The importance of having "a sense of where you are"

books:

	• At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA George Tenet HarperCollins, 2007 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 76 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The importance of having "a sense of where you are"

The "storm" metaphor seems to have almost unlimited applications to various circumstances and developments during the first six years of George W. Bush's presidency, beginning with the Supreme Court decision which (in effect) confirmed his election in 2000 and continuing through tragic events in the World Trade Center area (the bombing in 1993 and the air attack in 2001) until today (April 30, 2007) when there are bipartisan pressures on Alberto Gonzales to resign as Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice and international pressures on Paul Wolfowitz to resign as president of World Bank. Also today, George Tenet's At the Center of the Storm was published. It provides his account of the years during which he served as the Director of Central Intelligence for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Tenet held that position from July 1997 to July 2004. Already, this book has created a "storm" of positive as well as negative reactions that presumably will continue, at least for a while.

Frankly, although I have read a number of books and articles about the current Bush administration, I do not consider myself sufficiently qualified to verify or confront most of Tenet's allegations. For example, what he claims to be a deliberate, almost evil misrepresentation of his reference to "slam dunk" insofar as intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq is concerned. He concedes that, in 2001, he believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but continues to insist that there was no indisputable proof of that, then or now. Here are two reasons why I rate this book so highly:

1. As an outsider" to the culture in which the federal government (especially the executive branch) functions, I was fascinated by what I learned about the process of obtaining information worldwide, then converting it into "intelligence" by evaluating and verifying it. Of course, facts are most preferable but immensely difficult to determine. Hence the importance of obtaining as much information as possible from the most reliable sources, then exposing that information to rigorous and redundant evaluation to reveal trends patterns, variances, and contingencies of highest probability.

2. In On War (first published in 1832), Carl von Clausewitz observes: "The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently -- like the effect of a fog or moonshine -- gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance." I include this brief quotation because, as I read Tenet's book, I developed a much greater respect for the challenges of dealing with so many sudden uncertainties during a given crisis. I vividly recall that September morning in 2001, watching Good Morning America, and observed one tower burning and then the second tower struck! Although the effects of "a fog or moonshine" concealed for several hours the truth of what had happened there, then in Washington and later in rural Pennsylvania, Tenet insists he knew immediately that the attacks were by al-Quida (his preferred spelling). Perhaps his reaction is an example of what Malcolm Gladwell characterizes as a "blink" of cognition.

I remain curious why Tenet has waited so long to come forward with this account of his public service during the first term of the George W. Bush administration. I also wish he had developed in much greater depth his thoughts about lessons he learned that may be of value to the next President or at least to the next Director of the C.I.A.

Years ago in a book he wrote about Bill Bradley, John McPhee observed that Bradley demonstrated the importance of having "a sense of where you are." We expect so much of public service at all levels - and we should - but are well-advised to keep in mind that all of them are imperfect human beings, be they in the Oval Office, 10 Downing Street, or wherever. That is one of the key points in Theodore Roosevelt's speech at the Sorbonne, "Citizenship in a Republic" (April 23, 1910), when discussing "the man in the arena":

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

In this volume, Tenet is remarkably effective when explaining his "sense of place" while Director of the C.I.A., then and now, after having had what may have been a necessary period of reflection. Whatever we may say about his public service, he was definitely "in the arena" and much of the time, having to contend - each day -- with "a fog or moonshine" of uncertainty amidst the turbulence of various perils.

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The good and bad of George Tenet

I have mixed opinions about George Tenet and the book didn't really change that. His pre-9/11 career wasn't particularly distingished. However, after 9/11 he really stepped up in terms of the war in Afghanistan and rolling up portions of the Bin Laden organization. But then he reverted to his old style. Like Colin Powell, he allowed others with an agenda for Iraq to run all over him. He then allowed himself as an outsider in the administration to be blamed by almost everyone in washington for 9/11 and Iraq. Years later, he has written a very thoughtful book on events. But its years too later.

The biggest revelation in the book is confirmation of things that were suspected. The "slam dunk" comment about Iraqi WMDs wasn't what it seemed. Insiders at the top of the Bush Administration needed someone to blame for WMDs not being found in Iraq. And so one of them used Bob Woodward to get stories published in the Washington Post (and in books) putting all the blame on Tenet using the "slam dunk" quote. The incident actually says less about the white house than it does about Bob Woodward, his total lack of ethics and his series of so-called insider histories of post 9/11 events.

Those wanting a book hostile to the post 9/11 policies of the Bush Administration (detainee treatment, Iraq war) will not find that this book is what they wanted. Tenet believes in most of what he and the administration have done. His problems are more with the nature of how he was used and abused by a White House where loyalty is a matter of personal relationships rather than competence. This is a white house which will self-destructively try to hold on to failures (Rumsfeld, "Brownie", Gonzales) who have friends while throwing those without friends to the wolves.

The most useful part of the book is probably Tenet's account of the war in Afghanistan and the CIA's role in it. Its not that new information necessarly, but that its a useful view of what happened from one of the principals.

Tenet will disappoint some in not going after Bush. But in reading the book, you don't get the sense of a president who is really either leading or directing events. The impression that I get is of an administration where decisions are made in private, people unofficially go convince the president to go along with what they want and then it happens. Meetings exist only to confirm decisions that have already been made.

Tenet's failure was in not going to the president with a strong point of view at certain times. He was too timid in pushing the danger of terrorism as an issue before 9/11 and he seemed to avoid a frank discussion of Iraq after 9/11. Would his pushing harder have made a difference? Probably not. Colin Powell had both access and public prestige beyond Tenet but wasn't able to change the course of events as far as Iraq goes. And considering that he wasn't a "Bush" guy, his ability to go into the office and have it out over a fundemental policy would be limited anyway.

What Tenet perfect? No. But in an administration full of bad people and non-entities, he comes across as one of the better ones. He wasn't a great leader, but he was still better than Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Cheney and General Tommy Franks). He certainly did not deserve to have his reputation trashed by various people over the past few years.

If nothing else, the initial war in Afghanistan as covered in the book should serve as an example to future leaders of how to fight a war in a bad place.
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A footnote:
At some point in 2008, all the positive feedback associated with the review was removed without explaination.

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Still at the center of the storm

As someone that likes to read all side of a story, I find this book well written. It is definitely worth the read beyond the 60 Minutes sound bites. But the cloud will still persist over George Tenet head as only a part of the story. When it comes to understanding Saudi Araba and what the CIA was doing there, I find the book If Olaya Street Could Talk -- Saudi Arabia: The Heartland of Oil and Islam as a more objective book on the subject.

The Scary State Of Our World

Like I imagine so many thousands of others, I spent the last month counting down the days till the release of this book, contenting myself alongside everyone else with the tidbits revealed in the media. Ultimately, like some sort of hard-core Harry Potter fan, I used a connection at a local bookstore to get a copy at five AM, and spent this morning reading five-hundred of the most disturbing pages of revelations I've seen since the publication of Bob Woodward's State of Denial last year.

Anyone who claims this book is former CIA director George Tenet's self-exonerating backlash against his former agency or his one-time boss, President George W. Bush, has not yet read At the Center of the Storm, and is in for a surprise. If no other part of this book is read, I'd urge anyone to turn to the chapter entitled "They Want To Change The World" and then defy anyone to walk away without feeling slightly less secure. Yes, Tenet does give his side of the story for his now-infamous "slam dunk" remark, and has select critical words for the current administration, particularly Secretary of State Rice, and Vice President Cheney, but instead of using this work as a vituperous denunciation of Washington insiders, he makes what I found to be a responsible criticism of exactly what was mishandled in the time between September 11, 2001, and the period that followed the end of the (first stage of the) Iraq War, and what has come to be termed the occupation of that country.

Still, what kept me glued to these pages, what frightened and disturbed me, and what is sure to outshine the revelations on the conduct of the Bush administration and be most discussed in weeks ahead, is Tenet's revelations on the tenacity of the west's greatest foe, al-Quida (to use this book's spelling), its murderous ambitions, and the scope of what he maintains are some of its plots for mass-homicide. In At the Center of the Storm, Tenet writes of al-Qaida's 2003 plans for a gas attack on New York City's mass transit system. He tells of that organization's efforts to persuade scientists in Pakistan to sell it nuclear materials, and Tenet writes with a chilling detachment as he tells of bin Laden's meetings with Pakistani leaders with a goal of attaining that same technology. Most disconcerting of all is Tenet's statement that these meetings, including a face to face session between bin Laden and the Pakistani president, took place in the summer of 2001, mere weeks before 9-11, leading to the conclusion that things could actually have been so much worse than they were.

Tenet also has a mixed opinion on the Saudis as partners in the fight against global terrorism. On one hand he is critical of Prince Naif's frequent unwillingness to provide names of suspects, and accuses him of indifferent vacillation, and yet Tenet also has praise for (now) King Abdullah, and writes that without Saudi cooperation, US efforts to defend itself would be greatly hampered, perhaps past the point of effectiveness.

At the Center of the Storm is an engrossing read written by a credible source who one feels is coming clean here, as well as telling his side of things. Part insider's take on recent politics and policy, part revelation of the state of danger in our tumultuous world, it will become a best seller, and deserves to be.

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reviews: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, page 15, 16

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