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Dci george tenet resigns bush administration { June 3 2004 }

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   http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/politics/03CND-DIRE.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/politics/03CND-DIRE.html

June 3, 2004
An Unusually Close Relationship Comes to an End
By MARIA NEWMAN

Even among top administration officials in Washington, the relationship between President Bush and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, was unusually close.

The only holdover from the Clinton administration, Mr. Tenet has had half-hour meetings with Mr. Bush almost daily, usually starting at 8 a.m. The president has seen Mr. Tenet more often than he does Secretary of State Colin L. Powell or even Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time," Mr. Bush said at a news conference in April, talking about how concerned he was about keeping up with the threat of terror.

And even as criticism has continued to mount almost daily about intelligence failures that preceded the 9/11 attacks on Mr. Tenet's watch, the president has stuck by his C.I.A. chief.

But no more. Today, President Bush announced that Mr. Tenet would be leaving his post by next month, for "personal reasons."

"I told him I'm sorry he's leaving," the president, appearing grim, said today on the South Lawn of the White House, before leaving for Italy. "He's done a superb job on behalf of the American people."

The resignation will bring to an end the second-longest tenure of C.I.A. chiefs in the country's history. Mr. Tenet will have been on the job seven years in July, a term surpassed only by that of Allen W. Dulles, who served as director of central intelligence from 1953 to 1961.

It might seem surprising that a warm and close relationship would develop between Mr. Bush, the Texas-born, Yale-educated son of prominent New England political family, and Mr. Tenet, the voluble and barrel-chested Clinton appointee who as a youth worked as a busboy in his father's Greek diner in Queens. But those who know them say they have had a chemistry born out of both men's penchant for bluntness and straight talk.

"The most important factor in determining the director of central intelligence's success is his relationship with the president of the United States," John M. Deutch, Mr. Tenet's immediate predecessor as C.I.A. chief, told the New York Times in 2002. "And George Tenet has that as well as anybody ever has."

Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, also told The Times that same year, "They're pragmatists, they talk sort of `male talk."'

"George is a very smart person, but his rhetoric isn't theoretical," Mr. Graham added. "It's blunt. It's straightforward."

Some in Washington expressed surprise today that Mr. Tenet was going, while others said he should not be blamed for the administration's growing public problems with the continuing conflict in Iraq.

Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, called Mr. Tenet "an honorable and decent man who has served his country well in difficult times, and no one should make him a fall guy for anything."

And while he was well-liked personally, many in Washington held him partly responsible for leading the Bush administration down a path to war in Iraq without adequate reason.

"Director Tenet's resignation is long overdue," said Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who over seven years went from a strong supporter of Mr. Tenet to one of his biggest critics.

"There were more failures of intelligence on his watch as director of the C.I.A. than any other D.C.I. in our history," Mr. Shelby said. "I have long felt that, while an honorable man, he lacked the critical leadership necessary for our intelligence community to effectively operate, particularly in the post-9/11 world."

Mr. Tenet's leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency has been under fire since 9/11, and he has faced repeated criticism for overstating the case for Iraq's possession of unconventional weapons. In a now much-quoted passage from a new book by Bob Woodward, "Plan of Attack," he is said to have told the president that evidence about Iraq's illicit weapons added up to a "slam dunk."

When he faced questioning in April by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet offered an aggressive defense and often seemed combative with his answers. He insisted that his agency had provided "clear and direct" intelligence about the larger danger posed by Al Qaeda before Sept. 11.

"Warning was well understood, even if the timing and method of attacks was not," he said.

While several commission members praised Mr. Tenet, calling him energetic, entrepreneurial and smart, they minced no words in condemning the lack of preparedness at the agency, and warned that changes would have to be made.

A Republican member of the panel, John F. Lehman, who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, called Mr. Tenet a "gutsy guy who has worked very, very hard," but he nonetheless accused the spy agency of "smugness and even arrogance towards deep reform."

"There are going to be some very real changes," Mr. Lehman warned Mr. Tenet.

Mr. Tenet was born in Queens on Jan. 5, 1953. His parents were immigrants from Greece, and his father, John, operated a diner in Little Neck.

Mr. Tenet attended public schools, graduating from Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens, before moving on to Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1976. He also has a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

At the age of 29, he joined the staff of Senator John Heinz, Republican of Pennsylvania. From 1988 to 1993, he was director of the 40-member staff of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, which oversees federal intelligence agencies.

In 1993, when the Clinton administration came to power, Mr. Tenet became senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, an executive agency working out of a suite of offices adjacent to the White House. In 1995, he became the deputy C.I.A. director, and two years later was named to the top spot.

That he was reappointed in 2001 by a newly elected Republican president, even though he was originally appointed by a Democrat did not seem to stand in Mr. Tenet's way. President Bush's own father, former President George Bush, served as C.I.A. director in the Ford administration and has long said that the job should be kept separate from politics.

Mr. Tenet is married to Stephanie Glakas-Tenet and they have a son, John Michael.

When President Bush made his brief remarks about Mr. Tenet before boarding Air Force today, Mr. Bush seemed genuinely sad about the news of the intelligence chief's departure.

"George Tenet is the, is the kind of public service you like, servant you like to work with. He's strong. He's resolute," Mr. Bush said. "He has been a strong and able leader at the agency. He's been a, he's been a strong leader in the war on terror, and I will miss him."


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


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