The Tenet 60 Minutes interview

Please note: if you cannot view these YouTube videos, go to Crooks & Liars Here to view the Tenet 60 Minutes interview in two parts.

Here is the 60 Minutes George Tenet interview, in four parts. I have no idea how long it will remain up on YouTube - CBS clips have a tendency to be removed on a consistent basis.

After only watching the first couple of minutes, if your reaction is anything like mine, you will view Tenet as a combative, tragic, incompetent government bureaucrat who in many ways was caught up in the incompetence of a criminally negligent administration. Maybe that's harsh, but that's my impression before reading his book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, which I just bought yesterday and will start reading very soon, maybe tonight.

Here's Part II...

It's tough to not get angry listening to Tenet. "Have you ever seen the terrain in Tora Bora?" No, Mr. Tenet, I haven't, but one would think the greatest armed forces on the planet would have the resources and means to capture or kill bin Laden. Tenet has plenty of excuses, and his combative, defensive, intentionally ambiguous words about the CIA's torture methods are troubling, but I'm also aware that I know nothing compared to Tenet about the War on Terror. Yes, I've no doubt that extreme methods need to be used on occasion, but we're America - we aren't supposed to torture people. I don't understand why that idea is so foreign to people.

I'm not without sympathy for Tenet, but I'm convinced he believes his own lies, too; to listen to him, the CIA deserves no blame for 9-11 at all. Revolting.

Part III...

Here, Tenet has more credibility, because what he says about the administration ignoring the evidence, and twisting his "slam dunk" comment for its own PR purposes rings true, without question. I'm not basing that on partisan dislike for the Bush administration, I'm basing that on other books I've read on the subject, including Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III; Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror; and Ron Suskind's book on Paul O'Neill, The Price of Loyalty : George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill.

The footage of Colin Powell giving his speech at the U.N. is particularly painful. I remember reading in Newsweek Magazine a stunning cover story about how Powell at first refused to read what White House speech writers wrote for him to say at the U.N., saying, "this speech is bullshit." It's tragic that Tenet couldn't put a stop to Powell's speech, which, from what I've read, contained a whole pack of inconsistencies and assertions based on the flimsiest of evidence.

Part IV...

Who to believe? Tenet, or the Bush administration, about the etymology of "slam dunk"? Tough to pick one there. Someone's lying.

His defensive nature about his acceptance of the Presidential Medal of Freedom is pretty telling. It's worth repeating - he could have turned the medal down. Interesting how he justifies himself: "I was accepting the medal for the work we did in Afghanistan, not for Iraq."

Medals, and their recipients, cannot and should not discriminate.

One cannot and should not be eligible for a medal some of the time, Mr. Tenet.