George Tenet Quotes
There will always be days when we have to race to catch up to events we did not foresee, not because somebody is asleep at the switch, but because what’s going on is so complicated.
His catastrophic failure however was when he supported the Neocon ideology that Iraq had a nuclear bomb about to be deployed and urged a preventative war invading Iraq. Not only was there no bomb ready for deployment, there was net even a nuclear research or development program to do anything nuclear.
George Tenet, Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Quoted in Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, 2007
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Politicians and public administrators have been aware of unintended consequences for a long time.
She was explaining why she supported the Iraq War which the George W. Bush administration started claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After invading Iraq, it turned out that the “intelligence” was wrong—there were no WMDs. Many believe that the intelligence was fabricated to justify a war that Bush, Vice President Cheney and the neo-conservatives wanted for other reasons.
Both President Truman and Genera MacArthur, in command in Korea, received this report and several confirmation reports in the subsequent days. On October 30, 1950, 100,000 Chinese troops attacked across the border almost driving MacArthur’s forces into the sea. The Chinese then pushed Allied forces all the way back to the 38th parallel—the divide between North and South Korea. This is yet another stunning example of the major international security events where the Central Intelligence Agency was in the dark and misadvised the administration. See {634967} for another quotation on this Central Intelligence Agency weakness.
He was the Station Chief During the Blackhawk Down Catastrophe.
Powell, after being assured that the intelligence about the Iraq WMD showing that they were about to deploy a nuclear weapon and they had poison gas was absolutely true, was the major spokesperson to the UN and much of the United States justifying the Iraq War. It was all untrue, and Powell’s credibility which had been exceptional was hurt very badly. He soon resigned.
Although most listeners had to spend some time parsing this famous quote, it actually was not a new notion. See Copernicus in linked quotes.
Kay was chasing around Iraq trying to find the weapons that the George W. Bush administration had said definitely existed. Based on the weapons existence, the United States went to War in Iraq. No weapons were ever found.
It is noteworthy that a U. S. President had such a harsh evaluation of our major intelligence agency. Even more important in this case is that this President justified his 2003 decision to invade Iraq and start the war on the intelligence he claimed was provided to him by the CIA that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This quotation and the President’s view was not public at the time. I all fairness to the CIA staff, many of them had provided a number of caveats and warnings about the unreliability of the information. However, the CIA Director, George Tenant, advised Bush in a way that the caveats were sublimated. See {633093} for more detail.
George John Tenet is a former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
