Gelb on Tenet resignation
I cruised around the 'net a bit to check out speculation etc about Tenet's resignation. Actually, the most interesting thing I found came from that very well-connected old fox, Les Gelb.
(Gelb even taught Tenet in a seminar when Tenet was a senior at Georgetown U., back in 1981, and they've stayed in pretty close touch since.)
Here's the most interesting thing I saw Gelb saying, in the interview with him on cfr.org:
- Generally, you never know exactly what is going on. You hear some people repeating one rumor and other rumors come out, too. I don't think his leaving helps Bush politically, and I don't think he would resign to help Bush politically.
Btw, I agree with Gelb that Tenet's resignation doesn't help Bush politically.
#1 It adds to the impression of an administration in gathering chaos (prez hiring private legal advice, polygraphing of high officials at the Pentagon over the Chalabi leak, Ashcroft not talking to Ridge, etc etc etc.... )
#2 If Tenet is a "private citizen", he'll be in a much better position to defend himself and name the other names that need to be named since the upcoming, reportedly extremely damaging reports on pre-9-11 failures and other issues start rolling off the presses.
In the past, as Director of Central Intel, Tenet has on more than occasion been made the fall guy for the Prez and the White House, and manfully "shouldered the blame" for all kinds of misdeeds that were not solely his responsibility.
From here on out, he won't have to be the fall guy. (But he'll have to play his cards very carefully.)
But I'm thinking that he's a guy who really does know where a lot of the administration's more damaging internal-process bodies are buried. It would be kind of good to get him on the record regarding a lot of that-- now he's a private citizen and not beholden to the prez.
For example, George, tell us all you know about Ariel Sharon's Likud and its infiltration of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and other foreign policy inner sancta...
Yes, another disgrunttled former employee is unlikely to be good news for Bush, but it's hard to imagine what bombshell he could possibly lob that would be any more damaging than those that have already hit, unless he has information that Bush new about 9.11 and let it happen because it would help his re-election. Even if that were the case, I'm confident that 40 percent of the American people would still support Bush. In'shallah.
Nevertheless, I look forward to seeing what Tenet has to say on 60 minutes.
Did you catch this in Bush's tone of voice?
Did you happen to notice that when Bush told how he'd spoken to Tenant about his "resignation" his tone of voice went like this: I told him - I'm sorry. He's leaving.
Sounded to me, like he told Tenant: I'm sorry. You're leaving. (the latter as a command)
Last march,Slate's Fred Kaplan asked an interesting question: why was George Tenet not responding to Richard Clarke's charges of administrative negligence?
Clarke:"[Tenet] and I regularly commiserated that al Qaeda was not being addressed more seriously by the new administration. Sometimes I would walk into my office and find the Director of Central Intelligence sitting at my desk or the desk of my assistant, Beverly Roundtree, waiting to vent his frustration. We agreed that Tenet would ensure that the president's daily briefings would continue to be replete with threat information on al Qaeda."
It will be interesting to see if,indeed,Tenet does speak his mind.