Word: tenets
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...more than a year, George Bush stood by CIA Director George Tenet, dismissing critics who said the agency failed at its core mission--preventing attacks against the homeland. But loyalty is a two-way street for this White House, and since Bush began making his case for war with Iraq, his aides--particularly the hard-line ones--have pressed Tenet to join the march. For the President's war speech in Cincinnati last week, Bush aides badgered the CIA to declassify more intelligence on Saddam Hussein's ties to Osama bin Laden. As a result, Bush was able to disclose...
...when a recently released CIA report seemed to paint too dire a picture of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee pressured Tenet to declassify testimony by a top aide who rated the likelihood of Saddam's initiating a chemical or biological weapons attack against the U.S. as "low." That testimony appeared to contradict Bush's claim in Cincinnati that Saddam could lob those weapons at the U.S. or its allies "on any given day." Bush sympathizers saw a sellout by the CIA. "That wasn't intelligence, that was pure speculation," groused a former senior...
...which is it? Is the CIA politicizing the intelligence on Iraq to help the hard-liners persuade people that war is in the national interest? Or is Tenet, a former Senate staff member with keen survival instincts, working to keep the moderates happy too? Tenet denies both charges. "It's ludicrous," he told TIME. "I work for a guy who expects our honest judgment, period. There's no cooking of the books...
...politics," says a senior CIA hand. "We're the meat in the sandwich. People hear what they want to hear from our reports." Agency insiders say that if Tenet tried anything heavy-handed to please one side or the other, he would have a rebellion on his hands from CIA analysts. Insists Tenet: "We draw lines in the sand about anybody ever telling us what to do. I wouldn't stand for it, and the President wouldn't stand...
...Tenet fact-checked a footnoted version of Bush's Cincinnati speech before the President delivered it, correcting a few items and satisfying himself that it represented the agency's view. So perhaps it is not surprising that, according to a White House aide, Bush was miffed that testimony Tenet later declassified seemed to contradict part of his speech. Tenet wasted no time rectifying the situation. The next day he issued an unusual clarification that there was "no inconsistency" between the CIA's view and that of the President. --With reporting by James Carney and Michael Duffy/Washington