GEORGE TENET: HERO OR ENEMY?

The Average Man has a love/hate relationship with George Tenet. If you remember, he was the head of the CIA under Bush who made the famous "slam dunk" comment regarding Iraq's WMD's. At the time, I harbored only negative feelings towards Mr. Tenet. To me, he was simply part of the Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz axis of evil that lied our country into war, and I was all the more angry when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a reward for all his failures. Tenet, Brownie, Chertoff ... they were all the same to me.

Having said that, I have to admit that my attitude has softened a bit towards our former CIA chief. You might think the reason for my change of heart has to do with his new book, “At the Center of the Storm," where he has some not so nice things to say about the Bush administration. Well, that's certainly part of it, but it's definitely not the whole story. No, for me, it started with a little PBS show called Frontline. If I could convince you to watch one thing this year, it would be the episode titled The Dark Side. It is hands down one of the most important documentaries about our current White House that you will ever see ... I promise. Now, for the record, I didn't come away from that show loving Tenet, but I did leave it thinking that the guy was more than competent. Amongst other things, I learned was the following:

1) Tenet and the CIA knew that 9/11 was coming. It was they who wrote the PDB stating "Bin Laden determined to strike in the United States." And it was Tenet who's "hair was on fire" in August of 2001 because something bad was on the horizon. He was not incompetent. He was ignored.

2) Immediately after 9/11, Rumsfeld wanted to go to Iraq ... badly. Again, it was Tenet and the CIA who said that there was no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. And Tenet made Rumsfeld look absolutely foolish due to the fact he and the CIA were ready for Afghanistan (they had been preparing years for this moment). Rumsfeld was forced by Bush -- if you can believe it -- to relinquish control to Tenet's plan as Rumsfeld simply didn't have one.

3) Tenet and the CIA were hot on the trail of Osama Bin Laden when their resources were taken away for Iraq. I think they would have captured him.

While those were all important facts revealed in the The Dark Side, there is one outstanding bit of information all Americans need to understand: Rumsfeld and Cheney hated the CIA. Why, you ask? Well, because the CIA wasn't giving them the information they wanted. So, what did they do? They ignored the CIA and made their own "intelligence gathering" organization within Pentagon, which -- no surprise -- gave them exactly the information they wanted to hear.

So, here's the thing ... I absolutely believe what Tenet says in his book: he is a scapegoat, and he got the intelligence right. We must stop saying that the CIA is broken and that 9/11 was a huge intelligence failure. Even the Democrats say this over and over. It's simply not true, and it's not fair. Let me say it again: THE CIA HAD IT RIGHT ALL ALONG! The only intelligence failure was made by those with no intelligence who didn't listen to the CIA.

It seems that most of those on the Left won't budge for Tenet. I've made this case to some friends, and their response is basically that he should have stood up and said something why he was there. And people like Arianna Huffington are saying that he should have just resigned if he truly felt this way. Making millions of dollars on a tell-all book long after you're fired -- they will say -- is not commendable behavior. You won't get an argument from me on those points. However, in a pond of moral depravity, he was far from the biggest fish. Mr. Tenet may not ultimately have had the courage to speak truth to power while running the CIA, but he is far from our enemy.