Show How the CIA failed us Richard N. N Perle Special to The Washington Post George Tenet sets the stage in his memoir by recalling a conversation he claims to have had with meon meon me meon on Sept 12 2001 As I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West WestI I Wing Winge I 1 saw Richard t 1 Perle the exiting building just as asI I was about to enter Perle turned to me and said Iraq has to pay aprice a aprice aprice price for what happened yesterday They bear responsibility I looked back at Perle and thought Who has he been meeting with in the White House so e early in the morning on today of all days But I was in Europe on Sept 12 2001 unable to get a return flight to Washington and I did not tell Tenet that Iraq was responsible for the Sept 11 I 1 attacks not then not ever That should have been the end of the story a faulty recollection perhaps attributing to me something he may have heard elsewhere an honest mistake So I was surprised when having been made aware of his error Tenet reasserted his claim saying So Imay I Imay Imay may have been off on the day but Im I'm not off on what he said and what he believed On Meet the Press last Sunday Tenet argued that his version seems to be corroborated by bya a comment I made to columnist D. RobertD RoberttD Novak on Sept 17 and aletter a aletter letter to President Bush that I 1 signed with 40 others on Sept 20 But my word 10 comment to Novak made no claim that Iraq was responsible for Sept 11 Neither did the letter to the president which said that any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Hussein from power Tenet insists on equating two statements that are not at all the same that Iraq was responsible for Sept 11 II which I never said and that removing Hussein before he could share chemical biological or nuclear weapons with terrorists had become an urgent matter which I did say He continues to assert falsely that the presidents president's decision to remove was encouraged by lies about Iraq's responsibility for the Sept 1 11 II 1 attacks Understandably anxious to counter the myth that we went into Iraq on the basis of his agency's faulty intelligence Tenet seeks to substitute another myth that the decision to remove Hussein resulted from the nefarious influence of the vice president and a cabal of intellectuals To advance that idea a theme of his book he has attributed to me and to others statements that were never made Careful readers will see at once that what Tenet calls corroboration is nothing of the sort But Tenet is not a careful reader a serious deficiency in a CIA director and a c catastrophe for an intelligence organization Indeed sloppy analysis and imprecision with evidence got Tenet and the rest of us stuck in a credibility gap that continues to damage our foreign policy |