Mr. Tenet's Exit

Mr. Tenet's Exit

Mr. Tenet's resignation took many by surprise. The Washington Post editorial says the following:

Calls for his resignation seemed sure to escalate in the coming weeks, with the release of reports by the Sept. 11 commission and the Senate intelligence committee that are expected to be highly critical.

It's not that a shamed resignation was entirely called for. In the course of seven years at the head of the CIA -- the second-longest tenure in history -- Mr. Tenet did much to improve the agency and the overall capacity of U.S. intelligence. He inherited an underfunded, directionless and demoralized organization; by most accounts, he greatly improved training and recruitment, obtained new resources, and refocused on fighting terrorism. Mr. Tenet recognized the threat posed by Osama bin Laden before Sept. 11, although the CIA, like the rest of the bureaucracy, did not respond with sufficient aggressiveness. Agency operatives played a major role in the successful campaign to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and in the exposure of the rogue nuclear programs of Libya and Pakistan.

Yet Mr. Tenet's agency mishandled Iraq in ways that undoubtedly will shadow his legacy and may undo some of his success. While there is no proof that CIA reports on Saddam Hussein's weapons were falsified to please Bush administration hawks, the available facts suggest that crucial parts of them were, as postwar arms inspector David Kay put it, "almost all wrong." After months of prickly defensiveness, Mr. Tenet barely acknowledged that reality in a single speech last February; like the administration he serves, he has never fully accepted responsibility for what will surely be remembered as one of the most significant intelligence failures in U.S. history. The ongoing damage of that failure is only compounded by the conspicuous absence of accountability. Yes, Mr. Tenet is going, but Mr. Bush has yet to face up to the reasons why his departure was inevitable.

The New York Times editorial was direct in its criticism of Mr. Tenet:

It's true that Mr. Tenet has always demonstrated intense dedication to the nation and his job, but he presided over some of the most astonishing and costly failures of American espionage in recent history.

On Mr. Tenet's watch, the American intelligence community failed to comprehend the domestic threat from Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001. It either bungled or hyped its analysis of Iraq to spin fanciful threats from chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, threats that President Bush used to justify the invasion. The C.I.A. itself apparently did not sign on to the more ludicrous visions offered by Mr. Rumsfeld's team, like the one of grateful Iraqis showering American soldiers with flowers. But it utterly missed the dismal state Iraq was in and the strength of the insurgency that Americans would face after the fall of Baghdad.

The intelligence community's shortcomings did not begin with 9/11 or Iraq. While Bill Clinton was president, Mr. Tenet's team was stunned when India, a close ally, conducted nuclear tests. American intelligence did spot Pakistan's undisguised preparations for testing its own bomb. But now we know that a Pakistani rocket scientist had been peddling nuclear technology all over the world for years, possibly with government sanction, without the C.I.A. noticing.

For the reasons of Mr. Tenet's resignation New York Times says,

Mr. Tenet's reasons for leaving were the subject of much speculation yesterday. The White House offered up the customary "personal reasons" and said Mr. Bush had not forced him out. Mr. Tenet said in a choked voice that he wanted to spare his family further exposure to the pressures of his job. It's easy to sympathize, considering the months of criticism that he and the intelligence agencies are about to endure — from a highly negative Senate Intelligence Committee report that Mr. Tenet received this week, from the 9/11 commission's report and from an update expected this summer from Mr. Tenet's own investigator in Iraq on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

Officially, Mr. Tenet resigned for personal reason, to spend more time with his family. However, The Washington Times published an artile, "For Personal Reasons, or Is He the Fall Guy?" asking the following:

Was Tenet finally being served up as a sacrificial lamb by an administration that loathes to admit a mistake?