Judith Miller on George Tenet

From the NY Sun (ht JudithMiller.org):

Mr. Tenet repeatedly tries to distance himself from catastrophes he helped create. While acknowledging that he "did not oppose the president's decision to invade Iraq," he hints that he considered this decision unwise. Yet invariably, he portrays himself, in the words of one national security expert, as "the cat that drops the mouse on the doorstep and then walks away."

While his portrait of the factionalism and distrust within the Administration's inner circle is depressing, so, too, is Mr. Tenet's alleged self-serving passivity in the guise of intelligence neutrality. He was never a policy maker, he contends, merely a provider of intelligence — "just the facts ma'am."

In some cases the claim is simply incredible. Mr. Tenet, after all, was a member of the policy-making "Principals Committee" — the White House inner circle. Though the word "torture" never appears in his index, he was an architect of the CIA's notorious interrogation techniques that have mocked America's claim to be a civilized democracy that abides by national and international law. Although he defends the procedures by arguing that, after September 11, the CIA was on "new ground — legally and morally," he fails to explain what precisely the agency has done to detainees in its custody, or how such repulsive, counterproductive, and illegal conduct was instrumental in "preventing the death of American citizens."

This is an angry book, written after the White House blamed him for the mess it created. Mr. Tenet portrays himself as the latest in a series of "fall guys." But where was he when those policies were being adopted and implemented? Why did he do and say so little at the time? And why, if he could not bring himself to criticize the president he served, did he not quietly resign? He contemplated resigning earlier, he now says, but the president asked him to stay. Only those who remain silently loyal, or at least avoid a ruckus when they go, receive Medals of Freedom.