George Tenet was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Presidents Clinton and Bush. He eventually resigned because of the controversy over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. His book At The Center of the Storm is very interesting because it shows that he was very sensitive about his time at the Agency with several chapters responding to criticisms of his tenure.
Tenet covers several major issues. Those include the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks under President Clinton, the threat of Al Qaeda and 9/11, and the Iraq war.
When it comes to the invasion of Iraq Tenet has some underlying issues. He starts off with explaining how 9/11 changed everything for the Bush administration. He notes that there were some officials who considered Iraq “unfinished business.” They argued that since the U.S. failed to take care of Al Qaeda before 9/11 than the U.S. had to move on Iraq before it could do something unexpected. While many have tried to pin this feeling upon the neoconservatives that completely misses the fact that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and most importantly President Bush were not part of that group and were the most important advocates of getting rid of Saddam. They all had ideas about Iraq before the terrorist attack and afterwards quickly moved to making it their top priority.
Tenet noted there was never any discussions about whether the U.S. should invade Iraq or not. There was nothing about enhancing containment or the costs and benefits of regime change. Everything was on how to carry out the invasion and little else. Tenet mentions that the vice president’s office and the Pentagon also had their own plans for postwar Iraq of imposing Ahmed Chalabi as the country’s new leader which was not agreed upon by the rest of the administration. The result was a disastrous occupation because there was no real plan and the divisions were never resolved.
Many chapters focus upon specific controversies that occurred during Tenet’s time in office. On Iraq’s WMD for instance, he admits to major failures. He regrets that misleading information was presented to the public. Many judgements made by the CIA were presented as fact in speeches by officials. He doesn’t mention that he stood by the Agency’s claims when they were being disproven by events on the ground after the invasion. This was one of the biggest failures in recent U.S. history and he was initially unwilling to concede that fact.
He goes over the causes of these mistakes. During the 1990s Iraq tried to conceal its weapons programs from the United Nations. That convinced many, not just the United States that Iraq still head WMD otherwise why was Baghdad lying about it? Tenet said that the U.S. should’ve asked more probing questions about its assumptions about Iraq but at the same time Saddam was at fault because he made it seem like he had WMD. Finally he makes a point saying that there were some in the administration such as Cheney who wanted to create their own set of facts about Iraq to advocate for war which he believed was unethical. He repeatedly said that officials can have their own opinions but they can’t make up their own data.
A perfect example of that was the Pentagon and vice president’s office trying to argue that Iraq and Al Qaeda had an active and long term relationship. The CIA disputed this over and over. The Deputy Defense Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith was unhappy and created his own office to find connections between the two using raw intelligence that missed the bigger picture. Members of the White House would continue on with this even after the invasion found there was no such ties.
There are other times where Tenet is largely on the defensive. There’s a chapter on President Bush’s State of the Union address where he mentioned the false story that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, specifically the country of Niger. This was an important issue for the former director because the White House tried to blame the CIA when it had told the administration twice not to use the story. Tenet goes through all the twists and turns of the incident to try to prove his side. This became part of a much larger controversy within the administration with the White House trying to place the entire WMD controversy upon the Agency something Tenet obviously did not appreciate.
Finally, Tenet gives some insights into the early occupation of Iraq. He was not a fan of Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority. Tenet repeatedly calls Bremer out for his decisions to ban the Baath Party and dismiss the Iraqi military as huge blunders. The CIA repeatedly tried to warn him and the Bush administration overall about the problems this was going to cause with Iraqis which was ignored. That was captured in a November 2003 meeting of the national security staff where the Agency attempted to explain the growing insurgency. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld interrupted arguing over whether the word insurgency should be used or not and the discussion ended with President Bush ordering officials to not even mention the word publicly. Armed resistance was growing and the president didn’t want it to be discussed.
At The Center of the Storm is an “inside the beltway” book about not only the CIA but the political battles in Washington D.C. Was the Agency prepared for Al Qaeda? Was the invasion of Iraq well planned? Was the case for Iraq having WMD based upon intelligence or politics? These and more are all covered by Tenet because he was in the middle of all of them and wanted to show his side against his critics within the media and the Bush administration. He brings up some interesting points and even has some new information about Iraq that is not covered in other books. For a deeper background into the Iraq invasion Tenet’s release is a worthwhile read.
Link to all of Musings On Iraq’s book reviews listed by topic
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