George Tenet needs to answer some questions on Plamegate

By Aussiegirl

Herbert E. Meyer poses two important questions to George Tenet based on his own experiences as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence in the Reagan Administration.

Elaborating on remarks made to Ultima Thule for the article "Plamegate -- where is the crime?", which appeared here on October 30, Meyer lays out the way that intelligence was handled during the Reagan administration by the legendary Bill Casey and contrasts it with the lame and even weird behavior of Tenet.

One wonders who was in charge over there during this bizarre episode. And with the leak of additional top-secret information recently concerning overseas terrorist detention centers, it is clear that the crisis of leadership in the CIA is still a problem for the Bush administration.

And while you are reading this enlightening article, be sure to notice that Herb Meyer has created a must-see DVD called "The Siege of Western Civilization" which you can purchase by clicking on the link. In the "Siege", Herb lays out the dangerous prospect which faces the world in the coming years, a scenario that we see being played out today in the streets of suburban Paris, as Muslim youths riot and burn for the ninth straight day. This DVD is more of a must-see today than it was when Herb first made it. His predictions are coming true faster than he himself could have even anticipated. Paris is burning, and for Europe the time may be fast approaching when it may be too late to take strong action.

The American Thinker

Finally, the spotlight has started to swing away from Lewis Libby and his allegedly perjurous grand-jury testimony toward where that spotlight should have focused all along: on the CIA’s incompetent, weird – and possibly treasonous—response to Vice President Cheney’s inquiry about Iraq’s interest in purchasing yellowcake from Niger.

Perhaps an outline of how we did things at the CIA during the Reagan Administration will help to illustrate just how appalling the agency’s handling of Mr. Cheney’s query really was:

[...]It’s quite rare for a Cabinet member to actually ask for intelligence – and even more rare for the Vice President or the President to ask – so when they do it’s a very big deal. President Reagan’s great Director of Central Intelligence, William J. Casey, made clear to all of us that when a top-level official personally asked the CIA to check into something, he was to be notified immediately. No matter what else was going on that day that demanded Casey’s total attention – a revolution in Asia, a covert action in Eastern Europe, another of Bob Woodward’s fantasies in The Washington Post—a direct query from any of the four or five top Administration officials took precedence over everything else. After all, they were our primary customers.

[...]When we had our answer to the top official’s query – whether it took us an hour or a month – that answer went to Casey himself, who would review it personally to be sure it was an adequate response. Because the President, the Vice President, and the Secretaries of State and Defense were the CIA’s primary customers, Casey considered it his personal responsibility to oversee the agency’s responses to their queries. Usually, Casey himself would deliver the response in person. Other times it would be delivered in the form of a top-secret, “Eyes-Only” memo from him to the official.

All this raises two important questions for George Tenet, who was Director of Central Intelligence during all the time that “Plamegate” was going on:

• Why did the CIA, under your direction, treat the Vice President’s query about Iraqi efforts to purchase yellowcake in Niger so casually?

• When Joe Wilson started blabbing in public about his CIA mission to Niger – and lying about what he reported to the CIA upon his return – why didn’t you say something rather than allow the President’s credibility to be shredded?

These days George Tenet – to whom President Bush inexplicably awarded the Medal of Freedom, our country’s highest civilian honor—is raking in a fortune on the lecture circuit. Perhaps someone in his next audience will take the opportunity to ask these questions and insist on answers – which is more than any of the hot-shot reporters in Washington seems interested in doing.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. His DVD on The Siege of Western Civilization has become an international best-seller.