An Intelligence Chief Speaks Out

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	• 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

An Intelligence Chief Speaks Out

This is a valuable book and an unprecedented account by a Director of the CIA. Tenet's tenure, with its overriding focus on the threat of terrorism, bridged both the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies. Tenet is not kind to many in the Bush administration, particularly Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, Cheney, and Libbey, whom he accuses of cherry picking intelligence and asserting as fact statements that could not be backed up in their determination to justify a war with Iraq, but does not criticize the President. In the face of so many controversies and White House efforts to put the blame on intelligence for the Administration's policy errors, the book is at times inevitably defensive in tone, but this does not detract from a remarkable account full of considerable detail on matters not usually revealed in public. The "afterword" at the end makes it clear that, in Tenet's view, the war on Iraq was launched with total failure to heed warnings about the problems of winning the peace or making any real preparation therefor. For the future this account is an important reminder of both the importance and limitations of intelligence and the necessity always to "speak truth to power."

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Better than expected.

"Poor George", but this George wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. After reading what he had to say, I acquired a bit more respect for him than I had gotten from the media. George Tenet was in a tough job, made no easier by the White House and its coterie of yes-men around the other George. If the president wanted this man to be Director of Central Intelligence, he should have let him do his job, which was to oversee the collection and analysis of intelligence, not babysit the Israelis and Palestinians during interminable peace talks that eventually went nowhere. The Israelis and Palestinians are hell-bent on killing each other over their scrap of land---that's what Tenet needed to tell the president, not sit in while they pretended to negotiate. Tenet made too many trips to various places, particularly the Middle East; he should have been at Langley working. Even so, one has to give the guy credit for stamina. Tenet is very careful in this book to not directly criticize George Bush. Towards the end, particularly in the Afterword, criticism of Bush's policies, but not Bush himself, becomes more noticeable. After all, Bush invited Tenet's son to the White House for a private talk to assure the boy that he wasn't "mad" at him for being the purported reason his father resigned his job. Criticism of Vice President Dick Cheney, and several others such as Scooter Libby, is obvious. Tenet obviously thinks less of some of Cheney's doings that those of his boss. On the whole, this is a well-written and well-balanced book, and much better than expected.

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A Very Good Listen Indeed!

The book is everything a good audio book should be - well written, well read, compelling, and endlessly interesting!

Author George Tenet, Direct of the CIA under Presidents Clinton and Bush, reads the foreward and a long, detailed, and tremendously insightful conclusion in which he sums up the major themes of his book; 9-11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the War on Terrorism in general, and most importantly, the uses and mis-uses of intelligence during this critical period in history by the Bush Administration and Congress.

I found this audio book extremely compelling. Tenet, who is clearly much more comfortable with the written word than he is with the spoken word, organizes his arguments powerfully and meticulously, leaving this listener with a strong impression of the former Director of the CIA.

Tenet takes the blame for the CIA's shortcomings and errors during his tenure, especially for overstating the level of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. But he also makes it clear that he believes that key members of the Administration misused intelligence to justify launching a war against Iraq.

Tenet's conclusion is a warning that unless we change our attitudes and policies in the Middle East and Iraq, our War on Terrorism could last twenty-five years or more.

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cdp man

I found this very interesting and provided a background knowledge of events that were transpiring right under our nose. Although I believe a lot of fact, there was too much justifying, but that may have been necessary to cope with a very difficult time and responsibility.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

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