Word: tenet
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...Once Tenet steps down, his acting successor will be Deputy Director of Intelligence John McLaughlin, a career analyst. It is a cliche to call McLaughlin unassuming and modest; it is more telling to describe him as deeply analytical and alert to the ambiguities of his trade. An amateur magician, he is especially adept at sleight of hand, a skill that helped win him the nickname "Merlin...
McLaughlin may need his magic powers, for one of his first challenges will be to defend the agency against attempts by the Pentagon, which already controls 90% of the roughly $40 billion the U.S. spends on intelligence annually, to take over more responsibility for gathering and analyzing intelligence. But Tenet's departure may set the stage for much larger changes. The 9/11 commission report, due out on July 26, is expected to call for the creation of a new Cabinet-level chief who would consolidate control over all the nation's disparate intelligence operations--an idea supported by Bush...
When Powell was asked by Bush to make the case for war at the U.N., he insisted that Tenet sit directly behind him there so that the CIA's credibility was visibly on the line. After the first phase of the war ended and it became clear that weapons inspectors might come up empty handed, Powell blamed Tenet personally for providing him with exaggerated assessments. By that time, Powell had also witnessed the debacle surrounding the claims that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger, an assertion that made it into Bush's State of the Union address...
...news of Tenet's resignation last week, Rice showed no sign of old rancor. "It's really a great loss," she said Thursday aboard Air Force One. "I'm personally very sad because this has been a great team and it's worked through a lot of really hard issues." The hardest issue may be the one still to come--how to form an intelligence system that can extract high-quality information and analyze it without bowing to anyone's preconceptions. "If any future President asks my advice," Bush told TIME three years ago, "my advice is get to know...
...that George Tenet leaves behind next month is a shadow of its imaginary self, a butt of jokes rather than the envy of the world. It is an agency that has become self-protective and bureaucratic; it is too reliant on gadgets rather than spies to steal secrets. Sometimes the CIA has simply been too blind to see what is hiding in plain sight. Tenet restored the agency's morale, but he leaves behind a string of spectacular intelligence failures...