Bob Woodward Reviews George Tenet's Memoir

Posted on May 7, 2007

George Tenet's new book is causing controversy, as expected. Both the left and right are furious at him, which makes for excellent book sales. Now Bob Woodward finally speaks out and admits that he is the one that pushed Tenant to write a book. Editor and Publisher reports:

Bob Woodward, who has written three books about the Iraq war, each one more skeptical about it than the previous, takes a shot at former CIA director George Tenet's new volume in The Washington Post. Woodward calls At the Center of the Storm a "remarkable, important and often unintentionally damning memoir."
He adds: "A dedicated, often innovative and strong leader beloved by many at the CIA, Tenet nevertheless was hampered by a bureaucrat's view of the world, hobbled by the traditional chain of command, convinced that the CIA director's 'most important relationship with any administration official is generally with the national security adviser.'
"No. Your most important relationship is with the president."
Woodward criticizes Tenet for not coming clean with the president -- and now the readers -- about the intelligence failures in Iraq. He also offers a full disclosure: "In discussions with Tenet as a reporter for this paper, I many times urged him to write his memoir, and, after he resigned from the CIA, I even spent a day with him and his co-writer, Bill Harlow, in late 2005 to suggest questions he should try to address. Foremost, I hoped that he would provide intimate portraits of the two presidents he had served as CIA director -- George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Instead, he has adhered to the rule of CIA directors: protect the president at all costs."

Of course, it was Woodward that first reported that Tenet said that invading Iraq and finding WMD would be "a slam dunk." Tenet says he was quoted out of context and never intended to imply that the war would be easy. So, why didn't Tenet speak up when Woodward's book came out? That's the question that talk show hosts have been lobbing at Tenet this past week, with varying degrees of success. Tenet has his story, and he's sticking to it. And a very interesting story it is. At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA is available in bookstores everywhere.