George Tenet's new book about the CIA and the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, At the Center of the Storm, is out. According to reviews and reports, Tenet paints the picture everyone expected him to: he was told to politicize intelligence, Dick Cheney's office ignored his counsel, etc... This is the latest salvo in a public battle that has been going on for some time now, and will continue to go on for who knows how long, on who is to "blame" for what went wrong in Iraq.
But according to the Weekly Standard, Tenet is taking serious liberties with the truth:
According to Michiko Kakutani's review in Saturday's Times, On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming out of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility."
Here's the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday." And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.
Say what you will about the motives of Cheney's office and the Richard Perle gang, but at least they were honest: they wanted a war to liberate Iraq. The same can't be said of the CIA. Despite protestations to the contrary, they were squarely against any military action against Saddam Hussein from Day One and all of their work was tainted because it was assembled with the goal of hurting the case for invastion in mind. Tenet's likely argument that only one side of this battle pushed an agenda (the pro-war people) and that he was just doing his job is patently false.
I won't say anything more definitive about this book until I have read it, but so far, not so good.
