Word: tenet
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...TENET: The way this is portrayed is that this was the decision meeting. That's just ridiculous. I walk out of the room that day [and] I never thought anything of that. I will never believe until the day I die that that comment had anything to do with the timing or the legitimacy of going to war. It was about we were trying to construct a public case. Yes, we had a responsibility to make sure that the - we just produced an estimate. We testified. We talked to hundreds of members of Congress. We said [we had] high confidence...
...TENET: Well, you know, so this is a really painful moment for me. This is a matter of honor and trust, and trust was broken. Trust in the sense of, what are you doing here? So here are the guys [at the CIA] that give [the White House], you know, four days after 9/11, we give [them] the war plan on Afghanistan. Here are the guys that do A. Q Khan. Here are the guys that do Libya. Here are the guys who [the White House] sends to see the [Saudi] Crown Prince anytime there's a problem...
...TENET: He's a very disciplined guy and I understood. I understood where we were and there it is. But here's the teaching point, if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions. So here's what I'll say: we stand up and take responsibility when we're wrong. They need to take responsibility for the way they, for how they integrate their thinking with us and don't simply say, "Well...
...Center of the Storm is the first book written by a member of the President's inner circle after Sept. 11, and it was written in part because Tenet believes the "slam dunk" remark has became an unfair epitaph for his CIA tenure. In its 549 pages, Tenet defends his actions and is highly critical of the decision-making process that led to the Iraq war. "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," Tenet writes. He adds that there was also no "significant discussion" about dealing with...
...Tenet chronicles the tension between himself and Vice President Cheney, as well as his arguments with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but has mostly kind words for President Bush. Of Bush's leadership after Sept. 11 he writes, "He was absolutely in charge, determined, and directed." Still, Tenet is skeptical about the outcome of the war in Iraq, particularly about the so-called surge strategy. "It may have worked more than three years ago," he writes. "My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more...