Sunday, July 24, 2011

Chapter from Fenton Book Available Online

It mostly concerns the CIA's failure to notify the FBI that al-Hazmi and al-Midhar were in the United States, and goes over in some detail George Tenet's inconsistent responses to inquiries about the same. It's all familiar stuff, gone over in detail in Shenon's The Commission. Fenton's main addition to the story is his implication that the failures of the CIA were intentional and not simply mistakes or incompetence as here:

Some of these errors, such as the failure to pick up surveillance at the airport, may seem genuine errors of the sort made by all complex organizations. However, Bangkok station’s behavior when being queried about the cable is highly suspicious. Why claim it did not have the departure information and would have difficulty obtaining it, when it probably already had it or could get it easily? And why omit Almihdhar’s name from the March 5 cable?


Philip Zelikow, generally portrayed by the Truthers as one of the villains, actually comes off pretty well in this chapter:

Philip Zelikow, one of the staffers who interviewed Tenet, later said there was no one “a-ha moment” when they realized Tenet was not telling them the full truth, but his constant failure to remember key aspects disturbed them, and in the end “we just didn’t believe him.” After the meeting, Zelikow allegedly reported to the Commissioners that Tenet perjured himself. The staff and most of the Commissioners came to believe that Tenet was “at best, loose with the facts,” and at worst “flirting with a perjury charge.” It seems that even Commission Chairman Tom Kean came to believe that Tenet was a witness who would “fudge everything.”

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