Tenet Assails White House
Over War-Making Process ...
By JOSEPH SCHUMAN
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
Former CIA chief George Tenet writes in a book due out Monday that there was no serious deliberation within the Bush administration about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and his inside account seems sure to further roil the Iraq disputes raging now.
"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," he writes, adding that he also knew of no "significant discussion" about containing Mr. Hussein without an invasion, according to the New York Times, which got a hold of a copy. The Times notes the book, "At the Center of the Storm," is the first about 9/11 and the war in Iraq from a member of President Bush's inner circle, and says it is by turns "accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical." Mr. Tenet is especially disparaging of Dick Cheney, writing that he had to plead with Mr. Bush to kill a pre-invasion speech by the vice president that sought to link Iraq and al Qaeda "way beyond what the intelligence shows."
Mr. Tenet also plans to use a series of television appearances aimed at promoting the book to accuse the White House of making him a scapegoat and of ignoring CIA warnings about Iraq's descent into chaos, the Los Angeles Times adds. In an interview taped for CBS's "60 Minutes," Mr. Tenet says Mr. Bush had made up his mind to invade Iraq long before Mr. Tenet's oft-quoted Oval Office remark about a "slam-dunk" case on the weapons of mass destruction. And he accuses Mr. Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of citing the "slam-dunk" comment to blame him and the CIA for the decision to go to war. "I'll never believe that what happened that day informed the president's view or belief of the legitimacy or the timing of this war. Never," Mr. Tenet says. Former CIA officials who have read parts or all of the book tell the L.A. Times it "offers a detailed account of the CIA's role -- as well as the agency's increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the White House -- through a tumultuous period including the Sept. 11 attacks and the aftermath of the Iraq invasion."
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