gekko
08-01-2003, 07:50 PM
Memo to George J. Tenet/DCI
July 17, 2003
By John Weisman
Alabama Senator Richard Shelby is right. You need to be replaced. So resign. Do it now. Do it before things at Langley get screwed up any worse than they're already screwed up.
You became deputy director of the CIA in 1995. Your qualifications included a staff job for Senator David Boren, and a stint at the Clinton National Security Council.
Which means that before you became deputy director of CIA you were a professional staffer, an outsider, an intelligence dilettante who'd never recruited or run an agent, or worked inside that contradictory, dimly lit maze known as the Wilderness of Mirrors.
By 1995 according to many insiders, the Agency was in condition SNAFU.
As Deputy Director, you had the chance to help turn CIA around. But things didn't happen that way. In fact, the situation got worse. "Benign neglect," is the way one supergrade intelligence officer recently described it to me.
You assumed the position of Director of Central Intelligence on July 11, 1997. At that point, after almost two years of John Deutch's stewardship of the intelligence community, conditions at CIA had progressed downhill to TARFU.
Once more, you could have turned things around. But today, the Agency is FUBAR.
You're bright, George, even though a lot of Langley's Old Hands think you're insecure and overly given to hand-wringing when you're in the company of authentic intelligence professionals. Still, you can be charming. And you give great Hearing when you testify on the Hill. You're known to be direct, funny, and wittily profane. Bob Woodward is a lot fonder of you than he is of Don Rumsfeld -- at least that's the idea I got when I read "Bush at War." Then again, maybe you've spent more time talking to Woodward than Rummy has.
But according to the intelligence professionals I talk to, veterans who spent their lives spotting, assessing and recruiting spies, as DCIs go, George, you're no Bill Casey. Not even in the same universe.
The reason they feel that way is a simple, bottom-line truth: On your watch, CIA has suffered some of the most damaging intelligence failures in the history of our nation. That isn't just my opinion, either. It's Senator Shelby's.
You want the evidence? Okay, let's go to the video tape:
On your watch, the Indians tested a nuclear weapon in 1998 but CIA knew nothing about it.
On your watch, CIA mistakenly targeted the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, resulting in its bombing by U.S. planes.
On your watch, the CIA became terminally risk averse, resulting in the loss of dozens, perhaps even scores, of experienced case officers who were warned that recruiting agents who were less than squeaky-clean could result in their being fired. Intelligence professionals understand that you seldom find spies or terrorists at Boy Scout meetings or church cake sales. But then, you're not an intelligence professional, but a former congressional staffer.
On your watch, the experienced case officers who resigned or retired -- a situation I like to characterize as the ships deserting the sinking rat -- were all too often replaced with greenhorns who didn't have adequate language or people skills, or academic analysts, bookish reports officers, or even secretaries who -- just like you -- had never spotted, assessed, developed, recruited, and run an agent, and had no intention of doing so.
Which meant that on your watch, CIA's dependence on liaison intelligence services, which often have their own unilateral agendas, has had to increase. But liaison is a two-edged sword. CIA learned that lesson back in the 1970s, when we depended on Iran's SAVAK to provide us with info about Iranian dissidents, including an old guy in Paris named Ayatollah Khomeini. SAVAK told its CIA liaison Khomeini wasn't going to be a problem. The rest, as they say, is history. Well, history is repeating itself, George. That's why we need CIA reporting, not politically filtered dreck from Riyadh, Rome, Ankara, Cairo, Rabat, or Paris.
On your watch, many of the CIA stations in Africa were shut down, or turned over to annuitants.
On your watch, North Korea started reprocessing its spent nuclear fuel rods -- but CIA reported nothing about Pyongyang's ominous development until after April, 2003, when the North Koreans told the world -- and CIA -- what they were up to.
On your watch, the Counterintelligence Center (CTC) was eviscerated and much of its forward-basing capabilities were closed down, according to a former high-ranking CTC officer.
On your watch, according to former CIA case officer Robert Baer, the CIA had no unilateral assets in Iraq in the mid and late 1990s.
On your watch, according to a soon-to-be-released congressional report, CIA had no permanent DO case officers running agents in al-Qaeda's Afghan training camps in the days before 9/11.
And on your watch, on September 11, 2001, thousands of Americans were murdered in a brutal, well-planned, well-executed act of war against the United States, and yet you told Congress there was no pre-9/11 intelligence failure.
On your watch, the war in Iraq was hampered, according to some military sources, by the lack of trustworthy Iraqi agents working under the control of Arab-speaking CIA case officers.
CIA deserves better, George. CIA deserves a DCI who leads from the front; a surefooted, audacious commander whose fierce loyalty to his troops is unquestioned. CIA needs a results-oriented intelligence professional who will put the Agency back on track and create the kind of vigorous spy agency this nation needs in order to survive and prevail in the 21st century.
Those sorts of men exist, George. Sadly, you are not one of them.
Question of the day: Why the hell haven't we fired Tenet yet?
July 17, 2003
By John Weisman
Alabama Senator Richard Shelby is right. You need to be replaced. So resign. Do it now. Do it before things at Langley get screwed up any worse than they're already screwed up.
You became deputy director of the CIA in 1995. Your qualifications included a staff job for Senator David Boren, and a stint at the Clinton National Security Council.
Which means that before you became deputy director of CIA you were a professional staffer, an outsider, an intelligence dilettante who'd never recruited or run an agent, or worked inside that contradictory, dimly lit maze known as the Wilderness of Mirrors.
By 1995 according to many insiders, the Agency was in condition SNAFU.
As Deputy Director, you had the chance to help turn CIA around. But things didn't happen that way. In fact, the situation got worse. "Benign neglect," is the way one supergrade intelligence officer recently described it to me.
You assumed the position of Director of Central Intelligence on July 11, 1997. At that point, after almost two years of John Deutch's stewardship of the intelligence community, conditions at CIA had progressed downhill to TARFU.
Once more, you could have turned things around. But today, the Agency is FUBAR.
You're bright, George, even though a lot of Langley's Old Hands think you're insecure and overly given to hand-wringing when you're in the company of authentic intelligence professionals. Still, you can be charming. And you give great Hearing when you testify on the Hill. You're known to be direct, funny, and wittily profane. Bob Woodward is a lot fonder of you than he is of Don Rumsfeld -- at least that's the idea I got when I read "Bush at War." Then again, maybe you've spent more time talking to Woodward than Rummy has.
But according to the intelligence professionals I talk to, veterans who spent their lives spotting, assessing and recruiting spies, as DCIs go, George, you're no Bill Casey. Not even in the same universe.
The reason they feel that way is a simple, bottom-line truth: On your watch, CIA has suffered some of the most damaging intelligence failures in the history of our nation. That isn't just my opinion, either. It's Senator Shelby's.
You want the evidence? Okay, let's go to the video tape:
On your watch, the Indians tested a nuclear weapon in 1998 but CIA knew nothing about it.
On your watch, CIA mistakenly targeted the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, resulting in its bombing by U.S. planes.
On your watch, the CIA became terminally risk averse, resulting in the loss of dozens, perhaps even scores, of experienced case officers who were warned that recruiting agents who were less than squeaky-clean could result in their being fired. Intelligence professionals understand that you seldom find spies or terrorists at Boy Scout meetings or church cake sales. But then, you're not an intelligence professional, but a former congressional staffer.
On your watch, the experienced case officers who resigned or retired -- a situation I like to characterize as the ships deserting the sinking rat -- were all too often replaced with greenhorns who didn't have adequate language or people skills, or academic analysts, bookish reports officers, or even secretaries who -- just like you -- had never spotted, assessed, developed, recruited, and run an agent, and had no intention of doing so.
Which meant that on your watch, CIA's dependence on liaison intelligence services, which often have their own unilateral agendas, has had to increase. But liaison is a two-edged sword. CIA learned that lesson back in the 1970s, when we depended on Iran's SAVAK to provide us with info about Iranian dissidents, including an old guy in Paris named Ayatollah Khomeini. SAVAK told its CIA liaison Khomeini wasn't going to be a problem. The rest, as they say, is history. Well, history is repeating itself, George. That's why we need CIA reporting, not politically filtered dreck from Riyadh, Rome, Ankara, Cairo, Rabat, or Paris.
On your watch, many of the CIA stations in Africa were shut down, or turned over to annuitants.
On your watch, North Korea started reprocessing its spent nuclear fuel rods -- but CIA reported nothing about Pyongyang's ominous development until after April, 2003, when the North Koreans told the world -- and CIA -- what they were up to.
On your watch, the Counterintelligence Center (CTC) was eviscerated and much of its forward-basing capabilities were closed down, according to a former high-ranking CTC officer.
On your watch, according to former CIA case officer Robert Baer, the CIA had no unilateral assets in Iraq in the mid and late 1990s.
On your watch, according to a soon-to-be-released congressional report, CIA had no permanent DO case officers running agents in al-Qaeda's Afghan training camps in the days before 9/11.
And on your watch, on September 11, 2001, thousands of Americans were murdered in a brutal, well-planned, well-executed act of war against the United States, and yet you told Congress there was no pre-9/11 intelligence failure.
On your watch, the war in Iraq was hampered, according to some military sources, by the lack of trustworthy Iraqi agents working under the control of Arab-speaking CIA case officers.
CIA deserves better, George. CIA deserves a DCI who leads from the front; a surefooted, audacious commander whose fierce loyalty to his troops is unquestioned. CIA needs a results-oriented intelligence professional who will put the Agency back on track and create the kind of vigorous spy agency this nation needs in order to survive and prevail in the 21st century.
Those sorts of men exist, George. Sadly, you are not one of them.
Question of the day: Why the hell haven't we fired Tenet yet?