05 June 2004

 

 

George Tenet handed in his resignation just before the President took off for Italy last week. He is going home, and so it Jamie Pavet, his Operations Chief. Washington is all abuzz with speculation, which is mostly what we do for a living here. Buzz. And speculate.

 

There isn't anything else to do while stalled in traffic. Thank God for advances in wireless communications.

 

Unless something really strange happens, George will be the Director of Central Intelligence I knew the best, though we were by no means close.

 

By complete coincidence, I was with him when the first tower came down on 9/11 and we thought we might have an airplane coming for us at Langley. He was cool as a cucumber, though he went gray and the building dropped, and we knew that the other would be coming down, too, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it.

 

I sat next to him in a hearing at the House Intelligence Committee, the place where the Director of DIA normally would be, but I was just keeping the seat warm, reflected glory. I used to brief him periodically, and once found myself standing next to him in the men's room on the sixth floor of the Original Headquarters Building when he was walking around, the famous unlit cigar clenched in his teeth and a big grin.

 

He recognized me, even in the sideways look. "Howya doin'?" he said, and considering the position I was in, I told him just fine.

 

The wooden "I'm leaving to spend more time with my family" does not ring quite so hollow. George wanted to retire last year, when he got his thirty years of federal service, but the President asked him to stay on and he did. The college bills are indeed coming for the DCI, and he has been at the pay-cap for federal executives for a long time.
It is time for him to write his book, and serve on corporate boards, and rake in some money before he retires. With the 9/11 panel and the Senate reports all coming along in the next few weeks, he will stay on till July, take the heat, and be gone on his seventh anniversary as the head of the intelligence community.

 

That will remove him as a lightning-rod for the election and enable him to defend himself in a vigorous manner as a private citizen which he could not do while still in the job.

 

John McLaughlin, his deputy who will be Acting (just as George did) is a capable and colorless bureaucrat and will keep things running. His challenge will be the next attack on American soil. He is the intramural favorite to be the next real DCI, but since Porter Goss, former CIA case officer and Chairman of the House Intel Committee, is leaving Congress, he also would be a top pick.

 

That assumes the Bush folks are back after November, which is an open issue at this point. Plus, there are plans in Defense and on the Hill for a complete restructuring of the Intelligence Community, which, like life itself, will be brutish if not short.

 

I'll think about Intelligence Democrats who might be willing to serve under a Kerry Administration, but it could well be that George is going as the last DCI with the ultimate control of the budget.

 

But whatever happens, we will buzz and speculate for a while since that is what we do.

 

The matter will not be decided until sometime after November.

 

Jamie Pavet has been a cool and competent professional as the head of DO since "the gloves came off" after 9/11, and like George, I think he feels it is just time to go. There will be another behind him, not subject to Senate confirmation, and with any luck, he or she will be as ruthless and efficient as the job requires.

 

It is a hard thing to discern the future, and much easier to deal with the past. That is why we need spies to see the future, since it is the nature of the analytic beast to look at the near-past and try to connect the dots to an uncertain future.

 

Examining the entrails of the slaughtered sheep to determine if we might be having mutton for dinner.

 

Whatever else happens, George was loyal to whoever he served and always seemed to enjoy himself. He led us through some bad times, and I will always think fondly of him.

 

Copyright 2004 Vic Socotra

 

04 June 2004