Page 1 of 2 BOOK REVIEW Greek tragedy At the Center of the Storm by George Tenet
Reviewed by Elbridge Colby
Famous figures write memoirs for different purposes: some because they were
always frustrated writers, others to settle old scores, still others to impart
a bit of wisdom. George Tenet's memoir At the Center of the Storm is an
example of the defensive memoir, a book written to plead his case against the
legion of
accusations leveled against him.
And they are a multitude, from every direction and ranging from charges of
incompetence to outright malevolence. The reader can sense Tenet's exasperation
as he methodically lays out his side of the story on the talismanic
controversies of the period during which he was the United States' director of
central intelligence: Did the intelligence community cook the books for the
administration of President George W Bush? No, the community just got the
intelligence wrong. What about "slam dunk"? That
was an ill-advised phrase that was not relevant to the decision to go to war
against Iraq, which in any case did not result from the community's assessments
about weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Was the Central Intelligence Agency asleep at the wheel before September 11,
2001? Far from it - the CIA and Tenet were pounding the table for action
against al-Qaeda before it was fashionable, but human error was not absent, as
in the infamous watchlisting case. Why didn't Tenet push for the administration
to take action against al-Qaeda before September 11? He did to some extent, but
it was not his role to advocate policy. And so on.
Tenet also addresses the Bill Clinton administration's negotiations with Israel
and the Palestinians, the "16 words" incident, [1] the hunt for WMD after the
invasion of Iraq, and the other usual suspects. Those who have followed the
twists and turns of the more esoteric of these scandals, such as the
"curveball" intelligence-source incident, will find more grist for the mill.
On the whole, Tenet's testimony is plausible but, not surprisingly, biased.
Some peers are pictured as political animals, scrambling for influence in the
shark-infested waters of the Washington inter-agency world, but Tenet draws
himself as an "aw-shucks" Greek guy from Queens, New York, just trying to do
his job. While there is certainly a good bit of truth in this, there is also a
reason Tenet owns a reputation as a skilled political infighter. He was no lamb
among wolves.
Regardless of how precisely these fraught incidents actually transpired - a
historical timeline even renowned Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor
assigned to investigate the "outing" of CIA agent Valery Plame, could not
conclusively reassemble - the more important point is that the main lines of
Tenet's narrative are convincing and largely true. The book is basically about
two stories: the fight against al-Qaeda both before and after September 11 and
the Iraq war. And on these two matters, the defining events of his tenure,
Tenet's story - if not always his performance - is basically on target.
The heart of his book is a description of how the CIA came to recognize the
al-Qaeda threat in the 1990s, reoriented itself to combat this new threat,
consistently warned policymakers of the seriousness of the impending threat,
and was in a position to take immediate action after tragedy struck on
September 11, 2001. While Tenet's narrative will not add much for those already
acquainted with this history, it does provide a reminder that, instead of
condemnation, Tenet and the CIA generally deserve plaudits for pounding the
table on terrorism well before policymakers, Congress members or the American
people at large took much notice of the threat of catastrophic terrorism.
Tenet's exasperation at the tendentious criticisms of the 9-11 Commission and
others who blithely argue that the "CIA should have done more" is well
justified. As he argues, the intelligence agencies can only do so much. They
are not independent - let alone omnipotent - actors; they are, instead, the
servants of the American people and their elected representatives. The CIA
could and did warn both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Congress and the
American people of the threat al-Qaeda posed and repeatedly asked for more
resources and authorities to pursue the target. Indeed, it cut from its own
funding and personnel elsewhere to go after al-Qaeda, even during demanding
crises in the Balkans and Middle East.
The threat, however, remained too ethereal and distant for the US until
September 11 drove its immediacy painfully home. And when that happened, the
CIA stood ready with a plan of attack and a network of allies to depose the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan - what Tenet without exaggeration calls the
"CIA's finest hour".
Ultimately, charges that the CIA should have just "gone out and gotten the bad
guys" are not fairly directed against the CIA, but must be shouldered by the US
government and American people as a whole. The CIA was telling the US of the
danger and was asking for more leeway and resources, but the American people
and their representatives were not prepared to give them that. The threat just
seemed too unreal, and what the CIA was asking for was not negligible.
As Tenet fair-mindedly describes, the pre-September 11 problems of whether to
launch missile or other strikes against Osama bin Laden that might involve
killing innocent (and sometimes diplomatically important) people, how to deal
with the truculent Pakistanis and so forth were profoundly difficult ones.
These were not technical questions that simply demanded an assertion of will,
but deeply political ones, involving complicated and risky tradeoffs. Anyone
who remembers the atmospherics of 1998 and Wag the Dog will recall that
the US had not steeled itself to deal with the al-Qaeda threat. The failure to
"get al-Qaeda" before September 11 is therefore Americans' collective
responsibility, certainly not to be borne by the one group within the
government who were actually calling for greater focus and more action.
Perhaps the most important part of the book, however, is what Tenet has to say
about the struggle against al-Qaeda and its allies going forward. A decade or
more from now, the question of why the memo from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) agent in Phoenix did not receive more attention will likely
seem as abstruse as the question of how much Admiral Husband E Kimmel and
General Walter Short knew before the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii, does to us now. But the question of how and with what fervor
the US needs to combat its terrorist enemies will be just as salient - and may
be more so - if Tenet's dark but reasonable predictions about the likelihood of
further strikes, including nuclear strikes, against the US homeland are borne
out.
Tenet is clear on one point: by far the most valuable intelligence-gathering
techniques are also the most controversial. They have saved lives. Their
cancellation will have real consequences and will likely directly result in the
deaths of Americans.
Tenet states unequivocally, for instance, that the use of "enhanced
interrogation techniques" and aggressive interrogation of "high-value
detainees" "gave us ... more [on al-Qaeda and its plans] than the CIA, the NSA
[National Security Agency], the FBI and our military operations had achieved
collectively". In other words, the use of harsh interrogation techniques was
not only immensely valuable in the campaign against al-Qaeda, but was actually
more valuable than all the rest of the government's intelligence-collection
methods combined. As he notes, members - particularly senior members - of
al-Qaeda are fanatically dedicated and committed to deceiving or stonewalling
their captors. Without the use of these techniques, Tenet argues, the United
States would have "obtained none of the information [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
for instance] had in his head about imminent threats against the American
people".
Furthermore, Tenet contends that the other most important factors in preventing
follow-on attacks after September 11 were the president's Terrorist
Surveillance Program and a highly classified program that tracked terrorist
financial transactions. In other words, the most critical intelligence methods
are precisely those that many seem eager to suspend.
Tenet's bugle-call defense of these efforts should serve as a reality check on
current deliberations - in Congress, in the media and among the US presidential
candidates - about the necessity of these programs. As he states, "We must
understand
Head
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was an ill-advised phrase that was not relevant to the decision to go to war
against Iraq, which in any case did not result from the community's assessments
about weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
