30 April 2007
Tenet’s Slam Dunk
On the 29 April 2007 CBS 60 Minutes program, George Tenet presented his rationalization of the “Slam dunk” comment he admits he made when asked by President Bush about the case against Saddam Hussein on weapons of mass destruction. He admitted to saying those infamous words, but begged to clarify the context. He insisted that the slam dunk did not refer to the fact that Saddam had the weapons, for CIA estimates are only based on assumptions by analysts whom you trust to know what they’re talking about. It was a slam dunk for President Bush, rather, to make the case to others, presumably at the U.N., that Saddam had the WMD, based on the arguments that the CIA would provide.
Apparently, this is the purpose of the CIA in Mr. Tenet’s view. It isn’t the national security of the U.S. that the CIA is supposed to monitor and protect. Rather, it is in the service of the policy making and executive measures of the presidential administration that the CIA’s intelligence and analysis are to be put.
The subjugation of our government’s best intelligence to the objectives of the Administration would normally not be alarming. The problem is that when the Administration bases its actions on a political agenda rather than on a broadly accepted definition of the country’s interest, the CIA becomes a partisan tool instead of a national resource.
George Tenet was a team player; but the team on which he was playing was in the game only for its own survival and not on behalf of the nation’s good. So when his slam dunk rebounded off the rim, he was expendable. It was not good enough loyally to manipulate the knowledge of the CIA to make as convincing a case as possible for justifying an Administration strategic decision after the fact. During his 60 Minutes interview, Tenet was impassioned in defense of his former employees at the Agency. He apparently desires greater loyalty from them in return than he was awarded by the White House. All he got was a medal.
On the 29 April 2007 CBS 60 Minutes program, George Tenet presented his rationalization of the “Slam dunk” comment he admits he made when asked by President Bush about the case against Saddam Hussein on weapons of mass destruction. He admitted to saying those infamous words, but begged to clarify the context. He insisted that the slam dunk did not refer to the fact that Saddam had the weapons, for CIA estimates are only based on assumptions by analysts whom you trust to know what they’re talking about. It was a slam dunk for President Bush, rather, to make the case to others, presumably at the U.N., that Saddam had the WMD, based on the arguments that the CIA would provide.
Apparently, this is the purpose of the CIA in Mr. Tenet’s view. It isn’t the national security of the U.S. that the CIA is supposed to monitor and protect. Rather, it is in the service of the policy making and executive measures of the presidential administration that the CIA’s intelligence and analysis are to be put.
The subjugation of our government’s best intelligence to the objectives of the Administration would normally not be alarming. The problem is that when the Administration bases its actions on a political agenda rather than on a broadly accepted definition of the country’s interest, the CIA becomes a partisan tool instead of a national resource.
George Tenet was a team player; but the team on which he was playing was in the game only for its own survival and not on behalf of the nation’s good. So when his slam dunk rebounded off the rim, he was expendable. It was not good enough loyally to manipulate the knowledge of the CIA to make as convincing a case as possible for justifying an Administration strategic decision after the fact. During his 60 Minutes interview, Tenet was impassioned in defense of his former employees at the Agency. He apparently desires greater loyalty from them in return than he was awarded by the White House. All he got was a medal.
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