Did George Tenet drop the ball?

[Kulaf]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7411558/

"According to the report, CIA officials tried to tell the agency’s top officials that Curveball was a suspected fabricator and may have been mentally unstable. The new information includes an alleged warning in a late-night phone call to the agency’s former director, George Tenet."

[Ddrak]

Tenet doesn't work there any more so everything is his fault.

I actually believe the whole thing was a clusterfuck.

1. The CIA didn't have enough assets in Iraq (Clinton admin fault).
2. The CIA were relying too heavily on untrustworthy assets (general CIA problem, but really a result of #1)
3. The Administration didn't pay enough attention, or blatantly ignored the catch-phrases that indicate unreliable intelligence and proceeded to present it as fact.
4. No one had enough balls to stand up and say "bullshit".

Dd

[Kulaf]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/ ... ward.book/

Is "Slam dunk case" one of those catch-phrases the CIA director uses when he is not sure?

[Partha]

Yes, he did drop the ball. Of course, it shouldn't absolve the administration for misrepresenting it, either, but it will. Of course, it always helps when you make inquiries into the administration's use of the intelligence off limits to the committee report.

[Ddrak]

Kula,

Read the whole book before you comment on sensationalist excerpts from the media. That specific comment is about Saddam possessing nerve agents, and Bush was skeptical both before and after the assuranced by Tenet. None of that skepticism came public though. If you bothered reading the book you'd see countless times the administration was being run around by the CIA and yet never ultimately questioned the data enough to pull back and ask whether it was all really probable.

Dd

[Kulaf]

As the war planning progressed, on December 21, 2002, Tenet and his top deputy, John McLaughlin, went to the White House to brief Bush and Cheney on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Woodward reports.

The president, unimpressed by the presentation of satellite photographs and intercepts, pressed Tenet and McLaughlin, saying their information would not "convince Joe Public" and asking Tenet, "This is the best we've got?" Woodward reports.

According to Woodward, Tenet reassured the president that "it's a slam dunk case" that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

In his CBS interview, Woodward said he "asked the president about this, and he said it was very important to have the CIA director, 'slam-dunk' is as I interpreted it, a sure thing, guaranteed."

Seems pretty cut and dry to me.

[Ddrak]

Kula,

Get away from the article and read the whole book. You're cherrypicking, which is futile.

Here's a good start for you, directly from the book:

The vice president also issued his own personal National Intelligence Estimate of Saddam: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction [and] there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.” Ten days earlier the president himself had said only that Saddam “desires” these weapons. Neither Bush nor the CIA had made any assertion comparable to Cheney’s.

Want me to quote more, or you going to admit you've not actually read the book and are just quoting a press sensationalization, because that quote on its own is enough to justify me making point #3.

Let me put it another way: Are you seriously claiming that the administration didn't present possibilities reported through many different NIE's and other documents as fact when addressing their plans to go to war in public?

Dd

[Kulaf]

I've never said I did read it. Now if you can quote me any section of that book where Tenet states reservations about Iraq posessing WMD's then I am interested.

[Ddrak]

Tenet himself never had reservations, in fact he was up there with Rumsfeld and Cheney in pushing the case that Iraq did have bubbling baths all over the place. In essence, I fault all three of those members of the administration for not paying enough attention to what was fact and what wasn't.

In the book, Bush actually comes across as pretty level headed - playing devils advocate a lot and only loses out to Powell in character from his inability to do serious self-analysis.

Dd

[Klast Brell]

Does the book mention the "Office Of Special Plans"?