Sources close to Tenet say he is pondering his exit strategy. He had already been thinking about calling it quits, they maintain. At six years, he has served longer than all but two of the agency’s past directors. But the timing is tricky: go now, and it looks like he was forced out. Wait too long, and he risks becoming an issue in the 2004 campaign. Bush voiced confidence in Tenet on Saturday...
Kind of like the "vote of confidence" the owners give a baseball manager before they give him the axe!
.... but, as one official says, “he’s not going to stay forever.” The knives are out: Pat Roberts, the Senate Intelligence chairman, scolded Tenet for his “extremely sloppy handling” of Iraqi intelligence and denounced agency leaks “to discredit the president.”
Doesn't Roberts does the winger projection thing beautifully?
If there was any sloppy handling going on, it was from White House political operatives, who have by now succeeded in completely politicizing our intelligence services, and all sides on the controversy have been leaking and fingerpointing furiously. Watch Roberts! He's a coming man!
Meantime, midlevel staffers are still squabbling over who knew what. The White House had hoped that Tenet’s official admission would put an end to the questions about Iraq intelligence and take the heat off Bush. If anything, it may only turn up the flame.
Spiky -- who we remember well as a MW for the vast right-wing conspiracy -- has a piece of misdirection here. "Midlevel staffers"? Like Cheney, Condi, and Bush?
To repeat: Cheney knew from Ambassador Wilson, and Condi knew from her assistant, Steven Hadley, since Tenet talked to him to get the line out of Bush's October speech.
And Bush knew, since either Cheney or Condi had to have talked to him. Heck, Tenet must have talked to him -- Bush himself says he met with Tenet "every single day". They never talked about Iraq, and Tenet never warned him about phony tales of Niger uranium? (Thanks to alert reader simplicissimus for "every single day.")
Bush "considers the matter closed." "Mission accomplished," eh?