[CTRL] Fwd: Globe-Intel #69 - PROFILE OF GEORGE TENET

[William Shannon]

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Title: **Globe-Intel**

============================================================ Send the World's most popular eCards: birthdays, holidays, and more. Send as many eCards as you want all YEAR long. Click here to join Blue Mountain Unlimited! http://click.topica.com/caaalNRa2iZZ7a36O8Ab/BlueMountain ============================================================   **Globe-Intel**   NEWSBREAKS…ANALYSIS… COMMENTARY     Editor-in-Chief                                                              Number 69           Carol Adler                                                                   May 9, 2002 Contributing Editor           Gordon Thomas Contributing Writers           Mark Dankof…David McGowan…Joseph Ehrlich…           John Kusumi… Takashi “Thomas” Tanemori   PROFILE OF GEORGE TENET – THE SPY MASTER WHO FAILED IN THE MIDDLE EAST   by Gordon Thomas             In less than fifty words, George John Tenet destroyed the long career of his predecessor, John Deutch.  He announced to a stunned U.S. intelligence community that he had suspended “for an indefinite period” the security clearance of the man who had groomed him for office.  A CIA internal enquiry had found Deutsch “guilty of improperly storing national secrets in a desktop computer at his home.”           The highly classified information was thirty-one documents relating to Iraq and the 1996 terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 American troops.           Tenet had known what Deutch had done soon after coming into office a year ago. Deutch had freely admitted he was guilty. He had told friends he expected a reprimand. Instead, in those fifty words, Tenet had ensured that Deutch would never find work again in Washington – or with any U.S. company that would normally prize having a former intelligence chief on his payroll.           Tenet’s action is still viewed by many intelligence professionals around the world as a definite attempt to shake off his image as the gentleman spy. It had dogged him in his years as deputy-director of the CIA. Then he had worked hard to remain out of public gaze. Where others in Washington boasted of their role in the grinding pace of national destiny, Tenet’s strength was in concealment.  He took pride in his obscurity. If he knew something, he did not let on that he did. And nearly everyone assumed he knew even more.           He was the quintessential number two at the CIA, a man inured in its friendless discipline. For years he had survived the corrosive rumors, the tales of disgrace and ruined careers that had sent morale plunging at Langley. But nothing had touched him personally.           Within the agency he had a reputation as a methodical and careful manager. In everything he did there was a steady conformity with expectations.           Until his ruthless treatment of Deutch, the new director had remained an unknown figure – often no more than a glimpse as his chauffeured Lincoln Continental takes him from his Georgetown home to Langley.           Five mornings a week at 6:30 AM when only the tip of the Washington Monument is touched by the morning light, the limousine passes beneath a bold green-and-white overhead sign on the Virginia freeway that proclaims that the Central Intelligence Agency is the next turn to the right.           The CIA is the most conspicuous of the world’s secret intelligence services, spreading itself over 219 acres of pleasant and partially wooded countryside along the banks of the Potomac River. Its location, nine miles to the northwest of the White House, has long made it a landmark for pilots landing at Washington’s National Airport.           Like the Lincoln Continental, George John Tenet is outwardly deceptive.           The sleek, highly-polished limousine looks like any other government car. But the driver is a CIA officer who has passed the most demanding evasive driving course in the world. By his knees, within instant reach, is a compartment containing a loaded assault rifle.           The car’s amour has added some 2,000 pounds to the Lincoln’s original weight. An armoured rear partition and windshield have been integrated into the body shell. The doors are similarly armoured, as is the roof.           The titanium-ceramic amour has been tested to withstand a 155 mm shell airbursting overhead or a ten pound mine detonating under the chassis. All the windows have been tested against .50 caliber armour piercing ammunition.           Built into the passenger compartment is an oxygen mask and a fire-suppression system, a global position indicator accurate to within one metre and a jam-resistant satellite communications terminal that can instantly reach the CIA headquarters, the Pentagon or the Oval Office of the White House.           Even in the event of the limousine’s tires being shot out, the Lincoln would still be able to maintain a speed of 60 mph on the steel rims of its wheels.           Only one other civilian car in Washington, perhaps in the whole world, offers comparable level of ballistic and blast protection.  It is the one used by the President of the United States.           Inside the car Tenet can feel as near invulnerable as it is possible for any person to be, short of traveling in a tank.           Occupying a corner of the back seat, in repose, he remains genuinely intimidating.  It is not only because of his formal business suit, his formal way of sitting upright, his formal way of initialing each page of everything he reads.           It is the formality that comes with his job description as “essentially speaking truth to power. I do so whether it fits with Administration policy or not.”           They were the carefully chosen words of a man who has become a highly respected voice inside the Bush Administration’s foreign policy team. Secretary of State, Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfield listen attentively to him in the weekly policy “housekeeping meeting.”           His presentations are in marked contrast to his predecessor’s, whose words often sounded as if they had passed through an ideological prism. Tenet speaks calmly and with full mastery of his brief – outward factors that have brought relative calm to the CIA after its recent history of scandals and a leadership crisis caused by the turnover of three directors and two nominations who failed to pass Senate scrutiny to get the job.           The day he entered his seventh floor office at Langley, he summoned his heads of departments. In a short speech, memorable for its lack of hyperbole, he set out the CIA’s agenda.           A paraphrase of his words goes like this: “I am here to preside over a change in our priorities. That means I am going to recruit more analysts and case officers. I want them to focus on what is important in intelligence now. This includes countering money laundering, countering narcotics and countering terrorism. We are all going back to basic espionage. Our men are going to work in alleys that have no names. I don’t want to hear about our failures. But I also don’t want to read in the newspapers about our successes.”           One key to his style is the way he has insisted that the President’s Daily Brief – sent by the CIA courier to the White House at dawn every day – is more sharply written and includes even more classified raw reports and transcripts of intercepted messages.           Before he leaves home – a detached house in a Georgetown suburb -- Tenet has already read the Brief. Sometimes he adds a note in his own neat hand – knowing the touch will please Bush.           Every morning when he arrives, the first meeting is with the head of the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine side of the CIA. Every morning when he arrives, the first meeting is with the head of the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine side of the CIA.           Tenet has no qualms about sending men (or women for that matter) on missions that could result in their death.           Yet none of this shows. To his jogging partners – he runs every lunch hour around the Langley parkland – and the Georgetown basketball team he turns out for on a regular basis – he is still self-effacing.           But inside the closed community of U.S. intelligence he has shown himself increasingly firm in getting what he wants.           His firmness is coupled with a calmness that was not there a few years ago when he was diagnosed with heart problems.           His years as deputy director – the silent assistant who sits behind his mentor at a meeting – has not diminished his tact. At his first meeting with foreign intelligence chiefs, he asked them to clear the room except for the then deputy director of Mossad, Amiram Levine. When they were alone, Tenet said to Levine: “Excuse me, general, but you needed to zip up your fly.”           The story helped to create the legend that Tenet was a gentleman spy. The image died last when he publicly announced he had suspended John Deutch.           Tenet has told his staff they should see that as a warning of what to expect if they fall foul of the “tight ship” he intends to run.           Certainly with Tenet at the helm, the CIA may not be as derring-do as it was under previous directors, but it is almost certainly on a course that could return it to its past role as the world’s self-appointed Secret Policeman.           Gordon Thomas is a writer on intelligence for a number of leading European newspapers (the Sunday Express, UK; El Mundo, Spain; Welt am Sonntag, Germany). His work is also syndicated internationally by World Wide Syndication. Any use of the above must carry a clear attribution to both Gordon Thomas and Globe-Intel. He is a Contributing Editor to Globe-Intel, an international newsletter devoted to intelligence matters.   For archived Globe-Intel issues, click on www.topica.com/lists/gordonthomas/read   For a new review of SEEDS OF FIRE, click on www.freedommag.org/English/vol34il/page15.htm   To invite others to subscribe to Globe-Intel, have them click here: [EMAIL PROTECTED]   FOR INTERVIEWS WITH GORDON THOMAS, AUTHOR OF SEEDS OF FIRE: CHINA AND THE STORY BEHIND THE ATTACK ON AMERICA, Contact Dandelion Books; Tel. 480-897-4452; Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] , www.dandelion-books.com , www.gordonthomas.ie   To purchase Seeds of Fire: China and the Story Behind the Attack on America, click on http://www.dandelionbooks.net/cart/   For an autographed First Edition of Seeds of Fire, call toll-free 1-888-609-5006.       ============================================================ Kick Your Business Productivity Into High Gear! 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