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I Cannot Confirm nor Deny that those pictured below are actual Covert Agents in the CIA

By Mark I Posted in Featured Stories | National Security — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Much hand wringing and caterwauling coming from the left today after George Tenet's performance on 60 minutes last night. Given that Tenet's appearance to say essentially what the left has been saying about the Iraq War for its duration--i.e. rush to war, no plan, no WMDs, etc--generated so much buzz and news, one would expect that AEI's and NRO's Michael Ledeen will be getting an invitation to sit down with Scott Pelley very soon.

Ledeen, you see, has direct proof that Tenet is a liar. It seems that, in at least two cases, Tenet either mischaracterizes or outright makes up information in his much-ballyhooed book.

Read on...

Hat tip: Power Line

First, let's look at Ledeen's first hand account, and Tenet's second hand summary, of a meeting that took place in Rome prior to the Iraq invasion.

In December, 2001, I participated in discussions between two Pentagon officials and Iranians who claimed knowledge of Iranian-sponsored efforts to kill Americans in Afghanistan. We met in Rome, Italy over several days. The discussions were approved by Stephen Hadley, the deputy national-security adviser, and the two Defense department officials’ travel was approved by their superiors. The American ambassador in Rome was fully informed in advance, and fully briefed afterwards. The conversations produced detailed information about the identities, locations, and plans of Iranian-trained terrorists in Afghanistan. This was passed on to the proper authorities at the DoD, and I was later told by military officers that the information likely saved American lives.

Now comes the former director of central intelligence, George Tenet, with several pages about the meeting in his new book. He does not mention that American lives were saved, nor does he seem at all interested to learn that there were well-informed sources who were willing to help the American government. Nor, for that matter, is he much interested in the facts at all...He misdescribes the Iranians as “dissidents” living overseas. He misidentifies the two Pentagon officials as subordinates of Under Secretary Douglas Feith (one of Tenet’s many bête noires), but only one of them was in Feith’s shop. He says it “sounded like an off-the-books covert-action program trying to destabilize the Iranian government,” when the discussion was about Iranians in Afghanistan, not overthrowing the mullahs, and the meeting had been formally approved by the deputy national-security adviser...Tenet calls it “Son of Iran-contra,” with which it had nothing in common save for the marginal involvement of Manoucher Ghorbanifar, who helped bring the Iranians to Italy, but was not a source of information. Someone might have reminded Tenet that Iran-Contra had to do with providing weapons to Iran in exchange for hostages, while the Rome meeting was about Iranian efforts to kill Americans in Afghanistan.

That's damning enough, but Ledeen is not through. He provides a key detail to undercut Tenet's description of a conversation Tenet claims he had in passing with Richard Perle on 9/12/2001 outside the White House. That detail is the fact that the meeting never took place. One of the alleged participants wasn't in the country at the time.

On at least one occasion, Tenet conjures an event out of thin air. He says that on 9/12, he ran into Richard Perle coming out of the White House. According to Tenet, Perle said to him: “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.” Nicely crafted, but wrong again. Unluckily for Tenet, Perle was in France that day.

Ouch. One would think that the nations top spook, or his publisher, would remember to check the White House visitor logs before making up such a story.

The CIA under Tenet was apparently doing its best impression of Hear-no-Evil the monkey when it came to information about the Iranian regime's intent to harm United States troops. As a result, not only is the United States embroiled in a widening regional conflict in Iraq, based in part on the faulty intelligence generated under Tenet's watch, but Iran has had pretty much free reign to develop its own WMDs unobserved and unencumbered by our professional intelligence agency.

When it comes to glass houses, Tenet's is a mansion. To paraphrase a popular proverb, George, when your glass house is shattering around you, your first rule is to put down the rocks.