Bill Clinton’s transition team as director for
intelligence issues, a position that really served as an
audition for the new administration. Tenet im-
pressed the Clintonites, who appointed him senior
director for intelligence at the National Security
Council. He worked so hard in 1993 and 1994 that
he had a heart attack, causing him to stop lighting
the ever-present cigar stuck in his mouth but never
forcing him to slow down. In 1995, he moved to the
CIA to become deputy to DCI John Deutch, pri-
marily because his popularity on both sides of the
Senate aisle made him easy to confi rm. While dep-
uty, Tenet did not waste time. He spent the next two
years meeting the CIA’s people, learning its dark
tradecraft, and absorbing the agency’s problems
“the way a Geiger counter absorbs radiation signals”
( Coll 2004 , 354 – 55, 359).
When Deutch quit after only 19 months, President
Clinton nominated his national security advisor, Tony
Lake, as DCI, but Senate Republicans blocked Lake as
being too liberal. Th at left Tenet, who got the job
almost by default. He possessed two qualities that
appealed strongly to the White House: He was well
Th e cigar-smoking Tenet was a natural coalition builder, a rare commodity on the Hill, but,
according to a Senate staff er, he was prone to oversimplifying diffi cult issues. . . . he rarely discussed politics and was so
religiously nonpartisan that his closest friends did not know his
political affi liation.
422 Public Administration Review • May | June 2008
liked, and, again, he could be easily confi rmed by
Congress.
Before arriving at the CIA, Tenet had never run
for political offi ce, managed a large organization,
worked as an intelligence offi cer, shaped American
foreign policy, earned academic credentials by author-
ing a scholarly publication, or served in the military
( Coll 2004, 353 – 54 ). But it was not unusual for an
outsider like Tenet to head the agency. Only four
previous heads — Allen Dulles, Richard Helms,
William Colby, and Robert Gates — had been profes-
sional intelligence offi cers, while seven had been civil-
ians with political connections but little intelligence
background, and six had been military offi cers. To
rank-and-fi le CIA employees, the back-slapping Tenet
would be a breath of fresh air after the abrasive
Deutch. Old hands, in fact, still remembered the
notorious days of Stansfi eld Turner, President Jimmy
Carter’s DCI who had mistrusted clandestine opera-
tions and decimated the agency by fi ring hundreds of
operatives, and the opposite extreme, William Casey,
President Ronald Reagan’s hawkish DCI who had
used covert operations to meddle in the internal aff airs
of foreign governments. By comparison, Tenet was an
acceptable, low-risk choice whose two years as deputy
gave him some measure of credibility.
An Agency in Disarray On July 11, 1997, 44-year-old George Tenet was
sworn in as the eighteenth director of central intel-
ligence. President Clinton did not attend the cere-
mony but sent Vice President Al Gore ( Coll 2004,
353 ). Offi cially Tenet was a
cabinet member, but he re-
mained outside the president’s
inner circle. According to Tim
Weiner, “Clinton did not fi nd
the time to understand what the
CIA was, how it worked, or
where it fi t in with the rest of
government” (2007, 447). Clin-
ton did not require the DCI to
be present for the daily intelli-
gence briefi ng, often preferring
to read intelligence documents
on his own. Tenet was not sur-
prised to have little personal
contact with the president. Clin-
ton’s fi rst DCI, James Woolsey, had served from 1993
to 1995 and, according to one journalist, had never
met one on one with Clinton. “Remember the guy
who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House
lawn?” Woolsey sarcastically told an Insight magazine
reporter. “Th at was me trying to get an appointment
to see President Clinton.”
Th e CIA was in disarray when Tenet took over. Th e
agency had suff ered inconsistent leadership since the
fall of the Soviet Union, and he was the fi fth DCI in
seven years. Morale sagged badly. Since 1991, the
agency had lost more than 3,000 of its best people —
more than 20 percent of its workforce — including
many of its more experienced case offi cers ( Weiner
2007, 470 ). Some had left from budget cuts, others
from disgust. Recruiting was at a standstill. Indeed,
when Tenet arrived, the Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion had more agents in New York City than the CIA
had clandestine offi cers around the world ( Tenet
2007, 14 ). Th e agency budget was a mess, and there
was no central accounting of funds spent. At the same
time, the CIA had lost the technological edge that had
enabled it to compete and triumph during the Cold
War. Th e agency had not kept abreast of break-
throughs in private industry in communications tech-
nology, satellite surveillance, and supercomputing
( Tenet 2007, 21 ). Th ough required to coordinate the
intelligence community, the DCI had little real
authority over other agencies and controlled less than
20 percent of overall intelligence spending ( Kean and
Hamilton 2006, 197 ). “Th e fact is that by the mid-
to late-1990s American intelligence was in Chapter
11,” Tenet wrote, “and neither Congress nor the
executive branch did much about it” (2007, 108).
When Tenet became DCI, he did not have a grand,
compelling strategy concerning world aff airs, nor did
he seek one. Instead, he focused on the CIA’s inter-
nal, institutional needs. His top priorities were a
more clearly defi ned mission, improved morale, bet-
ter execution of intelligence collection and analysis,
more recruits, better training, and a substantial
increase in funding. He sounded
like a football coach when
he told his staff that “this is
all about focusing on basics”
( Coll 2004, 355 ).
Tenet immediately started
rebuilding. Turning to private
industry, he appointed a chief
fi nancial offi cer to straighten out
the agency’s spending and a chief
information offi cer to upgrade its
computing capacity. He called
talented veterans back from
retirement, including Jack
Downing, a Harvard-educated
ex-Marine who had served as station chief in Moscow
and Beijing, to reenergize the clandestine service
( Weiner 2007 , 67, 471). He also sought more fund-
ing. He sent two personal letters to President Clinton,
one in November 1998 and another a year later, seek-
ing an additional $2 billion over fi ve years. His re-
quests annoyed the White House, and he got only a
small increase ( Tenet 2007, 107 ). Late in 1999, Tenet
went through back channels to Republican Congress-
men Newt Gingrich and Porter Goss, who controlled
[Tenet’s] top priorities were a more clearly defi ned mission,
improved morale, better execution of intelligence
collection and analysis, more recruits, better training, and a substantial increase in funding.
He sounded like a football coach when he told his staff that
“this is all about focusing on basics.”
Administrative Profi le 423
the agency budget in the House of Representatives,
and secured an “emergency” $2 billion supplemental
appropriation, the agency’s biggest increase in 15 years
( Weiner 2007 , 468; Tenet 2007, 21 ). At the same
time, Tenet attempted to revamp the agency’s person-
nel structure by implementing a pay-for-performance
incentive system, but Congress refused to authorize it
(Tenet 2007, 25).
Tenet’s energy and hands-on leadership paid off .
Morale seemed to improve overnight as word spread
quickly around Langley about the new DCI’s
“management by walking around” style. He became a
familiar sight strolling headquarters corridors, chomp-
ing on his unlit cigar, throwing his arms around
people, or plopping down at cafeteria tables ( Coll
2004, 360 ). Over the agency’s history, few DCIs
had been true people persons and fewer had made
themselves readily accessible to the rank and fi le.
Now, most employees addressed the new DCI simply
as “George.”
Diplomat Rather Than Spymaster “At CIA we don’t make policy; we implement it,”
George Tenet said on numerous occasions (2007, 55).
He saw the agency’s role as that of an honest broker
that avoided direct involvement in foreign policy
making. His role as DCI became more politically
complicated, however, in the fall of 1998, when Presi-
dent Clinton hosted peace talks between the Palestin-
ians and the Israelis. During the Wye Oak
negotiations, Tenet served as the go-between for Yasser
Arafat and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netan-
yahu. “We were the one entity both sides could trust,”
Tenet explained (2007, 64). Th is new role was more
diplomat than chief spymaster, which made many
insiders “distinctly uncomfortable” ( Posner 1998;
Tenet 2007, 74 ). Late in the negotiations, Netanyahu
demanded that the United States release convicted spy
Jonathan Pollard. At fi rst Clinton was inclined to
grant the Israeli request, but Tenet told the president
that he could not remain DCI if Pollard were released.
After Tenet threatened to resign and Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich objected to the release, Clinton
backed down ( Risen 2006, 8 ).
Sometime in 1998, the Clinton administration
became aware of the threat that Osama bin Laden
posed and planned to capture him. At the time, Bin
Laden was seeking chemical and biological weapons
and sending his operatives into at least 60 countries
( Tenet 2007 , 109, 130). In December 1998, Tenet
warned top intelligence offi cials of the al-Qaeda
threat. “We are at war,” he wrote. “I want no re-
sources or people spared in this eff ort, either inside
CIA or the Community.” According to the 9/11
Commission report (2004, 357), however, the mem-
orandum did little to mobilize the intelligence com-
munity. Meanwhile, despite Tenet’s eff orts to rebuild
his agency, the CIA continued to experience major
intelligence failures. On May 11, 1998, India began
its nuclear testing program, to the surprise of the
U.S. intelligence community. “We didn’t have a clue,”
Tenet confessed to Senator Richard Shelby after the
test became public ( Bamford 2005, 129 ). A year later,
U.S. warplanes relied on faulty intelligence and mis-
takenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Like a loyal soldier, Tenet again shouldered the
blame. Soon after, a Washington Post reporter wrote
ominously that “politicization of intelligence esti-
mates continues to fl ourish under Tenet’s leadership
. . . We all have reason for grave concern”
( Eddington 1999 ).
A Member of the Inner Circle When George W. Bush won the presidency, George
Tenet expected to be replaced as soon as the Republi-
cans took offi ce. In early 2001, however, Senator
David Boren called Bush and urged him to keep Tenet
as a gesture of bipartisanship. Th e senator suggested
that Bush ask his father, himself a former DCI, about
Tenet. President George H. W. Bush had been im-
pressed by Tenet, who had shepherded Robert Gates
through the Senate confi rmation process in 1991 and
later led the eff ort to rename CIA headquarters for the
elder Bush ( Woodward 2002, 2 ). Tenet stayed.
On paper, Tenet was no longer a cabinet member, but,
despite being a Clinton holdover, he soon became a
trusted insider of the Bush national security team.
According to Tenet, the Bush administration had a
more traditional, and “perhaps more appropriate,”
view regarding the CIA’s involvement (2007, 80).
Unlike Clinton, Bush was fascinated by the CIA and
insisted that Tenet personally brief him each morning
at eight o’clock (Woodward 2004, 68). As Tenet be-
came more deeply involved in providing daily intel-
ligence to the president and attending White House
policy meetings, he no longer was able to focus on
rebuilding the agency. Th ere were just not enough
hours in his day.
“I like the president, plain and simple,” Tenet wrote
(2007, 480). Bush and Tenet bonded so well that
one White House offi cial remarked that they
“were like fraternity brothers,” and the two men
defended each other on every occasion. Some CIA
offi cers complained that the DCI was too close to
the president, still acting like a congressional staff er
overly concerned with pleasing his boss ( Isikoff and
Corn 2006 , 31, 268). In his morning briefi ngs to
Bush, Tenet sometimes took along a fi eld offi cer, still
needing a shave and a shower, who had just fl own in
from some hot spot on the far side of the world.
“I wanted to take the person closest to the action,
the one with hands-on experience, to tell the
Commander in Chief what was really happening”
( Tenet 2007, 183 ).
424 Public Administration Review • May | June 2008
George Tenet Goes to War On September 11, 2001, George Tenet sat under an
ornate Louis XVI chandelier having breakfast with
Senator Boren at the St. Regis Hotel at 16th and K
streets. Tenet never fi nished his breakfast. His security
detail whisked him away when news reached them
that an airliner had crashed into the World Trade
Center ( Bamford 2005, 18 ). Th e DCI knew immedi-
ately that the attacks were the work of al-Qaeda. Two
months before, he had raced to the White House to
brief Condoleezza Rice on his fears of an imminent
terrorist attack based on intelligence that “literally
made my hair stand on end” ( Goldberg 2007 ). A
week after the attack, Tenet wrote to top intelligence
offi cials that “there can be no bureaucratic impedi-
ments to success. All the rules have changed. Th ere
must be an absolute and full sharing of information,
ideas, and capabilities. We do not have time to hold
meetings to fi x problems — fi x
them — quickly and smartly”
(2007, 169). In a perverse way,
9/11 made Tenet’s job easier. It
gave him clarity, allowing him to
know exactly what his priority
was, that he had the full support
of his president, and that he would have a blank check
for more people, more funding, and expanded covert
authority to do his job. A week after the attack, Bush
signed a secret order giving the CIA more than $800
million ( Suskind 2006, 20 ).
Tenet and the CIA focused on wiping out al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan, a country where the agency had a long
history of involvement, especially during the Russian
occupation. For a change, the CIA was ahead of the
Defense Department in the planning and execution of
a paramilitary assault to dislodge al-Qaeda from its
sanctuaries in the rugged country. On November 14,
2001, the Northern Alliance, along with CIA opera-
tives and U.S. Special Forces, rolled into Kabul. Th e
takedown of Afghanistan was the CIA’s — and George
Tenet’s — fi nest hour.
“Slam Dunk” and Weapons of Mass Destruction On August 26, 2002, Vice President Richard Cheney
announced to the Veterans of Foreign Wars conven-
tion in Nashville, Tennessee, that “there is no doubt
that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass de-
struction … many of us are convinced that he will
acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.” Cheney’s re-
marks troubled Tenet, who wrote that the speech
“went well beyond what our analysis could support.”
Tenet believed that policy makers have a right to their
own opinions, but not their own set of facts. “I had an
obligation to do a better job of making sure they
knew where we diff ered and why,” he later confessed.
“I should have told the Vice President privately that,
in my view, his VFW speech had gone too far …
I should not have let silence imply agreement”
( Tenet 2007 , 315 – 17; Drogin 2007, 107 ).
Cheney’s speech marked the beginning of a huge
dispute over the presence of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, as well as possible collusion between
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda terrorists. By this time,
the Bush administration was determined to change the
regime in Iraq, and for good reason. Saddam was a
brutal tyrant who threatened his neighbors, sought to
annex Kuwait into Iraq, shot missiles into Israel, and
tortured his own people. He had used chemical weap-
ons in the past and, in the late 1980s, had made prog-
ress toward acquiring nuclear weapons (Pfi ff ner 2007b,
2). According to some insiders, Bush had made up his
mind to go to war with Iraq in the summer of 2002,
but Tenet defended the president (Pfi ff ner 2007b, 3).
“To me, the president still appeared less inclined to go
to war than many of his senior
aides,” he wrote ( Tenet 2007,
319 ). But Tenet also revealed that
the administration had decided
earlier to go to war when he told
Kurdish leaders in March there
would be a military attack on
Iraq (Woodward 2004, 115 – 16).
Meanwhile, Tenet tried to keep a low profi le and stay
out of the public limelight, but as a member of the
president’s small war cabinet, he found himself
increasingly involved in the policy debate. He did not
object when both the Offi ce of the Vice President and
the Defense Department formed their own ad hoc
intelligence units that pressured the intelligence com-
munity when intelligence products did not fi t their
political expectations and stovepiped raw, unverifi ed
intelligence straight to the White House (Pfi ff ner
2007b, 1).
When the SSCI became aware of the Iraqi intelligence
dispute between the Offi ce of the Vice President,
Defense Department, and the intelligence community
on whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruc-
tion, it ordered the CIA to complete a crash National
Intelligence Estimate ( Tenet 2007, 321 – 22 ). Th e new
estimate concluded that “Baghdad has chemical and
biological weapons . . . and could make a nuclear
weapon within several months,” but Tenet later admit-
ted the estimate was “fl awed” and contained little
hard evidence ( Weiner 2007, 487 ). As the inconsis-
tent intelligence fueled more controversy, the DCI
attempted to quell a press leak that the CIA’s internal
analysis confl icted with that of the White House.
Supposed to stay above the partisan fray, Tenet found
himself in the odd position of downplaying the con-
clusions of his own analysts at the CIA ( Gordon and
Trainor 2006, 129 ). Meanwhile, a senior CIA offi cial
threatened to resign after the National Security
Council pressured her to confi rm that Saddam had
In a perverse way, 9/11 made Tenet’s job easier.
Administrative Profi le 425
collaborated with al-Qaeda. She refused to rewrite her
report, and Tenet defended her with a tirade of
f-words aimed at White House staff ers ( Pfi ff ner
2007a , 14; Suskind 2006, 191 ).
In October, Tenet removed material from a presiden-
tial speech claiming that Iraq had tried to buy 500
tons of uranium oxide from Niger. Analysts at the
CIA concluded that the information had originated
from an unreliable source and forged documents
( Remnick 2003 ). Two months later, however, Tenet
supposedly assured the president in the Oval Offi ce
that the evidence for Saddam possessing weapons of
mass destruction amounted to a “slam dunk,”
although he provided no new intelligence ( Tenet
2007, 359 ). On January 28, 2003, President Bush
delivered his State of the Union address and an-
nounced that “the British government has learned that
Saddam Hussein recently sought signifi cant quantities
of uranium from Africa” ( Tenet 2007, 449 ). Th is was
the same bogus intelligence the CIA had found to be
unsupported and fl awed. But even if Tenet had
objected to the use of the questionable intelligence,
would the decision to invade Iraq have been diff erent?
Probably not, for by this time the Bush administra-
tion was committed to ousting Saddam, with or with-
out hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Whatever Tenet did at this late date may not have had
much impact on a decision already made.
A few days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell trav-
eled to New York to address the United Nations.
Tenet spent a week with Powell trying to agree on
which intelligence could be used in the speech. “After
all the back-and-forth, we believed we had produced
a solid product,” Tenet wrote (2007, 374), but he
later contradicted himself by admitting that Powell’s
speech contained some of the fl awed analysis from the
National Intelligence Estimate. Powell made a power-
ful and persuasive delivery to the United Nations and
helped galvanize support for the invasion of Iraq. In
an unusual public appearance for the DCI, Tenet
accompanied Powell and, according to a former CIA
analyst, sat behind the secretary of state during the
speech “like a potted plant” ( McGovern 2006 ). When
journalists later revealed that the intelligence in the
speech was doubtful, Powell’s reputation suff ered
permanent damage, as did the credibility and useful-
ness of Tenet and the CIA ( Risen
2006, 151 ). “If we are not be-
lieved,” former DCI Richard
Helms once said, “we have no
purpose” ( Weiner 2007, 488 ).
Hard Questions Never Asked Some CIA offi cers felt that George Tenet could not
carry out his role as DCI objectively because he was
too close to George W. Bush. But Tenet really had no
choice. If the president wanted him in his inner circle,
then he must follow orders and join. Tenet’s choice,
however, was to decide what his role was to be once he
joined that inner circle. He claimed that his task was
clear. “I mean, you know, you don’t cross that policy
line,” he told the New Yorker. “You’re supposed to
provide objective assessments and analysis” ( Goldberg
2007 ). But during the Iraq War buildup, he no longer
served primarily as an honest broker of hard intelli-
gence but instead allowed himself to be swept up in
the politics of the day. According to one CIA offi cial,
he helped the administration use intelligence “not to
inform decision making, but to justify a decision
already made” ( Pfi ff ner 2007a, 14 ).
Tenet’s performance should not be surprising, for he
had a bad habit of too often telling people what they
wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear ( Risen
2006, 12 ). He tried to please all parties instead of
stepping back and letting the analysis speak for itself.
At a time when he needed to stick to the facts, Tenet
continued to act primarily as a consensus builder.
Chester Barnard once wrote, “It seems to me inevi-
table that the struggle to maintain cooperation among
men should as surely destroy some men morally as
battle destroys some physically” (1938, 278), and
indeed, Tenet may have placed himself in such a
dilemma. He worried about political consequences
rather than speaking truth to power and asking the
hard questions that needed answers. He should have
been asking whether the intelligence used in the
National Intelligence Estimate was accurate, appropri-
ate, and analyzed according to prevailing standards.
Was the evidence believable, coming from diverse
sources, and tested for credibility? Were the arguments
persuasive and balanced rather than one sided?
( Wildavsky 1979 ). Never asked, the hard questions
were never answered.
Tenet was too good a guy to lie intentionally, but
unfortunately, his loyalty to the president and his
inner circle was greater than his loyalty to his agency’s
analysis and, ultimately, his loyalty to the truth and
his responsibility to have that truth heard. Tenet
would later blame the intelligence community for
failing to do its job: “Why so many opportunities to
sound the alarm were missed is a mystery to me,” he
wrote (2007, 380). But as DCI, it was Tenet’s role to
sound the alarm. “It’s not enough
to ring the bell,” Richard Helms
used to say. “You’ve got to make
sure the other guy hears it”
( Weiner 2007, 479 ).
The Departure of George Tenet
In March 2003, American forces invaded Iraq,
fought their way into Baghdad, and nine months later
captured Saddam Hussein. Soon after occupying
“It’s not enough to ring the bell,” Richard Helms used to say. “You’ve got to make sure
the other guy hears it.”
426 Public Administration Review • May | June 2008
Baghdad, U.S. civil administrator Paul Bremer or-
dered that the new Iraqi government remove all Ba’ath
Party members from offi ce, as well as disband the
Iraqi army. Tenet and the CIA strongly opposed these
actions, arguing that the Ba’athists were the only
experienced civil servants in Iraq and were needed to
rebuild and run the country. Th e agency also argued
that disbanding the army would drive thousands of
Iraqis into the ranks of the insurgents. Unfortunately,
the CIA’s credibility had been seriously weakened, and
some high-level offi cials, particularly Vice President
Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
believed the agency was too cautious and not aggres-
sive enough for the war on terror ( Pfi ff ner 2007a, 15 ).
Bremer, supported by the vice president and Defense
Department, ignored the CIA’s objections ( Tenet
2007, 428 ).
After U.S. inspectors found the existence of weapons
of mass destruction to be “more chimerical than
chemical,” increasing public skepticism arose regard-
ing the intelligence used to justify the invasion
( Remnick 2003 ). In June 2004, after Tenet admitted
the intelligence fl aws in the president’s State of the
Union speech, Senator Richard Shelby called for the
DCI’s resignation ( Tenet 2007, 449 ). Tenet knew that
his days were numbered when Condoleezza Rice told
the press that if the DCI “had said, ‘take this out of
the speech,’ it would have been gone, without ques-
tion.” When reporters started asking him whether the
president still had confi dence in him, he knew that he
was “in a world of trouble” ( Tenet 2007, 464 ).
On July 11, 2004, with the political fi restorm over
weapons of mass destruction still building, Tenet
resigned as director of central intelligence. Five
months later, he stood in the East Room of the White
House, where President Bush, still loyal to his former
DCI, praised the CIA and awarded Tenet the Presi-
dential Medal of Freedom.
The Demise of the CIA Eleven days after George Tenet resigned, the 9/11
Commission issued its report and, as expected,
soundly criticized the CIA for committing “a major
intelligence failure” of a magnitude that “we simply
cannot aff ord.” Th e report blamed Tenet for not de-
veloping a strategy for a war against Islamist terrorists
prior to 9/11. Calling the intelligence community a
disorganized “confederacy,” the report recommended
the most ambitious intelligence reorganization since
the CIA was created in 1947. Responding to both the
report and a hot debate during the 2004 presidential
campaign, President Bush signed legislation in April
2005 that created the Offi ce of the Director of Na-
tional Intelligence (DNI). Th e new position would
report directly to the president and would take over
the role, previously played by the now-defunct DCI,
of coordinating the separate intelligence agencies. In
eff ect, the CIA director no longer would produce the
President’s Daily Brief, oversee the production of the
National Intelligence Estimate, or personally brief the
president. Instead, the new DNI would build up his
own bureaucracy of more than 1,500 personnel, many
siphoned from the CIA, and take control of inter-
agency bodies such as the National Counterterrorism
Center ( Pfi ff ner 2007a, 15 ).
Tenet, having taken a faculty position at Georgetown,
opposed the creation of the DNI and the demotion of
the CIA director post. Labeling the legislation an
“eff ort destined to provide only a false sense of prog-
ress and security,” he argued that the new intelligence
design created an “over-centralized, multilayered
structure that, at least where terrorism is concerned,
lacked the speed and agility to meet the challenges we
face.” Tenet also wrote that the new DNI “may be too
distant from the people he is supposed to lead and
may be divorced from the risk taking and running
operations” ( Tenet 2007 , 490, 501 – 4).
Th e larger, more enduring impact of the intelligence
reorganization will unfold in future years. But for
better or for worse, Tenet ushered in the end of the
CIA era and, in many respects, was the last infl uential
DCI to manage the agency at the height of its power
and prestige — an agency that began as the Offi ce of
Strategic Services during World War II, helped win
the Cold War and dismantle the Soviet Union, and
more recently has faced the modern, unconventional
challenges of international terrorism, rogue nation-
states, nuclear proliferation, narcotics traffi cking, and
other emerging threats. For more than 50 years,
Washington insiders referred to the CIA cryptically as
“ the Agency,” but under the new DNI framework, the
CIA has become merely another bureaucracy whose
director no longer holds sway over the rest of the
intelligence community.
Tenet must share both praise and blame for the de-
mise of the DCI and the weakening of the CIA. Th e
reorganization may have happened without him, as
the catastrophic magnitude of 9/11 demanded
change, whether needed or not. But he did prove that
the huge job of the DCI was too diffi cult for one
man — at least for him. Tenet is fundamentally a de-
cent man, but his legacy will not be that of a man
who displayed moral courage when the country
needed him to do so. At times he showed a burst of
fortitude, as when he stood up to President Clinton
and insisted the president not release Jonathan Pol-
lard, and later, in March 2003, when he told President
Bush that he opposed a speech to be given by Vice
President Cheney that linked Iraq and al-Qaeda
( Tenet 2007, 341 ). But too often, Tenet did not
object to the misuse of intelligence for political
purposes, nor did he have the courage to quit when
it was misused. One high-ranking CIA analyst
Administrative Profi le 427
compared — perhaps too harshly — Tenet’s role in the
Iraq controversy to Watergate, when Attorney
General Elliott Richardson and his deputy William
Ruckelshaus both quit rather than follow the orders
of President Richard Nixon to fi re the special pros-
ecutor. “You don’t see that kind of courage any-
more,” the analyst remarked, referring to Tenet
( McGovern 2006 ).
As the debate over the Iraq War drags on, the mud-
dled legacy left by Tenet revolves primarily around his
“slam dunk” remark in the Oval Offi ce, the uranium
oxide in the president’s State of the Union speech, and
even the seven-fi gure advance he received for his re-
cent book, in which he tries to distance himself from
the failures of the intelligence community. His blam-
ing of others has been disingenuous. “Quite simply,”
he wrote, “the NSC did not do its job … . Th ose in
charge of U.S. policy operated within a closed loop.
Bad news was ignored. Our own reporting — reporting
that eventually would prove spot-on in its predictions
of what came to pass on the ground — was dismissed”
(2007, 447). But Tenet, too, was in the closed loop
and deserves a large part of the blame that he casts on
others. He may have admitted his true, less stalwart
legacy when he confessed weakly that “perhaps
I should have pounded the table harder”
(2007, 493 – 94).
Acknowledgments Th e author is grateful to James Pfi ff ner and Hal
Rainey for their helpful comments. Any conclusions,
of course, are solely those of the author.
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