Tenet Resigns!

[Argento]

Tenet Resigns (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12296-2004Jun3.html)

He says for personal reasons but......

I don't know what I really think about him he was there during Clinton's term and I have no idea how he did during that phase, and the whole september 11 throws just about everything out the window intelligence wise so I'm not too comfortable throwing blame at him.....for now.

[Windswept]

Tenet Resigns (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12296-2004Jun3.html)

He says for personal reasons but......

I don't know what I really think about him he was there during Clinton's term and I have no idea how he did during that phase, and the whole september 11 throws just about everything out the window intelligence wise so I'm not too comfortable throwing blame at him.....for now.
Well, here's the thing. The CIA was emasculated some years back, with tons of new rules to rein them in and prevent abuses. Naturally, what 'should' have been merely an increase in oversight became a straightjacket. For one thing, they weren't allowed to recruit foreign informers who were "unsavory" characters (I think I remember reading). So, lo and behold, one way or another, we lost a huge percentage of our "hum-int" - our human intelligence capability - our informers on the ground.

This ONE thing, imo, has proved disastrous wrt 9/11 and lots of other events, like (afaik) India and Pakistan going nuclear, for example; Sudan (iirc) offering to give us (pre-9/11) Bin Laden, and we turned him down!!! Major things going on, and we're sitting here with our thumb up our ...... uh, posterior region.... wasting all our time and national attention on Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky...while the world spins out of control. :no: Just incredible. :grumble:

And then 9/11 happens, more or less unanticipated, and everyone's crawling all over the CIA and FBI for their failures......for their stunning lack of (HELLOOOO!!!) human intelligence operatives on the ground in the Middle East and elsewhere, who could have given us a glimmer of events in the planning stages.

I don't blame Tenet for resigning. I'm just surprised he didn't do it sooner. The frustration both agencies must have felt over the last few years.....just unimaginable.

[Naderfan]

The thing with the CIA is that they have a nasty habit of doing things in foreign countries that the average american (i hope!) would be appalled at. During the Cold War there was obviously a lot of fear and paranoia and so the intelligence agency was given a lot of power. With the fall of Communism, I think the government sort of realized that it was time to reign them back in. Did they go overboard? Most likely. The government can never seem to do anything in moderation. I'm not defending it exactly, I've never studied the CIA too indepth. I just have studied history and seen their past record. As for Tenant himself, I don't think there was any good way for him to get past this, whether he was to blame or not for current events. It probably was a good decision for him.