George Tenet and the Last Great Days of the CIA

George Tenet was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1997-2004. He was good at what he did; he was so good that he was asked to stay on as the Director of the CIA when President Bush won the Presidency. The one thing Tenet experienced with the Bush administration that he did not experience with the Clinton Administration is he became part of the President’s inner circle. Once George Tenet experienced the inner circle, he no longer was able to focus on rebuilding the agency (Stillman 2000). In George Tenet and the Last Great Days of the CIA, Richard White, Jr. gives us the rise and fall of the CIA under CIA Director George Tenet.

With any profession ethics always plays an important role. We run across many ethical situations and it always come down to what should you do? In George Tenet’s case it was no different. During his political career Tenet had faced many ethical dilemmas, some of those ethical dilemmas include him serving as a go-between person making his job politically complicated, not being able to openly disagree and communicate with the members of President Bush administration, even when he knew the President was wrong he still backed him, and being in a cross road for performing the duties of his job and being loyal to the president.

Tenet had always seen the role of CIA as an “honest broker that avoided direct involvement in foreign policy making” (Stillman 2000). In 1998 he stood as a “go-between” for Yasser Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during a peace talk hosted by President Clinton, that action contradicted his statement. Tenet’s response was that the CIA was

the only entity both sides could trust. The CIA serving more as a diplomat than a spymaster, made those on the inside slightly uncomfortable.

When the acts of 9/11 happened Tenet knew that it was the work of al-Qaeda. Tenet had the full support of from President Bush to do whatever he needed to get the job done. The problem became when Vice President Chaney announced at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, that it was Saddam Hussein was the one with the weapons of mass destruction. Tenet, did not agree with this analysis in fact he stated “the speech went well beyond what our analysis could support.” Because Tenet had not had that conversation with Vice President Chaney about his speech, it sparked the beginning of a huge debate over the agreement between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda terrorist. In 2007 Tenet went on Sixty Minutes and announced that there had been no connection with between Saddam and al-Qaeda (Giraldi).

When Tenet was asked to stay on as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency by President Bush, he became a member of the President’s inner circle. He would brief the President every morning, this had CIA officers complaining that Tenet was too close to the President. Tenet had to please the President, even if that means stretching the facts to suit the policy (Boyle). In January of 2003 President Bush gave a State of the Union speech stating that the US had learned that Saddam had recently brought significant quantities of mass destruction weapons from Africa. Now prior to the speech Tenet had taken that comment out of the President speech because it was unsupported by the CIA, but later he recanted and stated it was a slam-dunk.

When Tenet took over his role as the Director of the CIA his primary focus was to rebuild. He went to Congress to get an approved budget so that he would be able to do things he needed to get the CIA where it needed to be. Once Tenet became a part of the President’s inner circle not only did he brief the President every morning but he also attended White House Policy meeting and his focus no longer became rebuilding the CIA. Some of the CIA officers felt that he could not carry out his role because he was too close to the President. It became a dilemma when he wanted to please everyone involved instead of letting the analysis speak for itself. These ethical dilemmas impacted George Tenet significantly he was unable to effectively perform his job, his leadership abilities was questioned, his judgment was clouted, and he became known as someone that was not trust worthy.

Tenet had faced many ethical issues in his time working for the government; there are various ways in which Tenet addressed some them. First when Tenet became Director of the Central Intelligence he knew that he had a problem on his hand because the department was short staffed, the budget was in disarray, and there had been an inconsistent leadership. Tenet knew that when he was sworn in as the eighteenth director he would have his hands full and to be effective he would have to tackle those problems first. Another situation, I mentioned earlier when the CIA served as a go-between for Yasser Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. His actions were not well received but Tenet stood by his answer, he displayed good leadership qualities in handling the situation. When the Clinton Administration became aware of the threat by Osama Bin Laden, Tenet warned to the top intelligence officials “we are at war,” “I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community” (Stillman 2000). This showed that Tenet was on top of his job and looking out for the welfare of the

country. He made sure government officials were advised on the best way to handle the situation so that the country was not unprepared. In 1998 the US intelligence community got a big surprise when they received word that India began doing a nuclear testing program. Tenet confessed that neither him nor his unit had a clue. Tenet was honest and shouldered the blame.

In CIA there are some ethical obligations that overlapped. These strategies help to provide a road map that ensures development is ongoing for an individual and an organization. Having ethical strategies in places allows for monitoring and policing to avoid legal and ethical violations. There are four strategies that I found to be competing as it relates to many intergovernmental organizations. These type of strategies make sure all activities are logical and that they fit the guidelines.

Communication strategy is one of the most important strategies any organization can have. This strategy helps to build an ethical culture. It communicates the behavioral expectations, while also providing training on compliance and expectations, and a protocol for which things are reported. Ethics policy strategy provides ways to communicate in an agency effectively, as well as provide the expectation for behavior. It also provides an individual ways to apply value to any given situation. Value strategy provides guidance to those within the organization. This particular strategy works hand and hand with communication strategy, in the sense by communicating with an individual you are teaching them the values of the organization. Lastly is leadership strategy. This strategy’s focus is enforcement, it sets the tone for an organization. If you have a good leader at the top then an organization is taken seriously.

In his new role as Director for the CIA George Tenet top priorities were to improve the morale of the agency, define the agency’s mission, more recruits, better equipment, and an increase in the agency’s budget. To ensure he met his priorities, Tenet began rebuilding his agency by appointing a chief financial officer to get the agency’s budget under control. He also called back retired veterans that had talent, and when the White House didn’t give Tenet the money he needed Tenet had no problem with going to Congress.

Relevant notions for defining and prioritizing ethical obligations starts with the government and how they handle ethics. The government should make use of techniques like ways of handling obedience and disobedience. There should be a creation for an organization that is inadequately equipped so to deal with the available government such as when the internal opportunities for voicing one’s dissent limited or decline (Giraldi 2007). There should be a creation for ways of handling dishonor and not just military officials. Lastly the creation of government on what to do when orders are being neglected, and the focus on building public and private partnerships.

In Conclusion, George Tenet was a good guy with good intentions. His ethics became under attack when he allowed his popularity with the government to effect the decisions of his job. A lot of this makes you think if George Tenet had spoken up like he should have would we be in a war now?

Reference:

Boyle, Michael (2008). A war in search of a rationale. International Affairs 84 (5) 1009-1023.

Comparative Strategy 18 (1) 100

Giraldi, Philip (2007). George Tenet’s Machiavellian Moment Mediterranean Quarterly, 18 (3) 31-38

Hornatt, Andrea, Fredericks, Susan, An Empirical and Theoretical Exploration of Disconnections Between Leadership and Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 59 (3) 233- 246

Stillman, R.J. III (2010). Public Administration Concepts and Cases (9th Ed). New York: Houghton Mifflin. U.S. Department of Interior (1947).