Former CIA Director George Tenet breaks his silence about the Bush administration, and the mistakes his department made, both pre- and post- 9/11 to 60 Minutes in advance of his book release this week. Click on the link and see videos of the entire interview. Here is an excerpt of that interview with the always outstanding Scott Pelley...About briefing Condi Rice....
"by the summer of 2001, Tenet says he was so alarmed by intelligence that an attack was coming, he asked for an immediate meeting to brief then-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. "Essentially, the briefing says, there are gonna be multiple spectacular attacks against the United States. We believe these attacks are imminent. Mass casualties are a likelihood," Tenet remembers.
"You're telling Condoleezza Rice in that meeting in the White House in July that we should take offensive action, in Afghanistan, now. Before 9/11," Pelley remarks. "We need to consider immediate action inside Afghanistan now. We need to move to the offensive," Tenet says.
In his book, Tenet says that even though he told Rice an attack on Americans was imminent, she took his request to launch pre-emptive action in Afghanistan and delegated it to third-tier officials. "You’re meeting with the president every morning. Why aren't you telling the president, 'Mr. President, this is terrifying. We have to do this now. Forget about the bureaucracy. I need this authority this afternoon,'?" Pelley asks. "Right. Because the United States government doesn't work that way. The president is not the action officer. You bring the action to the national security advisor and people who set the table for the president to decide on policies they're gonna implement," Tenet says.
About Iraq....
The truth of Iraq begins, according to Tenet, the day after the attack of Sept. 11, when he ran into Pentagon advisor Richard Perle at the White House. "He said to me, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.' It’s September the 12th. I’ve got the manifest with me that tell me al Qaeda did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way shape or form and I remember thinking to myself, as I'm about to go brief the president, 'What the hell is he talking about?'" Tenet remembers. "You said Iraq made no sense to you in that moment. Does it make any sense to you today?" Pelley asks. "In terms of complicity with 9/11, absolutely none," Tenet says. "It never made any sense. We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period."
About the erronious Niger intel in regards to Saddam seeking uranium.
The CIA had knocked down that uranium claim months before. The agency even demanded it be taken out of two previous presidential speeches. How did it get through the third time? "I didn't read the speech. I was involved in a bunch of other things," Tenet says.
And about the outing of Valerie Plame....
When it became clear there were no weapons of mass destruction, a rift split the White House and CIA. A former ambassador named Joe Wilson wrote an article debunking the uranium claim that had slipped into the State of the Union address. The White House retaliated, leaking a story that exposed the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as an undercover CIA officer. "She's one of my officers. That's wrong. Big time wrong, you don't get to do that," Tenet says. "And the chilling effect that you have inside my work force is, 'Whoa, now officers names are being thrown out the door. Hold it. Not right.'"
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