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CIA Director Tenet Resigns By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — CIA Director George Tenet submitted his resignation today for “personal reasons,” U.S. President George W. Bush announced (see GSN, June 1). “I send my blessings to George and his family. I look forward to working with him until the time he leaves the agency, and I wish him all the very best,” he said. Bush also praised Tenet for his seven-year tenure as head of the CIA. “George Tenet is the … kind of public … servant you like to work with. He’s strong. He’s resolute. He’s served his nation as the director for seven years. He has been a strong and able leader at the agency. He’s been a … strong leader in the war on terror, and I will miss him,” Bush said. Tenet himself announced his resignation to CIA staff this morning. “I did not make this decision quickly or easily. But I know in my heart that the time is right to move on to the next phase of our lives,” he said. During his tenure, Tenet said, the CIA made improvements in a number of areas, including “rebuilding” the clandestine service, expanding the number of analysts and developing new intelligence gathering technologies and training facilities. “This I say with exceptional pride: The Central Intelligence Agency and the American intelligence community are stronger now than they were when I became DCI [director of central intelligence] seven years ago, and they will be stronger tomorrow than they are today,” he said. Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said today that Tenet’s resignation would aid efforts to reform the greater U.S. intelligence community. “As in so many other policy areas, the Bush administration has denied its intelligence mistakes and refused to take responsibility for them. It’s about time that there is some accountability for these failures,” Holt said in a press statement. According to intelligence experts, a number of recent intelligence-related controversies may have played a role in Tenet’s decision to resign. Chief among them is the continuing controversy surrounding U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s alleged prewar efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Time reported this week that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which has been conducting one of several inquiries into the issue of prewar intelligence, is set to soon release a report that is highly critical of both the CIA and Tenet. Tenet’s resignation might be “a way of falling on his sword for the administration … and to take away a target for the committee’s criticism, ” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. In addition, the revelation made in a recent book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that Tenet claimed the intelligence on Iraq’s prewar WMD efforts was a “slam dunk” might have embarrassed him, Aftergood said. “It made him look foolish,” he added. Another factor, according to experts, might be the recent reports that Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, may have passed on U.S. intelligence information to Iran, including that the United States was able to break Iranian intelligence codes. According to reports today, the FBI has begun to administer polygraph tests to civilian Defense Department employees as part of its investigation into the leak. Even though a Pentagon employee is suspected of passing the information to Chalabi, the CIA is ultimately responsible for protecting intelligence sources and methods, Aftergood said. The severity of the leak may have damaged Tenet’s standing within the Bush administration, he said. Chalabi and his former opposition group have also come under heavy fire for providing inaccurate, and possibly intentionally misleading, information on Iraq’s WMD efforts (see GSN, May 24). John Pike, executive director of the GlobalSecurity.org think tank, said today, though, that the CIA had long been suspicious of Chalabi. He said that a possible factor in Tenet’s resignation might have been the debate over intelligence reform, and a proposal to create a national director of intelligence. If such a position were created, and Tenet had chosen to remain as head of the CIA, it would have appeared as if he had been passed over for the higher spot, Pike said. If Tenet had sought appointment as national director of intelligence under such a scenario, he would probably have faced grueling confirmation hearings in the Senate, Pike added (see GSN, April 22). Another intelligence-related controversy that has recently rearisen in the news is the Justice Department’s investigation into the public leak last year of the name and CIA status of the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who publicly criticized some of the WMD-related evidence the Bush administration offered to justify the invasion of Iraq. Reports state that Bush has recently consulted with a lawyer about representing him if the president is questioned as part of a grand jury investigation into the leak (see GSN, Feb. 26). “It’s a target-rich environment,” Pike said of the various controversies surrounding the CIA and Tenet. Pike also said that the timing of Tenet’s resignation might be linked to the 2004 presidential election in November. “The window for leaving the administration is rapidly closing,” he said. However, Tenet’s stated reason for leaving the administration — “personal reasons” — cannot be wholly discounted, according to Pike. “Maybe his wife got tired of all this foolishness and wanted to get rich,” Pike said. In his remarks this morning, Tenet also denied that there were hidden motives behind his decision to step down. “While Washington and the media will put many different faces on the decision, it was a personal decision and had only one basis in fact — the well being of my wonderful family. Nothing more and nothing less,” he said.
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