Tenet claims CIA was a scapegoat for war

Breaking the Saddam-bin Laden chain
Tenet also chronicles his battles to keep administration officials from linking Saddam and bin Laden, even though pressure to do so was often great.

Tenet writes that on Aug. 15, 2002, Tina Shelton, whom he misidentifies as a naval reservist on Feith’s team, visited the CIA to brief analysts and Tenet on the alleged connection.

Shelton “started out by saying there should be ‘no more debate. It’s an open and shut case. No further analysis is required.’  What I was thinking was ‘this is complete crap. I want to end this right now,’ ” Tenet writes.

Shelton, who is retired last year after a career with the Defense Intelligence Agency, disputed Tenet’s account. She said she was never a naval reservist and did not say what she is quoted as having said.

Tenet also writes extensively about the famous 16 Words, the passage in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address alleging that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from Africa.

It has been previously reported that Tenet intervened to remove the uranium reference from a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati in October 2002. In the book, Tenet reveals that afterward, the CIA sent Hadley an extensive analysis of why the agency believed the report was false, but Hadley never passed the information on to Andrew Card, then the White House chief of staff.

After the passage appeared in the State of the Union address, Tenet went to Card with the chronology of events. Card’s response, according to Tenet: “I haven’t been told the truth.”

Blocking the ‘slam dunk’
But Tenet reserves his greatest anger for the infamous “slam dunk” story, originally published in Bob Woodward’s book “Bush at War.”

In Woodward’s version of the story, Tenet told Bush that there was a “slam dunk case” that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Tenet is described as jumping out of his chair and making a motion as if he were dunking a basketball.

Tenet writes that he may have used those words at the meeting, which took place in December 2002, but that he was speaking about the larger case against Saddam, not about weapons of mass destruction. In any event, he insists, there were no accompanying gymnastics.

Tenet’s main objection is that his alleged comment has been accepted as a key element in persuading Bush that Saddam did have such weapons. In fact, he points out, administration figures for months had already made it clear that they had no doubt about their case.

In essence, he contends, Bush’s aides seized on the episode described in Woodward’s book to “shift the blame for Iraq away from them and onto the CIA in general and me in particular.”

“Credit Woodward’s source with a fine sense of the ridiculous, at least a fine sense of making me look ridiculous, but don’t credit him or her with a deep sense of obligation to the truth,” he writes bitterly.

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