They Keep Dropping Off

If former CIA director, George J. Tenet’s book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, and his arguments and assertions therein were a multi-legged stool, it doesn’t seem like it will be left with any leg to stand on before long. A set of the legs fell off even before the book’s actual release April 30, because both The New York Times and the Associated Press that bought advance copies were whole-hearted in their declaration that it raised more questions than it answered particularly on Mr. Tenet’s candor over his role in the intelligence on which the Bush White House based its case for the invasion of Iraq. In its recent issue, The New Yorker magazine dubbed the book an episode in the Bush administration’s almost perfect score in “perfecting the art of unaccountability”. But Mr. Tenet still cleared a hefty four million dollars from his publishers for the book.

Not withstanding that, the legs keep falling off the book and its author’s arguments and assertions. Yesterday, British Prime Minister, Tony Blair who has been called the only man who could have single-handily prevented the invasion of Iraq by insisting on the need to be a little more circumspect in the handling of the intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, WMD announced his resignation as from June 27. Some people including The New York Times are convinced that his resignation is another casualty of the decision to invade Iraq. The Times is even unequivocal that “Mr. Blair’s once boundless prospects and personal credibility imploded after he became Mr. Bush’s most articulate enabler on Iraq”.

In this same week too, came news of the arrest of six men in New Jersey who have been indicted for plotting to inflict terror on a US Army formation in Fort Dix. The more shocking aspect of the crime that these men are alleged to have been plotting is the fact that although they are all Muslim, the investigation which trailed them in a period of more than a year before their arrest claims that their plan is home-grown. The other aspect is the fact that they are not of African or Asian extraction. When these two facts are stood side by side with some of the forceful assertions made by Mr. Tenet in his book and in his promotional interviews in the media to the effect that the next terrorist attack on America is more likely to come from people of Asian and African descent already here in America, who are connected with al-Qaeida, it becomes one additional shade clearer that he lacks valid knowledge of the possible sources of existing terrorist threats being faced by America right here at home. There goes some more legs of the book by Mr. Tenet.

The danger in such unguarded assertion by Mr. Tenet is that it might throw vigilance off certain sources of threats while concentrating it elsewhere. Highly placed public servants who are reluctant to be candid in he discharge of their duties posse as much threats to the security and well being of society as those who go out of their ways to plan and inflict harm on innocent people in pursuit of ideological motives.