Last week Inspector General John Helgerson delivered a scathing report to Congress calling for punitive sanctions against Tenet and other agency personnel for failures related to 9/11 and flawed intelligence regarding Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
Tenet has written a 20 page response to Helgerson's allegations. His response is sure to give added credence to what Richard Clarke said in his book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. Here's a quote from Roberts' Op-Ed:
Mr. Tenet's decision to defend himself against the charges in the report poses a potential crisis for the White House. According to a former clandestine services officer, the former CIA director turned down a publisher's $4.5 million book offer because he didn't want to embarrass the White House by rehashing the failure to prevent September 11 and the flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Tenet, according to a knowledgeable source, had a "wink and a nod" understanding with the White House that he wouldn't be scapegoated for intelligence failings. The deal, one source says, was sealed with the award of the Presidential Freedom Medal.
Now that deal may be off. Mr. Tenet's rebuttal to the report is detailed and explicit. In defending his integrity as CIA director, Mr. Tenet treads perilously close to affirming the account of Richard Clarke, the former NSC terrorism official whose public disclosure of the Bush administration's delay in adopting a strategy against al Qaeda stirred controversy last summer.
1 comment:
What's the world coming to if the spooks can't trust a wink and a nod?
Post a Comment