More intrigue as 'slam dunk' Tenet
quits By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
The abrupt resignation of Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) director George Tenet adds new grist to
Washington's
rumor mills, already churning at warp speed
due to the ongoing prisoner-abuse scandal in Iraq and
reports that the Bush administration's favorite in
Baghdad turned over critical information to Iran.
Whether
Tenet, 51, who also served for seven years as the
director of Central Intelligence (DCI) - a post that
theoretically oversees all of Washington's 16
intelligence agencies - was pushed or decided to resign of his own accord
is the question of the day. And, if he was pushed, why
now, just five months before the presidential election?
Tenet's resignation was followed by that of
James Pavitt, deputy director for operations, who was in
charge of the CIA's spies. He is said to have made the
decision some weeks ago. The CIA says that Pavitt's
decision is unconnected with Tenet's departure.
In a speech to CIA employees at the agency's
headquarters outside Washington, Tenet insisted on
Thursday his decision was based exclusively on the
"well-being of my wonderful family - nothing more,
nothing less".
That was echoed by Bush himself,
albeit in rather curious circumstances. Just a few
minutes after a routine photo opportunity on the White
House lawn with visiting Australian Prime Minister John
Howard, the president reappeared before reporters to say
Tenet had informed him of his decision to leave "for
personal reasons" on Wednesday evening.
"I told
him I'm sorry he's leaving," Bush, who appears to have
had an unusually warm relationship with Tenet and had
long resisted right-wing pressure to fire him, said
haltingly. "He's been a strong leader in the war on
terror, and I will miss him." As has become customary,
Bush took no questions and simply walked away.
But, as Tenet himself anticipated in his
farewell, some observers suggested his decision may not
have been entirely voluntary and could, in fact, mark
the first of a series of high-level administration
departures over the coming weeks as Bush's re-election
campaign struggles to persuade voters to forget about
setbacks in Iraq.
"I think he's being pushed
out," said former CIA director Stansfield Turner in an
interview on CNN. "The president feels he has to have
someone to blame."
"They want to use him as a
scapegoat for everything that's gone wrong," one
congressional aide told IPS. "But I don't think that's
going to work. While the CIA obviously fell down in
major ways, everyone knows by now that the Pentagon has
been at the heart of this whole mess."
Even as
Tenet was bidding good-bye, reports dominated newspaper
headlines that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has
begun interviewing - in some cases with lie detectors -
senior Pentagon civilians close to former Iraqi exile
Ahmad Chalabi to determine who told him that US
intelligence had broken the codes Tehran uses to
communicate with its spies. Those reports came in the
wake of a New York Times article Wednesday that said
Chalabi had informed Iran's top operative in Baghdad the
codes had been broken.
What with the
administration deeply concerned about Iran's nuclear
program, as well as its ability to disrupt Washington's
efforts to stabilize neighboring Iraq, the information
is considered a major security breach. Two weeks ago,
Chalabi's own residence and headquarters were raided by
Iraqi police and US agents and a US$340,000 monthly
stipend that his group, the Iraqi National Congress
(INC), had been receiving from the Pentagon for
intelligence-gathering was cut off.
Chalabi, who
has heatedly denied the allegations, has blamed the
report on the CIA which, after backing the INC with
millions of dollars in covert assistance in the early
1990s, broke with him after an aborted coup d'etat
launched by a rival exile group headed by Iyad Allawi,
who last weekend was selected as Iraq's new prime
minister.
Allawi's emergence at the top was seen
as a decisive victory of the CIA and State Department
over their neo-conservative rivals at the Pentagon and
Vice President Dick Cheney's office, who have championed
Chalabi since 1998.
In recent days, Chalabi has
lashed out against Tenet personally, accusing him of
concocting the charges against him.
Asked about
Tenet's sudden resignation, Chalabi repeated those
accusations, telling reporters that the CIA director's
role in developing US-Iraq policy has "not been helpful
to say the least". Tenet, he added, had provided
"erroneous information about weapons of mass destruction
to President Bush, which caused the government much
embarrassment at the United Nations and his own
country".
The latter charge appeared
particularly ironic in view of the growing consensus,
both in the administration and in Congress, that
"defectors" provided by Chalabi's INC were the most
important source of faulty - and, in some cases,
apparently fabricated - reports of Baghdad's pre-war
weapons of mass destruction programs.
While the
CIA and other intelligence agencies were skeptical of
many of these reports, they were fed directly into the
White House via Chalabi's backers in the Pentagon and
Cheney's office, according to numerous published
reports.
Nonetheless, in at least one case,
Chalabi's charge about Tenet's own role in faulty
weapons evidence appears to have been correct. According
to journalist Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of
Attack, a critical moment in the run-up to the war
occurred when Bush himself expressed doubt that the
public would be persuaded by the CIA's evidence of the
threat posed by Iraq's weapons.
"From the end of
one of the couches in the Oval office, Tenet rose up,
threw his arms in the air. 'It's a slam-dunk case'! the
DCI said," Woodward reported, adding that Tenet repeated
the phrase a second time when Bush asked whether he was
confident about the evidence.
That account, on
which Tenet has not commented, has proved very damaging
to his position among war critics, particularly moderate
Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who until then had
seen him as a restraining influence on Bush during the
run-up to the war.
Indeed, Tenet's loss of
support from the war skeptics, as well as ongoing
scandals around the performance of the CIA and even its
use of interrogation techniques that amounted to torture
and resulted in at least one death during the "war on
terrorism", may have played a decisive role in his
decision to resign now.
Lawmakers on both sides
of the aisle are very angry at recent CIA delays in
clearing a pending report on the intelligence
community's performance before the war, which is itself
expected to be strongly critical of Tenet. The
commission established to investigate the causes of the
September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and
Washington is expected to be similarly critical.
In addition, Tenet, who has talked to friends
about wanting to leave the agency for at least two
years, had become a lightning rod for anger by
Republican right-wingers in Congress and
neo-conservatives, who have long agitated for his
removal in part because of his status as the
highest-ranking holdover from the administration of
former president Bill Clinton.
"By leaving now,
Tenet will be depriving them of a highly visible
target," said the Capitol Hill aide. "I'm sure people at
the CIA appreciate that, because they don't like being
in the middle of a highly-charged political debate."
Another hint that it was Tenet himself who
decided to leave now was suggested by the fact that his
resignation will not take effect until July 11, the
seventh anniversary of his swearing in. The timing
bolsters the notion that he is leaving on his own terms,
while Bush's failure to announce a successor, in the
eyes of some analysts, indicates the White House was
caught unawares by Tenet's departure.
For now
his successor will be John McLaughlin, the current
deputy director of the CIA and a career intelligence
officer who is generally well respected in Congress.
Whether Bush will retain McLaughlin through the
November elections or make a political appointment will
be a critical decision. It was widely rumored six months
ago, when Tenet last indicated he wanted to leave, that
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz would be moved
to CIA, but Washington insiders now say that Wolfowitz,
the administration's highest-ranking neo-conservative
and Chalabi's most effective champion, would not survive
Senate confirmation hearings.
Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage has also expressed interest in
the job in the past, but, as an unconditional ally and
friend of Secretary of State Colin Powell, he would be a
major target of right-wing Republican hawks and
neo-conservatives, to the extent the latter retain much
influence in the White House.
If Bush were to
decide not to stick with McLaughlin, the likeliest
candidate is the head of the Intelligence Committee in
the House of Representatives, Porter Goss of Florida.
While a Republican loyalist, Goss, a former CIA officer
himself, has had generally good relations with
Democratic colleagues and is not considered particularly
ideological.
rumor mills, already churning at warp speed
due to the ongoing prisoner-abuse scandal in Iraq and
reports that the Bush administration's favorite in
Baghdad turned over critical information to Iran.
