Free Republic

In intelligence it’s not so much what you don’t know as what you won’t know. Al Qaeda was initially formed in 1988, when the Soviet Union announced the humiliating withdrawal its forces from Afghanistan, whence it had invaded in 1979. The Saudi magnate, Osama bin Laden, and Abdullah Azzam, the charismatic Palestinian co-founder of Hamas, birthed al Qaeda from the Services Bureau (Mektab al-Khidmat) the pair had set up in the mid-1980s to promote the so-called “Arab Afghans”-- Muslims from around the world (but mostly from Arab nations) who flocked to Afghanistan to fight in the jihad. Among Afghan tribal...

(CBS)s director of the CIA, George Tenet has kept America's most important secrets. And until now, his lips were sealed. Tenet's CIA has been blamed for failing to stop 9/11, praised for the fall of the Taliban, and vilified for predicting that Iraq held chemical and biological weapons. Now, three years after leaving the CIA, Tenet has written a book, aptly named, "At the Center of the Storm." This month, correspondent Scott Pelley sat down with Tenet. 60 Minutes wanted to know how he got "weapons of mass destruction" wrong. Are we using torture in the war on terror? And...

Al Qaeda is in the United States, former CIA Director George Tenet says, and he’s surprised there have not been more attacks on American soil. “I do know one thing in my gut,” Tenet writes in his upcoming book. “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.” Tenet, who served as CIA chief from 1997 to 2004, questioned how Al Qaeda hasn’t sent “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half-dozen American shopping malls on any given day.” Tenet's 549-page book, "At the Center of the Storm," published by HarperCollins, is set to hit the bookstores on Monday. ...more

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White...

The John Batchelor Show WABC 770 AM News Talk Radio New York City Thursday, June 3, 2004 7:35pm, EST On Thursday night's broadcast of the John Batchelor Show, long-time intelligence gadfly, John Loftus accused that "the President himself approved the leaking of the name of the CIA agent". What follows is an exact transcription of the relevant portions of the show. (Transcription begins 3:52 minutes into The Loftus Report segment of the John Batchelor show. [transcriber's notes in brackets]) Batchelor:   And I'm certain that Patrick O'Donnell and John Loftus have now convinced you all that the landings on Normandy,...

Rumsfeld wanted Iraqis in on the action — right from the beginning. The latest post-hoc conventional wisdom on Iraq is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld won the war but lost the occupation. There are two problems with this analysis (which comes, most forcefully, from The Weekly Standard). First, it's not Rumsfeld's occupation; it's Colin Powell's and George Tenet's. Second, although it's painfully obvious that much is wrong with this occupation, it's simple-minded to assume that more troops will fix it. More troops may be needed now, but more of the same will not do the job. Something different is needed —...

During an anti-George-Bush rant, a friend demanded, "What about those weapons of mass destruction?" Oddly enough, a year and a half ago, she (along with a lot of other folk) had refused to make a similar demand of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's former dictator. Indeed, it was Saddam's failure to answer the very same question over a period of more than a decade that led to his fall from power and his cowering before American soldiers in a rat hole on the outskirts of Tikrit. Unlike my friend, I don't believe our President misled this nation as to the existence of...

I have come here today to talk to you and to the American people about something important to our nation and central to our future: how the United States intelligence community evaluated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs over the past decade, leading to a national intelligence estimate in October of 2002. I want to tell you about our information and how we reached our judgments. I want to tell you what I think, honestly and directly. There's several reasons to do this: because the American people deserve to know, because intelligence has never been more important to the security...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday a flood of news leaks about sensitive matters are jeopardizing national security -- and 95 percent of the leaks are coming from the executive branch of government.</p> <p>"The nature of the leaking that's going on in this town is unprecedented. It is compromising sources and methods. It is jeopardizing American security and there are people in our government who think they have some free pass to do this for their own pleasure," said Tenet, who was testifying before the House Intelligence Committee at its first public hearing about the bombing of the Chinese Embassy.</p>

<p>The flap over who baked the yellowcake uranium story is so transparently political that it is tempting to ignore. But now that Democrats and other opponents of deposing Saddam Hussein are demanding a full-scale scapegoat hunt, by all means let's consider the uses and abuses of intelligence.</p>

<p>CNN's Jonathan Karl on George Tenet's attempt to deflect blame from President Bush.</p>

The Associated Press WASHINGTON July 13 — The Bush administration said Sunday the president's statement in the State of the Union address about Iraq's seeking uranium was accurate and is supported by other British and U.S. information.Nevertheless, said Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, the statement should not have been in the Jan. 20 speech, in which Bush laid out reasons for military action against Iraq. "We have a higher standard for presidential speeches" than raw intelligence, she told "Fox News Sunday." Rice said Bush's claim was a small component of his case against Saddam Hussein."It is ludicrous to...

Intelligence breakdown after Britain dismissed US doubts over Iraq nuclear link to Niger Kamal Ahmed, political editorSunday July 13, 2003The Observer Britain and America suffered a complete breakdown in relations over vital evidence against Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, refusing to share information and keeping each other in the dark over key elements of the case against the Iraqi dictator. In a remarkable letter released last night, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, reveals a catalogue of disputes between the two countries, lending more ammunition to critics of the war and exerting fresh pressure on the Prime Minister. The...

ENTEBBE, Uganda - President Bush (news - web sites) and his national security adviser on Friday put responsibility squarely on the CIA (news - web sites) for the president's erroneous claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq (news - web sites) tried to acquire nuclear material from Africa. "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," Bush told reporters in Uganda. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) was more direct, saying, "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety." If CIA Director George Tenet had concerns about the...

White House ignored CIA over Iraq uranium claim (Reuters) - July 11 2003 6:13 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House ignored a request by the CIA to remove a statement in President George W. Bush's State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for its nuclear weapons programme, CBS Evening News reports. The White House acknowledged this week it had been a mistake to put the claim about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa in Bush's January speech and that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged. Critics have seized on the statement...