The man with the secrets
His epic run is over, but questions about George Tenet's tenure at the CIA sure aren't
George Tenet likes his cigars. At his office on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters, the director likes to pull open the sliding doors overlooking the nearby treetops and enjoy a good smoke. For years, his cigar breaks have driven the CIA's security people nuts, but those worries are soon to be over. Last week, Tenet, the longest-serving CIA director in 43 years, finally called it quits, telling President Bush that he was resigning July 11 for "personal reasons."
In retrospect, it's a miracle Tenet survived this long. Seven years is an eternity for a director of the Central Intelligence Agency; his three immediate predecessors each lasted less than two years. And Tenet's time at the helm was hardly smooth. For much of his tenure he seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis, weathering extraordinary failures from the horror of 9/11 to the furor over prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. His departure will hardly calm the storm swirling around Washington's far-flung intelligence community. The weeks ahead, instead, will see a parade of stinging reports, prompting more soul searching and questions about the work product delivered by U.S. spy agencies. What emerges from the clamorous debate may determine the future of America's intelligence community for years to come.
No modern CIA director has survived without controversy. Trying to run an agency charged with stealing secrets is bound to draw unwanted attention in this age of global media and 24-hour news cycles. Despite the criticisms, many give Tenet plaudits for a job well done. In the face of often poisonous partisanship in Washington, Tenet was an anomaly--only the second CIA chief to serve both Republican and Democratic administrations. When he took over in 1997, the CIA was hobbled by tight budgets and strict rules tying the hands of overseas operatives, agency veterans say. In a speech to CIA employees announcing his departure, Tenet pointed to what he called "a massive transformation of our intelligence capabilities." Indeed, the CIA director is widely credited with bringing billions in new funding into the agency, boosting morale, and rebuilding the agency's clandestine service.
Tenet is particularly proud of the CIA's work in the war on terrorism, close aides say, as well as the Middle East peace process and the agency's unraveling of a nuclear black market that stretched from Pakistan to Libya and North Korea. Since 9/11, the CIA has spearheaded a global assault on al Qaeda cells that has taken out two thirds of the terrorist group's leadership.
For many, though, Tenet's record is a troubling one. Some spy veterans liken his tenure to that of the last CIA director to serve for many years--the Reagan administration's William Casey, who similarly boosted funding and morale but then led his troops into the quagmire of the Iran-contra scandal. "Tenet will probably end up like Casey," says Milt Bearden, who for 30 years helped run covert operations for the CIA. "He will be among its most beloved directors, but at the same time among those with the most destructive legacies."
"Slam dunk " Prominent within that legacy is the 9/11 attack, a historic intelligence failure that conjures up comparisons to Pearl Harbor. The litany of missed opportunities has been chronicled by investigators in Congress and on the 9/11 commission. Among them: how the CIA waited months before passing the identities of two hijackers to the FBI; how the agency seldom sent case officers into Afghanistan to collect intelligence; and how its analysts failed to produce a comprehensive analysis of Osama bin Laden's strategy and organization.
Equally bruising to the CIA has been its record on Iraq--its conclusions that Saddam Hussein was running banned programs to produce chemical, biological, and nuclear arms. In the months leading up to the war, the threat those weapons posed to Americans was touted by the Bush administration as the principal reason for an invasion. At the United Nations in February of last year, Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out the case against Saddam, with Tenet seated directly behind him. Powell was seen as presenting the best evidence the world's premier intelligence agency could offer. There were electronic intercepts of Iraqi conversations and satellite imagery of suspected weapons sites, plus revelations about portable bio labs, uranium enrichment, and more. How sure were Tenet's spies? Weeks earlier, at a Saturday morning White House meeting, Tenet assured a skeptical George Bush, according to Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack . The evidence, Tenet declared, made for "a slam-dunk case."
Those words may haunt Tenet for a long time. The CIA was, to put it bluntly, dead wrong. The assurances turned out to rely on an embarrassing array of dubious exiles, forged documents, and wrongheaded assumptions, intelligence officials now admit. Further, they ignored evidence suggesting Saddam had abandoned his banned weapons programs years earlier. The "slam dunk" revelation prompted comedian newscaster Jon Stewart to quip, "What the [bleep] does George Tenet have to do to get fired?"
Other controversies have marred Tenet's watch, among them the failure to detect India's nuclear test in 1998 and, more recently, the role of CIA officers in interrogating prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere. Tenet, too, has faced criticism for failing to reform intelligence gathering. In addition to his job as CIA chief, he is also DCI--director of central intelligence--charged with coordinating the U.S. intelligence community, which remains a disparate array of 15 agencies that, even after 9/11, have trouble working together.
But it is 9/11 and Iraq that have taken the biggest toll on the agency's prestige. So glaring are the failures that they have led some in the Bush White House to distrust intelligence developed by the agency in sensitive areas--North Korea's and Iran's weapons of mass destruction programs, for instance. At a meeting earlier this year, involving senior spies from the United States and Europe, some allies openly rejected the CIA's analysis, says one source. "It will be a daunting task for the CIA ever to regain its status as the gold standard among the world's intelligence agencies," says Bearden, the CIA veteran.
Bum's rush. Through it all, Tenet has retained Bush's strong support; the president praised his CIA chief last week for "a superb job on behalf of the American people." But there was tension with senior White House aides, exacerbated most recently by a speech Tenet gave in February at Georgetown University. The CIA never characterized the threat from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, Tenet said, as imminent.
Had Tenet stayed, more rough sailing was clearly ahead. In coming weeks, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will release a report that largely blames the CIA for miscalculations on Iraq. A second Iraq report, by the House intelligence committee, is also in the works. Sources who have seen drafts of the reports describe them variously as "brutal," "harsh," and "nasty." The Senate report deconstructs the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which helped make the case for war, U.S. News has learned, and takes the CIA to task for relying on single, often dubious, sources for key intelligence. The inquiry suggests that the CIA's clandestine service remains riddled with problems and that the agency had fewer than five sources in Iraq before the war. "For 10 or 12 years [Iraq] was the No. 1 intelligence target," says a source close to the investigation. "And they got it wrong on the fundamental questions." The CIA has had the report for the last month, vetting passages for classified material.
Another big hit is likely to come on July 26, when the 9/11 commission releases its final report. Commission members are meeting this week behind closed doors, discussing how to restructure the intelligence community. "I'm here to tell you ... there is a train coming down the track," Commissioner John Lehman told Tenet at an April hearing. "There are going to be very real changes made."
Washington being Washington, Tenet's resignation was immediately dissected for its political implications. "This is one less bit of explaining they have to do in an election year," said Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee. Administration officials can now claim that someone is finally paying the price for intelligence failures. "Up to now," said Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who formerly chaired the intelligence committee, "there has been no accountability."
White House and CIA officials insist that Tenet was not given the bum's rush. "The reports had no bearing on his decision whatsoever," says CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield. Tenet, in fact, has been looking for a way out for over a year and decided on his departure some two months ago, aides say. He tried resigning last summer, but the president insisted he stay. "If he waited longer, it would be too close to the election," says a close associate. "It could be seen as quitting in disgust, or the president pushing him over."
Winds of change. Tenet's departure, coupled with the upcoming reports, may give intelligence reform a real tail wind. (Tenet's chief spy, Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt, also let it be known last week he is resigning.) Several proposals call for separating the CIA director's position from that of the director of central intelligence, overseeing all U.S. spy agencies, and giving the DCI greater power to coordinate America's $40 billion intelligence community. But reforming U.S. intelligence has never been easy. Commissions and studies have called for change ever since America's modern intelligence community was created in the 1947 National Security Act. One key issue: Up to 90 percent of the intelligence budget is controlled by the military.
Who will replace Tenet? A leading candidate is said to be Rep. Porter Goss, a former CIA officer and chairman of the House intelligence committee. Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, has also been mentioned, but he's unlikely to take the job. Other candidates: National Security Council deputy Stephen Hadley and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. A successor is unlikely to be named before the November election; Tenet's deputy, John McLaughlin, a veteran of the agency's analytical side, has been named acting director.
For his part, George Tenet looks forward to spending time with his family and building a new life. He also hopes to make some money, by giving speeches and building a consulting firm. Aides are encouraging him to write a book. The money would come in handy. Some months down the road--no one will say just how many--Tenet's government protection will expire, and he'll have to hire his own bodyguards--a sign of the times for CIA bosses in the terrorism age.
With Edward T. Pound, Linda Robinson, Samantha Levine, Terence Samuel, Kenneth T. Walsh and Chitra Ragavan
This story appears in the June 14, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.