Tenet Gets Heat From CIA Report

The CIA report by IG Helgerson tries to dodge the major issue in the run-up to 911.

First, the reason Israeli officials called Tenet "grease ball" was because he threatened to resign if Clinton released Jonathon Pollard at Netanyahu' behest at Wye.

Tenet was a family friend and gave me his CV back in the mid-90s while he was Senate Intell Cte Chief. He wanted to work for Amoco in Chicago and get out of DC because it was full of a**holes, in his trenchant phrase. Instead, shortly afterward he was vaulted into the NSC job, then DDCI, then DCI.

Tenet detested Sandy Berger, calling him a "trade lawyer" and a shill for the Israelis, among other choice observations. Sandy is hiding the Clinton smoking gun on BJ's feckless efforts to get AQ. Tenet is also responsible, as is CTC under its various chiefs, including Cannistraro, who is now Larry Johnson's pal signing letters of condemnation of Tenet.

Tenet was right. DC is full of a**holes.

Kate O'Beirne at The Corner has the real scoop.

"recounting of the CIA's inexcusable failure to report to the FBI that two known al Qaeda associates (who were 9/11 hijackers) had traveled to the U.S. comes awfully close. The summary concludes: "Informing the FBI and good operational followthrough by CIA and FBI might have resulted in surveillance of [the "UBL associates"]. Surveillance, in turn, would have had the potential to yield information on flight training, financing, and links to others who were complicit in the 9/11 attacks." The review team recommends assessing the performance of two chiefs of the counterterrorism unit with respect to their management of the watchlist program and of three managers for failure to ensure prompt action on the known al Qaeda members in the U.S. "

No amount of CIA bobbing and weaving and juking will avoid its inexcusable oversight/turf-war crime in not sharing the two AQ operatives' arrival in San Diego in the late '90s. Read Lawrence Wright for how Ali Soufan almost caught AQ despite the CIA attempt to cover AQ's operations in the USA---unintentionally, of course, but as effectively as if the CIA were an arm of Islamic terrorism.