CIA Director Tenet: A Survivor

George Tenet moved the CIA director's job out of the shadows, in the end dividing Washington on the question of whether he was a scapegoat or flawed sentinel in the Sept. 11 attacks and beyond.

Tenet was the highest-ranking holdover from the Clinton administration — and hold on he did, through a series of crises shining harsh light on weaknesses in American intelligence and the national security system.

He resigned Thursday, praised for his work by President Bush and many lawmakers even as others laid critical intelligence failures on terrorism and Iraq at his feet.

The son of Greek immigrants, Tenet rose from No. 2 in the agency to become chief in 1997, and quickly declared that the post-Cold War CIA knew just what it had to do. "We are no longer in search of a mission," he said. "We know what the mission is. We know what the targets are."

They were, among others, terrorists, weapons runners and drug traffickers, not the usual suspects in U.S. clandestine operations. Insiders have portrayed Tenet as an early and persistent voice of alarm about al Qaeda's intent and ability to attack Americans.

Former national security aide Richard Clarke, in his book faulting Bush and his top advisers for not taking al Qaeda seriously enough, quoted Tenet as telling him, just a few months before the Sept. 11 attacks, "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

Yet the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks harshly criticized the CIA for not doing more to foresee and stop the attacks.

Later, when Bush was building his case for war against Iraq, Tenet reportedly assured him he had "slam dunk" evidence showing Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction — a leading justification for the invasion. Such weapons have not been found.

The intense scrutiny of U.S. intelligence made Tenet more of a public figure than Americans are used to seeing in their spymaster.

CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports Tenet earns almost universal praise for his dedication. But many also believe that he got whipsawed by both the Vice President and the Defense Secretary in the debates over weapons of mass destruction. Especially when they wanted Tenet to place more stock in information coming from Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader who is now believed to have been feeding U.S. information to Iran.

Tenet spoke openly of the agency's successes and failures, and for years enjoyed a collegial relationship with members of Congress from both parties dating from his time as staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee during the first Bush administration.

Bush had him come to many of his morning national security briefings, a departure from Clinton's practice of getting the daily reports in writing.

Tenet increased the number of covert officers in training and impressed Bush with his boots-on-the-ground commitment of CIA officers in the Afghan war, where operatives served as a paramilitary force.

"He brought stability and he had access to two presidents of entirely different personalities, political perspectives," said Judith Yaphe, a 20-year CIA veteran and senior research fellow at the National Defense University. "That's kind of stunning when you think about it."

She added: "My guess is that he's exhausted."

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