Value Judgment: Tenet Out

Value Judgment is a daily weblog written by two independent voters on the eastern seaboard of the United States. VJ will focus on the 2004 U.S. Presidential campaigns, including strategy, tactics, and substance. The authors supported Howard Dean in the Democratic primary. Accordingly, his activities will be a prominent topic on this site.

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June 3, 2004

Tenet Out

The New York Times > President Bush Cites 'Personal Reasons' in Announcement

President Bush said Thursday that CIA director George Tenet has resigned "for personal reasons" and that his deputy will temporarily lead America's premier spy agency until a successor is found.

"He's been a strong and able leader at the agency. and I will miss him," said Bush as he was getting ready to board Marine One for a trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., and on to Europe. [I, me, I, I... - V]

"I send my blessings to George and his family and look forward to working with him until he leaves the agency," Bush said.

Tenet had been under fire for months in connection with intelligence failures related to the U.S.-led war against Iraq...

...Conventional wisdom had been that Tenet, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, did not plan to stay on next year, no matter who won the White House. Tenet has been on the job since July 1997, an unusually lengthy tenure in a particularly taxing era for the intelligence community that he heads.

Personal reasons, my ass.

What I don't get is, what's different about today? What new thing could have led him to leave that wouldn't have brought about his resignation at any time in the past 18 months?

There's surely a lot going on that we don't see. Hopefully someone will leak the juicy bits.

Posted by V at June 3, 2004 11:06 AM

Comments

Valerie Plume?

Posted by: Kevin at June 3, 2004 11:43 AM

No, he was on the right side of the Plame situation. ABC adds this detail to the resignation:

'DEVESTATING' SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE REPORT: Linda Douglass reports that according to two senior sources familiar with the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-war intelligence failures yet to be released, findings are "devastating" for Tenet. Democratic sources confirm Tenet was losing support among Democrats because of the conclusions reached by this report. One Republican source predicted Wednesday Tenet might resign before it is released. The report is currently being declassified by the CIA and is expected to be made public on June 17.

Posted by: V at June 3, 2004 11:57 AM

I just don't know what to think anymore.

Posted by: J at June 3, 2004 12:33 PM

Well, Chalabi says that Tenet provided "erroneous information about weapons of mass destruction to President Bush, which caused the government much embarrassment at the United Nations and his own country.'' (quote from the Times, borrowed from Talking Points Memo).

Don't we believe everything that Chalabi says?

Posted by: Dori at June 3, 2004 05:16 PM

Oh. My. God.

Fall guy, then, I guess.

Posted by: J at June 3, 2004 05:30 PM

Hmm....if it's the Senate Armed Services Cmte report...then Tenet is probably falling on his sword.

But I'm also wondering if Tenet will be called to testify on the Valerie Plame issue...especially given that Capitol Hill Blue is reporting that Bush knew about the leak and did nothing...see http://preemptivekarma.com/2004/06/bush-hires-mouthpiece.html

Posted by: carla at June 3, 2004 05:34 PM

No, it's the Intelligence Committee according to V's comment.

I'm not plugged in enough to know what any of this means though.

And I find the coincidence of Tenet's resignation and Bush lawyering up interesting. But maybe it's unrelated.

Who knows? And it's not like we can learn anything useful from the pathetic excuse for journalists we have in this country.

By the way, Digby's got a great post about Raines. At the end he comes up with a new catch-phrase -- no longer the SCLM, we now have the SBE -- Shallow, Bitchy, Elitists.

Posted by: J at June 3, 2004 05:57 PM

Apologies, J. I should have said Senate Intelligence Committee, not Armed Services.

That said after doing some reading over the last two days...this whole thing gets murkier for me....

As I posted over at preemptivekarma why would Tenet resign over prewar intelligence...when the prewar intelligence that the Bushies relied upon came heavily from the Pentagon via Chalabi? Tenet and the CIA didn't have much to do with Chalabi...they didn't trust him (see the post at preemptivekarma for the hows and whys...too much for here).

The reasons being touted for Tenet leaving can't be right. It doesn't make sense.

Posted by: carla at June 4, 2004 11:08 PM