From the Nelson Report:
Posted by DeLong at July 23, 2003 07:48 PM | TrackBackTalking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: As one Administration source put it, privately, today: "Between Tenet and Hadley, Condi now has the choice of saying she's a fool, or a liar…if not both. Bottom line is she failed to protect the President…look at all this lame stuff about him not being a 'fact checker'. It's just incredible."
-- even before last week, a source close to the White House told us, "the President now sees that he's exposed on the intel problems. And he now sees who's been manipulating him, and he's not happy about it. No president likes to be embarrassed, but this stuff goes to the heart of all the reservations, pre-9/11, about his intelligence, his attention span, and his interest in foreign affairs."
12. Three weeks ago, this source speculated that it would be "difficult" for Bush to fire the senior officials responsible, for obvious reasons, since they would include Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice, at a minimum, and that Tenet seemingly had so ingratiated himself at the personal level, he could escape punishment.
-- today, while no one wanted to speculate about Rummy and Cheney, in the absence of new disclosures, disparate Administration sources confirm that it is "generally accepted" that Tenet will be fired from the CIA, if only because of what he started last week...
The people who really should be fired are often the best at finding political cover. I always had the impression that Condi Rice was more like Bush's minder, the one assigned to make sure he doesn't get into trouble, serve as a walking encyclopedia for the factually challenged, etc. After all she goes everywhere with the president. Therefore, it seems that it would be difficult for her to mind George and run her own shop at the same time. With his domestic minder gone back to Texas, Rice is almost indispensible.
Tenet is a Clinton holdover and useful as a scapegoat. He may get cut loose in a fall for the 9/11 report. You cannot fire the VP. Cheney is tied too closely to the money donors. He is only gone if he is seen as a liability. The press had Rummy out the door before 9/11 for challenging the defense contractors and military status quo.
The one guy that should have been fired was Louis Freeh. As FBI director he only wanted to investigate crimes after terrorist committed them, not be proactive. Clinton could not fire him because he was carrying water for the Congressional GOP faux scandals and Clinton would have set off a firestorm if Freeh were fired. The FBI suffered greatly because of partisan politics.
Posted by: bakho on July 24, 2003 07:30 PM