By Mark Mazzetti and Julie Bosman
The New York Times Tuesday 13 February 2007
The New York Times Tuesday 13 February 2007
Washington - For the past two years, George J. Tenet has maintained a determined silence even as senior White House officials have laid the blame for the prewar mistakes about Saddam Hussein on him. But now Mr. Tenet, the nation's former spy chief, is preparing to return fire.
Mr. Tenet was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom at a grand White House ceremony in December 2004, after stepping down as director of central intelligence, only to have Vice President Dick Cheney appear on "Meet the Press" 21 months later and pin the mistake about the Iraq intelligence squarely on him.
Now, as he races to complete a memoir due out this spring, the talk in Washington has turned to how Mr. Tenet, known for fierce loyalty and political survival instincts that enabled him to weather both Democratic and Republican administrations, will use the book to juggle a host of agendas: polishing his legacy, settling scores and explaining just what he meant when he said it was a "slam dunk" that Mr. Hussein had unconventional weapons.
Of course, Mr. Tenet must finish the book first, which has proved to be something of challenge. The book was supposed to hit shelves last week, but Mr. Tenet was still writing as late as last month. The book has also undergone a slow vetting process at the White House and the C.I.A., which reviewed it to ensure it did not contain classified information.
Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Tenet note that he built his career by making more friends than enemies, and they say he is unlikely to use his book to pick new fights. But some of president Bush's top aides with whom Mr. Tenet clashed in the past, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, are said to be targets of criticism.
"George is a born politician and he wants everyone to love him, but in order to sell books he's going to have to throw somebody out of the lifeboat," said a former colleague of Mr. Tenet at the C.I.A., one of several people interviewed for this article who requested anonymity because they did not want to speak on the record until the book was published.
Mr. Tenet is not expected to take on Mr. Bush, with whom he developed a close bond during early morning intelligence briefings in the Oval Office. But Mr. Tenet's friends said he had been surprised when Mr. Cheney and Ms. Rice, appearing on Sunday talk shows last September, fingered him in justifying Mr. Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq.
In the interview on "Meet the Press," Mr. Cheney said: "George Tenet sat in the Oval Office and the president of the United States asked him directly, he said, 'George, how good is the case against Saddam on weapons of mass destruction?' The director of the C.I.A. said, 'It's a slam dunk, Mr. President, it's a slam dunk.'"
Mr. Cheney added, "That was the intelligence that was provided to us at the time, and based upon which we made a choice."
Promotional materials for the book promise that Mr. Tenet will give the "real context" for that episode.
One person who has read early drafts of the book said Mr. Tenet defended himself by carefully parsing the "slam dunk" comment: he said he was not telling Mr. Bush that there was rock-solid evidence that Mr. Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, only that the president could make a "slam dunk" case to the American public about these weapons programs.
David L. Boren, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a longtime friend of Mr. Tenet, said it was Mr. Tenet's friends and former C.I.A. colleagues who urged him to write a book to balance the record.
Mr. Boren said that in the weeks before the Iraq war, he warned Mr. Tenet that since he was not a member of Mr. Bush's closest circle of advisers, the White House would make him the scapegoat if things went badly in Iraq.
"I told him they had your name circled if anything goes wrong," recalled Mr. Boren, who is now president of the University of Oklahoma.
Tina Andreadis, a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, declined to discuss the book in detail. People who have read parts of the manuscript said it would span Mr. Tenet's career at the C.I.A., with a particular focus on the agency's warnings about Al Qaeda and operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.
One publisher who met with Mr. Tenet to discuss publishing the book said he had vowed to defend the assessments of C.I.A. analysts about Iraq.
"He wanted everybody to know that he felt the portrayal was inaccurate," the publisher said. "He defended the agency. He was very emotional. This was not a mea culpa."
Mr. Tenet has been applauded for sounding an early alarm about the threat from Osama bin Laden and his network. Yet his exchanges with the Sept. 11 commission left some commission staff members puzzled about his recollection of details of certain crucial decisions.
"He has a lot to be proud of and a lot he will want to explain," said Philip D. Zelikow, who was executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and more recently a counselor to Ms. Rice. "If he felt that he was constrained in his ability to tell the full story when he was a member of the Clinton or Bush administrations, then people like me should wait patiently and read what he has to say now before offering further judgments."
According to HarperCollins's original news release for the book: "Tenet will offer a gripping narration of the run-up to the war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an unusual foe: Never before had a rogue nation tried so hard to convince the world that it had WMD."
A string of carefully planned news media appearances to promote the book has been in place for months. HarperCollins has decided to release it on a Monday, rather than a Tuesday, when most books are released, to coincide with a scheduled Sunday evening appearance by Mr. Tenet on "60 Minutes" on CBS.
The Crown Publishing Group first signed a book contract with Mr. Tenet in December 2004 for a reported $4 million, but the contract was dissolved a few months later when Mr. Tenet hedged on a delivery date.
The publisher who met with Mr. Tenet said he had spoken extensively about the toll that the Iraq war had taken on his family, particularly on his son, who was "teased mercilessly" at school. "Other kids would yell, 'Your dad's a murderer!' and that kind of thing," the publisher recalled him saying.
For Mr. Tenet, the downside of waiting so long to emerge with his own account is that other books by journalists and former officials have already shaped public opinion about his role in the Iraq war, and some of Mr. Tenet's friends fear that his account may be arriving too late.
Other allies said that while his book would give a fresh perspective, it would still be one account among many competing interpretations of the events of the past five years.
"Because of the nature of intelligence work, you can never totally set the record straight," said former Senator Bob Kerrey, a member of the Sept. 11 commission who has known Mr. Tenet since the two worked together on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "The record is always going to be a little bit murky."
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