Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Blaming Tenet and distorting history

This piece in the Examiner seems to blame George Tenet for every post-Cold War "failure".
Commentary: Tenet needs to confess
Unfortunately, the author glosses over just how rare good HUMINT is.

She also ignores Steven Den Beste's crucial point: just because something is valuable or desirable, that does not mean it is attainable or feasible.

Katz-Keating overstates CIA's ability to generate or control sources within totalitarian societies like Iraq. Even during the Cold War, our best sources were volunteers ("walk-ins"). Essentially, they fell into our lap.

In addition, Katz-Keating blames Tenet for not revamping our HUMINT capabilities in the wake of the Ames case. She ignores the fact that CIA was paralyzed by another mole hunt in Tenet's first years as director. The hunt was conducted by the FBI which turned out to be unfortunate because the real mole was Robert Hanssen. Nonetheless, as long as CIA was under investigation by the Bureau, Tenet's ability to make big changes was limited.

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