AT THE CENTER OF THE STORM: Tenet's Book Part III

By Sara

And now a line of suggestion that runs through Tenet's book, without a clear subject and predicate. 

If you have the book -- I refer you to Chapter 18, "No Authority, Direction or Control" and in particular to p. 356.  This is really fairly minor stuff here, but what Tenet is describing is the publication last fall of translated supposed Intelligence documents from Iraqi files, which I believe were put on the web at the behest of Horskstra, the then Republican Chair of the House Intelligence Committee -- and which Tenet here identifies as, all forgeries, as ascertained months earlier by both Secret Service and CIA.  As Tenet describes it, Baghdad, when initially occupied,  was seeded with piles of "intelligence documents" that were intended to be found and discovered, and were neatly stacked for convience, but which were mostly forged.  He makes the point that into 2006, the same forgeries show up, even though CIA and Secret Service have done forensic work on them, (Ink and paper tests and all that) and they are simply not authentic.   Tenet's point is that the folk who forge documents are just as alive and well and working in 2006 as they were in 2000 or 2001, when they were alive and well in Italy.  Moreover the arrangements are, and have been, that the forged material gets to the inner circle without first being vetted for signs of misbegottenness.  (Tenet devotes 3 times the space to Ledeen as to Perle). (I bet little dickie perle feels slighted.)

Progressive and Liberal readers of something like Tenet's 500 page book need to learn how to read it, sort it, test it, figure what is likely near correct, and what is disinformation.  Let's just face it -- Our Government does not employ these guys to tell us the unvarnished truth.  Tenet's flaw was that He got sucked into Bush's circle sufficently that he began to accomodate, and pretend that was his role.  "Intelligence Guy" is not a witness for truth for public consumption.  In fact, any rational reader knows that the text of a former Intelligence Officer, unless published outside the realm, has been totally vetted by the agency -- and they are not going to give you much beyond that to chew on.  But what they allow is what interests. 

Thus one item that intrigues me is the mentions of times when GWB got his Intelligence Briefing Christmas Eve, 2002, in the presence of his father, GHWBush.  Apparently it is more frequent than otherwise described.  Is the "great father in the sky" disinformation, and 'daddy and son' more the case?  Tenet's book is the first time I have seen documented suggestions that this might be the case.   I think this very worthy of being explored. 

As to the matter of al-Qaeda pre 9/11, Tenet has nothing very useful to say that has not already been said by Richard Clarke, Steve Simon, Daniel Benjamin and a few others.  If one has not previously read Age of Sacred Terror and Against All Enemies, I would recommend starting with those books before reviewing what Tenet more or less remembers about those times and discussions. 

For Tenet avoids critical questions, such as why the US CIA and the Political realm sided with the Sunni ultra Fundamentalists beginning in the late Carter period, (after the Shia Revolution in Iran in 1979), and right on through the Reagan-Bush 12 years in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and yea, at the behest of the Saudi's.  My sense is that the Clinton folk never fully comprehended the religious ideological dimension of this, but in Bush II it wan't really on the radar.  Tenet tells us that some potentially promising investigations were turned off in the early Bush II months, but not much more.   He does not give us a full view of whether if ever Bush came to ask any questions about the Saudi establishment and their religious ideology.   He suggests that it was put on the table.  (I've actually come to consider it possible that the reason Paul O'Neill was let go as Sec of the Treasury may be because he started pushing that question.)  Tenet never mentions Paul O'Neill. He really doesn't do much with tracking funding of al-Qaeda, even though he makes the point that up till about 1997, they viewed bin Laden essentially as a financier of terrorism.  But In some ways Tenet may be right.  If 9/11 only cost about half a million dollars totally, what makes you think tracking big dollars is going to get you to truth?

Wondering about the "Slam Dunk" comment -- well read his chapter.  I agree with him, it was not that comment that sent us off to war.  But what was done to Tenet by Cheney and Woodward was essentially a re-play of the Libby-Judy deal.  (these guys are not original). 

And yea, more to come...

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Jon]

Hi Sara,

Thanks for the terrific book review and analysis. You've created a good backdrop for those who have yet to read the book.

[Neil]

Sara, Thank you for your take on Tenet and his tome. David Corn blogged a summary of the things he found interesting in the book too, which you can read here.

[John Lopresti]

Sara, I wondered if you had located Judy Miller's review of Tenet's book posted at the NY Sun two days ago; there.

[Sara]

Yes, I read it sometime yesterday, Saturday. I think Judith opens with a very good question -- but then she stomps on it. Yes, why didn't CIA and the rest of the Intelligence Community properly read al-Qaeda's intents in 2001? and why did they get WMD all wrong? Just as good a question as asking in 1990 why CIA did not predict the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989?

Maybe the answer is that they are not organized to deal with those kinds of questions. That there are too many internal institutional forces at play that mitigate against honest answers. Could it be that a command system, more or less military in structure, is antithetical to sharp analysis?

As an analogy, I think a quick trip through the scholarly/academic world will help. When you look for who produces the breakthrough publications, the new developments in Science -- what you find it is at the level of advanced Grad Students and Post-Doc's. Roughly ages 25 to about 40. After that production and new breakthrough research diminishes by age, and the degree to which one is digested into the system, and the requirements of system maintence.

I think the same thing is true of intelligence work, particularly on the analysis side of the house. At FBI there are nine steps in the hierarchy between investigative agent and Director, and mini steps in between, and anyone who as ever played telephone knows that the reality of the observation gets distorted after only a few steps. CIA has much the same problem, with the added matter that upper level CIA types also have conditional military ranks, and the structure is much more Command down than most understand. It is simply the wrong kind of culture from which one could expect creative original research on pressing questions. According to Tenet, the problem with WMD research on Iraq was that they accepted all the assumptions made since 1998 when the inspectors left, and they tried to build on that. Tenet does not mention that pre-invasion, Zinni told congress and wrote in OP/ED that he believed Iraq was pretty well cleaned out after the inspections, and after Central Command had bombed everything they had been denied access to in December 1998. Why not? Two reasons. First, the 1998 bombing had been characterized by the Republicans in Congress as Wagging the Dog -- it was Clinton trying to change the subject from Lewinsky. Second, Zinni's estimate came from outside the 2003 command system. It was against the grain. If you want a future in a command system, that is not a choice you make. Go with the flow.

Take something like Tenet's description of why the 16 words in the SOTU were not red flags to CIA types who reviewed them. Well, they were not directed to review for meaning or content, only to be certain no sources or methods were improperly referenced. It is only a blind hierarchial system that can put such blinders on supposed experts and scholars. Judith was as much a part of that as any high level appointee -- the voice of the New York Times, afterall, The Paper of Record. She asks the right question, but then she stomps on it because she is profoundly threatened by everything Marx or Weber or Simmel or any of the rest of them had to say about why bureaucracy does not produce real insight, but it does carefully regulate power.