The most interesting passage -- to my eyes, at least -- concerns former DCI George Tenet:
The one-page October 2002 President's Summary specifically told Bush that although "most agencies judge" that the use of the aluminum tubes was "related to a uranium enrichment effort... INR and DOE believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons uses."Historians will always get a good, dark snicker out of the image of Bush refusing to read a mere 90 pages before deciding to drop bombs. At the moment, though, I am most intrigued by the image of Tenet and Dubya in the oval office, with Bush reading his one-page summary and the head spook explaining the longer words.
The lengthier NIE -- more than 90 pages -- contained significantly more detail describing the disagreement between the CIA and the Pentagon's DIA on one hand, which believed that the tubes were meant for centrifuges, and State's INR and the Energy Department, which believed that they were meant for artillery shells. Administration officials had said that the president would not have read the full-length paper. They also had said that many of the details of INR's dissent were contained in a special text box that was positioned far away from the main text of the report.
But the one-page summary, several senior government officials said in interviews, was written specifically for Bush, was handed to the president by then-CIA Director George Tenet, and was read in Tenet's presence.
How did Waas learn of this meeting? Was anyone else in the room?
More than likely, Tenet described the meeting to his associates, and those associates relayed the information to Waas and (one presumes) other reporters. I would argue that people close to the former DCI would not have spoken of such matters unless Tenet wanted them discussed.
Yesterday, we read that two former high-level CIA officials (not named) had informed ABC News that the Inspector General was looking into allegations that Brent "bribe-master" Wilkes had received lucrative CIA contracts via his old friend at the Agency, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who is now the Number Three "company" man. (Amusingly, this Los Angeles Times story notes that the CIA still won't confirm whether Wilkes had any such CIA contracts. Obviously, if no contracts existed, there would be no investigation.)
Who were the sources for the original scoop? I have argued that Tenet or one of his closer aides first spoke to reporters about the Foggo matter.
In light of the "insider" enemies he has made, we should ask not why Bush's approval ratings are so low, but why they are so high.
In times past, no president could withstand a series of assaults of this sort. At least once a week, and sometimes more frequently than that, an absolutely damning revelation hits the press. Clearly, a faction within the intelligence community has decided to spill beans.
And yet none of these revelations has "burying power." The president still maintains a large base of support. Much of the public remains blissfully unaware of the most damning information.
What has changed in our society over the past thirty years? Back in the late 1960s, people asked: "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?" Nowadays, the question seems to be: "Suppose they released a new version of the Pentagon Papers and nobody read them?"
2 comments:
It seems to me that for most of American history, the free press had an adversarial relationship with government. The higher the level of government, the sharper the criticism. This condition was non-partisan, for the most part. The conservative and the liberal rags alike were hounds after the gov't fox. The Fourth Estate was more than a for-profit industry. It was a natural systemic check and balance. No longer. With a few exceptions, (like Harper's and some of the smaller newspapers), the free press has merged seamlessly into the corporate/entertainment/news conglomerate, and is concerned only with advertising revenue and circulation numbers. The same thing has happened with TV news departments and radio.
The consequences of this sell-out have been catastrophic, because for the most part, the country's political thinking was done by those professionals. It was the reporters and editors and anchormen who told us what things meant and how we should feel about them.
Now, they are telling us what they are paid to tell us (Limbaugh and Hannity and Coulter being prime examples of these media whores feeding at the trough), or else telling us that nothing political matters and we need not pay attention to it.
I say, after the R*volution, we string them all up.
One page summary---don't read newspaper---Who could that be???
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