But last week Tenet abruptly discovered the limits of his political skills, and of his friendship with Bush. After weeks of ducking uncomfortable questions about the administration’s mishandling of intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war–did the president and his advisers hype the danger and mislead the country? Bush issued a terse response: it was the CIA’s fault.
In the State of the Union address last January, Bush said that Iraq was seeking to buy large quantities of uranium from Africa, an assertion based on what turned out to be crudely forged documents from Niger that had been questioned by the CIA months before. How did such a dubious claim make its way into the president’s most heavily edited speech? That’s where the finger-pointing begins. Anonymous CIA officials complained to reporters that Tenet had tried to warn the White House the Niger claims were bogus. The president, whose Africa trip was marred by the controversy, struck back hard, pushing the blame back on the CIA. “I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services,” Bush said. National-security adviser Condoleezza Rice took it one step further, saying Tenet himself was responsible. “I can tell you, if the CIA, the director of Central Intelligence, had said ‘Take this out of the speech,’ it would have been gone, without question,” Rice told reporters.
In fact, the CIA had objected to an earlier draft of the line, and had kept references to the false Niger deal out of a speech last October in Cincinnati. But after the White House removed specific references to Niger from the State of the Union Message, and changed the line to say that the information came from the British government, not U.S. intelligence agencies, CIA officials signed off. Suddenly, Tenet found himself playing an unfamiliar role: fall guy. On Friday he issued a statement officially taking the blame, saying the intel “did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed.”
CIA officials insisted that Tenet had made the decision to step forward on his own. But White House officials, who worked with Tenet for days drafting the statement, left the impression that Tenet was told he had to do it. “The discussion was, the CIA needs to explain what its role was in this,” said Bush’s spokesman Ari Fleischer. Either way, NEWSWEEK has learned, Tenet may not be in the job much longer. Sources close to Tenet say he is pondering his exit strategy. He had already been thinking about calling it quits, they maintain. At six years, he has served longer than all but two of the agency’s past directors. But the timing is tricky: go now, and it looks like he was forced out. Wait too long, and he risks becoming an issue in the 2004 campaign. Bush voiced confidence in Tenet on Saturday, but, as one official says, “he’s not going to stay forever.” The knives are out: Pat Roberts, the Senate Intelligence chairman, scolded Tenet for his “extremely sloppy handling” of Iraqi intelligence and denounced agency leaks “to discredit the president.”
Some Bush aides worry that pushing Tenet out could backfire with the press, an increasingly skeptical public and Bush’s potential rivals in 2004. Democrats are piling on. “Mr. President, stop trying to pass the buck,” Florida Sen. Bob Graham commented Friday. “You made the baseless claim, you should take responsibility.’’ Meantime, midlevel staffers are still squabbling over who knew what. The White House had hoped that Tenet’s official admission would put an end to the questions about Iraq intelligence and take the heat off Bush. If anything, it may only turn up the flame.
