http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2165269/nav/tap1/A Loser's History
George Tenet's sniveling, self-justifying new book is a disgrace.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, April 30, 2007, at 11:37 AM ET
Former CIA Director George Tenet
It's difficult to see why George Tenet would be so incautious as to write his own self-justifying apologia, let alone give it the portentous title At the Center of the Storm. There is already a perfectly good pro-Tenet book written by a man who knows how to employ the overworked term storm. Bob Woodward's 2002 effort, Bush at War, was, in many of its aspects, almost dictated by George Tenet. How do we know this? Well, Tenet is described on the opening page as "a hefty, outgoing son of Greek immigrants," which means that he talked to Woodward on background. Further compliments are showered upon him. We discover that his main protector on Capitol Hill, Sen. David Boren, who represented Oklahoma until 1994, had implored President-elect Bush to retain this Clinton-era head of the CIA and if he had any doubts, to "ask your father":
When the younger Bush did, the former President George H.W. Bush said: "From what I hear, he's a good fellow," one of the highest accolades in the Bush family lexicon. Tenet … later led the effort to rename CIA headquarters for Bush, himself a former DCI.
No need to draw a very complex picture here: Tenet knows how the kiss-up and kiss-down game is played. And, for a rather mediocre man, he did well enough out of the arrangement while it lasted. Woodward was even willing to describe him as one who "had developed an understanding of the importance of human intelligence, HUMINT in spycraft." But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I only mean to say that it was a very favorably disposed chronicler who wrote this, in describing Tenet's reaction on the terrible morning of Sept. 11, 2001:
"This has bin Laden all over it," Tenet told Boren. "I've got to go." He also had another reaction, one that raised the real possibility that the CIA and the FBI had not done all that could have been done to prevent the terrorist attack. "I wonder," Tenet said, "if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training."(MORE AT LINK)
Now, far be it from me to rush to Tenet's defense. He knew much of the Bush case for WMD was fake or exaggerated way back in 2002 and 2003, but he went along like a loyal Bushie and got a medal for his cowardice.
But the nerve of an unprincipled scumbage like Hitchens, who showed up all disheveled and bleary-eyed at all the talk shows at the time to carry Bush's water to go after him is a new low.
What a piece of garbage. At least Tenet is letting some of the truth out. Hitchens continues to lie and whore to this very day.
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