Spooks are always fascinating

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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 75 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very informative read

As with most books of this type, George Tenant has a tendency toward self aggrandtizement and patting himself on the back a little too often. That being said, I thought the book offered many tidbits of insider information not found in the deluge of information already available on many of the topics he covered.

Tenant's explanation of his involvement with the 2003 State of the Union "sixteen words" debacle, the administration's handling of pre-war CIA intelligence reports regarding the ties between Saddam and Osama bin Laden (especially Dick Cheney's choice to blatantly ignore the CIA's findings), and their cloudy information regarding WMD were all points of view I appreciated hearing. Although the author never comes right out and calls anyone a liar, he makes it clear much of the information this administration chose to use did not have the support of the intelligence agencies.

The book's narrative is entertaining and well-written and I felt as though Mr. Tenant was attempting to give a fair anyalysis of events and the people who shaped them.

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At the Center of the Storm

I found the book very interesting. It definately workth to read it.

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A Must Read

George Tenet's book "At the Center of the Storm" is not a belated effort to offer excuses for the failure of the CIA to prevent the 9/11 tragedies or to provide the Bush administration with correct intelligencee before the
decision to invade Iraq, as some critics have said. In fact, the opposite is true. Tenet, with remarkable candor,
identifies not only the shortcomings of the intelligence commuity but his own mistakes.
The book, however, is much more than a litany of errors. To a degree seldom if ever seen in other books that have covered critically or otherwise the inside operations of the American government at the highest levels, Tenet gives astonishing details about the real way major decisions are made, how interlligence is gathered and evaluated, how the various agencies cooperate or feud over turf, how human beings having tremendous power may not be as wise, impartial, competent or honest as the ordinary citizen wants to believe that they are. He does that by naming names, describing in detail specific meetings, revealing what happened behind the scenes at critical moments in the years Tenet was Director of the CIA. This is not hearsay, or second-tier stuff.
I found especially refreshing his admission that, in retrospect, it appears that Saddam Hussein deliberately fed the intelligence community with false information to create the impression that he possessed biological and chemical weapons with the expectation that this would deter the United States from invading Iraq (pp.316-333). "Before the war," Tenet writes on p. 333, "we didn't understand that he was bruffing, and he didn't understand that [in threatening to invade] we were not." Interestingly, in my bi-weekly column in "The National Herald," I had presented on July 24, 2004 (p.7) under the title "A Saddam Hoax?" evidence that Saddam had indeed used disinformation deliberately as a deterrent.
Georger Tenet's book is an eye-opener and a must-read for every citizen who wants to know with specifics how our leaders get by, their own choice, into situations leading to disastrous consequences, and how uncommon is common sense in high places.
Professor Dimitrioss G. Kousoulas

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Totally Credible

I've seen Genrge Tenent making the rounds of the talk shows and found his take on the actions of the CIA to be credible sounding enough though I know the attack dogs are out to discredit him. Reading his new book gives a great deal of context to the actions of ther CIA and I found the first half on the structural issues concerning his tenure at CIA and his prosecution of the war on terror in Afghanistan to be completely credible and full of candor. I only hope the second half in Iraq sheds more light on the murky dealings that led to this war.

Spooks are always fascinating

Very engrossing and scary. But you feel the obligations George Tenet has
to keep the secrets as just when it gets exciting he has to hold back
the juicy details. Also one wonders how this guy ever made it to be DCI -he doesn't come across as having the intellect and depth one assumes would be a requirement. But a good read.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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