Tenet “Shocked! Shocked!“

to find dishonorable behavior going on in the Bush White House!

Dubya and Tenet, pictured here in happier days.

Now, not so much.

Tenet Says He Was Made a Scapegoat Over Iraq War
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 27, 2007; A15

Former CIA director George J. Tenet bitterly complains in a forthcoming television interview that White House officials set him up as a scapegoat when they revealed that he had assured President Bush the intelligence on Iraq's suspected weapons arsenal was a "slam dunk."

Tenet, who was one of the longest-serving CIA directors in U.S. history, resigned abruptly in June 2004 after administration infighting over the flawed intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom six months later. Tenet then remained publicly silent about his role in the presentation of prewar intelligence that turned out to be wrong. But in a memoir scheduled for release on Monday, Tenet will offer his version of events and of conversations preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Tenet received a reported $4 million advance for the book, "At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA," which is being published by HarperCollins. Yesterday, CBS News's "60 Minutes" released excerpts of its Tenet interview, which will air Sunday night.

In the interview, Tenet acknowledged that he used the phrase "slam dunk" during a conversation with Bush and other key advisers in December 2002. But Tenet said the phrase was an offhand remark used to describe the ease with which a public case for war could be made. "We can put a better case together for a public case," Tenet told "60 Minutes." "That's what I meant."

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward first wrote about the conversation between Tenet and Bush in his 2004 book "Plan of Attack," chronicling the run-up to the invasion. Bush told Woodward then that Tenet's "slam dunk" assurance had been "very important" as he weighed decisions about the invasion.

In the television interview, Tenet takes special exception with Bush's comments, telling "60 Minutes" that he will "never believe that what happened that day informed the president's view or belief of the legitimacy or the timing of this war. Never!" White House planning for the invasion had been far along by then, Tenet said, with military and logistical plans near completion.

Tenet said that the description offered first to Woodward and then repeated by senior administration officials, including Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was "the most despicable thing that ever happened to me."
"You don't do this," Tenet said. "You don't throw somebody overboard just because it's a deflection. Is that honorable? It's not honorable to me."
…

So let me get this straight.

You led the most powerful spy agency on Earth, right? And yet the fact that the people who purloined the 2000 election, gutted John McCain for sport and came to power with an entire, pre-cooked, PNAC/fascist vision for America were a vicious, backstabbing, dishonorable pack of jackals somehow eluded you?

I mean, who in the fuck did you think you were working for, Mr. Tenet?

Facts and conclusions about the nature and character of the Bushies which were gleanable by millions everyday citizens with no vast intelligence networks available to them -- who were simply paying attention to the neutered mess that passes for news these day -- somehow sailed right on past the head of the CIA?

We’re not exactly Mycroft Holmes, are we Mr. Tenet?

Or Mike Hammer.

Or Jeff Lebowski.

Or even Maxwell Smart.

But then again I'll bet none of them have a spiffy Presidential Medal of Freedom hanging in their rumpus room next to their 30 pieces of silver.