The Wrong Man at Langley: George Tenet isn't up to it; neither is U.S. intelligence.(fumblings of the Central Intelligence Agency)

Several months ago I asked the CIA's chief spokesman, Bill Harlow, whether CIA director George Tenet had ever offered to resign after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After all, the attacks represented a fundamental failure of strategic intelligence. Harlow's response was an indignant "no." In Tenet's view, 9/11 was not an intelligence failure. Tenet told the Senate in February 2002 that not only was there no failure, he was actually proud of the CIA's record: "It is a record of discipline, strategy, focus, and action. We are proud of that record. We have been at war with al-Qaeda for over five years."

Precisely what that war really meant, however, was disclosed by Eleanor Hill, the staff director of a joint House-Senate inquiry looking into the intelligence failures of 9/11. She revealed in congressional testimony that the war declared by Tenet was not being waged with a massive devotion of CIA resources. Tenet didn't even inform the FBI that he-in a 1998 memo to CIA managers after the al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania-had declared war on Osama bin Laden.

"We are at war," Tenet stated in that memo. "I want no resources or people spared in this effort." But what kind of war was this? A phony war, if you count the actual number of CIA analysts devoted full-time to studying bin Laden's terrorist network: three, with two others added in the months before 9/11. (A CIA spokesman later contended that these numbers were wrong, that there were actually nine analysts devoted to bin Laden-still hardly a warlike effort.)

On September 11, 2001, Tenet was having breakfast at the Hay-Adams Hotel near the White House with his mentor, former Oklahoma Democratic senator David Boren. One of Tenet's security guards brought him the news: "A plane has gone into the World Trade Center, Mr. Director." Tenet said: "Was it an attack? It sounds like an attack." Tenet jumped in his limousine to dash over to CIA headquarters. Before leaving, Tenet told Boren: "This is bin Laden. His fingerprints are all over it." This comment showed a) that Tenet was aware of the danger of an attack on the U.S. by bin Laden but also b) that the CIA viewed itself as helpless to predict-and thus to help prevent- such an attack.

Which is completely unacceptable, because it is precisely to avoid such disasters that we have an intelligence establishment. Tenet himself is an important part of the problem. He backed into the position of CIA director in 1997 after President Clinton's first choice, Anthony Lake, was forced to withdraw. His first intelligence experience was as staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee from 1988 to 1993, a job he lost when the Senate went Republican. He quickly found refuge as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for intelligence programs on the White House National Security Council staff, a key policymaking position for intelligence issues. In 1995, Tenet became deputy director of Central Intelligence, the No. 2 official in the community.

As deputy director, Tenet was involved in covering up the security violations of then-director John Deutch. In December 1996, Deutch left the agency; in early 1997, CIA security investigators discovered highly classified documents on Deutch's Macintosh computers. Deutch, it turned out, had a habit of typing his notes into an unsecured laptop computer after secret briefings in the Pentagon. He would then e-mail copies of the notes to himself at home, using his America Online account, and retrieve them on a home computer. Some of the most important secrets were compromised by the practice, which exposed such secrets to interception by foreign spies. "We know that foreign intelligence services routinely monitor the Internet for just such material," a senior Pentagon official said. "And AOL is a major target."

The CIA undertook an investigation of Deutch-but later reprimanded six current and former officials for mishandling the probe: "The principal shortcoming in the Deutch matter was that normal Agency procedures for handling and reporting a serious security incident were not followed. Among other things, a crimes report should have been submitted sooner to the Department of Justice." And the reason for this ...