After 9/11, being the director of the CIA invariably must have had one of the toughest and most pressured jobs in the country. So it isn’t all that surprising that George Tenet had had enough of his job and handed in his resignation last Thursday. What does come as a surprise is the timing of his resignation and the fact that the President accepted it. His resignation also comes with every bit of controversy that would follow the resignation of a top official that was very much a key player in the war against terror. Tenet has claimed that he chose to resign in order to be able to spend more time with his family. Is that really an acceptable excuse at his level? Upon taking up the position of director of the CIA seven years ago, wasn’t Tenet aware of the magnitude of his responsibility toward his country? Fall guy One of the biggest speculations circulating the media is that Tenet may have resigned because he’d had enough of being the fall guy for all that has gone wrong over the last few years starting with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The 9/11 commission hearings have shown that Tenet and the CIA’s performance prior to the attacks were poor and that the intelligence agency failed to stop Osama bin Laden or fully acknowledge the threat his terrorist organization posed. Furthermore, the CIA also failed to alert the President and his administration to the seriousness of the al-Qaeda threat. For all this, Tenet took the blame. The intelligence used as the reasoning to invade Iraq is where Tenet’s role was greatest. First, it was he who apparently allowed false information to slip into the President’s State of the Union address two years ago about Iraq trying to acquire uranium from an African nation. Senior Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward tells in his latest book that Tenet personally informed President Bush that finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq would be a “slam dunk” case. Needless to say, in a war that has taken the lives of more than 800 Americans and over 10,000 Iraqis, no such weapons have been found. The rationale for war is now being questioned more than ever and someone has had to answer for it Tenet was most likely and, not surprisingly, the one who was chosen to take the fall. Bad timing For all the reasons that called for Tenet’s resignation, some may have been unfairly attributed to him. While he may have insisted on Saddam having WMDs and an al-Qaeda connection, it has been suggested that it was the Bush administration that pressured him to find a case to go to war with Iraq soon after 9/11. Furthermore, it has been reported that Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not always agree on what was considered as dependable intelligence or who were credible sources. If there really is a communication problem between the CIA and the Pentagon, Tenet’s resignation will do very little to mend that problem any time soon. So maybe Tenet’s abrupt departure has been poorly timed. It is also worth mentioning that Tenet’s resignation came a week after Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller raised the terror alert level and suggested the possibility of an imminent attack on the U.S. by al-Qaeda. If this threat is really what they say it is, then why did the CIA director leave at such a crucial time for America? Wouldn’t his services be extremely valuable during a time like this? Wouldn’t the President want his top intelligence advisor’s services now? Some timing Tenet had. No one knows when or if Tenet will come out with the actual reason for his resignation or when the truth behind it will be revealed. And it may take weeks, or even months, before we get to hear the whole story. In the mean time, we will see just how great, or little, of an impact his resignation will be on the intelligence community and the war on terror.
