Today I was going to by the new book out by former DCI George Tenet, the longest standing head of the CIA in almost a generation. Today, the consensus of peoples whose opinions I tend to trust on such matters is that Tenet was a total screw-up or at least that he paints an ineffective tissue of lies in his certainly vetted memoirs. Indeed today was an auspicious day in that another intelligence expert sent me an email so very soon I may be doing some off the cuff analysis myself. One needs to assess the wobbly orbits of bright stars in order to find the positions of dark worlds.
As I look back on my own notes, the most detailed I ever got on Tenet was over the 'sixteen words' that became such a big hit in the press and his fudging around that. Tenet was tangential to that and said they shouldn't have been said. Today his book is saying that 'slam dunk' was misinterpreted as well. There doesn't seem to be anything whatsoever that George Tenet has said that sticks in anyone's (ok my) mind that associates him with any credible success. That ain't right and it certainly can't be good. The Anchoress has the best rundown of Tenet fisking.
So now, it seems likely that anybody who wants to use the term 'intelligence failure' is going to have to look more closely at how Tenets apologies and excuses stand up to the wave of criticism which will be smashing him against the rocks for a while.
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