On Digby on Woodward On Tenet

From Digby quoting Bob Woodward:

In his remarkable, important and often unintentionally damning memoir, George Tenet, the former CIA chief, describes a meeting with Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, two months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In much more vivid and emotional detail than previously reported, Tenet writes that he had received intelligence that day, July 10, 2001, about the threat from al-Qaeda that "literally made my hair stand on end."

According to At the Center of the Storm, Tenet picked up the phone, insisted on meeting with Rice about the threat from al-Qaeda, and raced to the White House with his counter-terrorism deputy, Cofer Black, and a briefer known only as "Rich B."

"There will be a significant terrorist attack in the coming weeks or months," Rich B. told Rice, and the attack would be "spectacular." Black added, "This country needs to go on a war footing now." He said that President Bush should give the CIA new covert action authorities to go after Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization. After the meeting, Tenet's briefer and deputy "congratulated each other," Tenet writes. "At last, they felt, we had gotten the full attention of the administration."

Is it me, or does this fish keep getting bigger? I know Tenet is just being a self-serving finger pointer here like the kid who rats out the others to try to get out of detention, and Condi does not dispute that he told her, but this story gets better every time he tells it. He's trying to throw Condi under the bus for hanging him out to dry on the infamous 17 words, but he ends up making himself look foolish also.

Woodward wonders why he didn't take it directly to the President. As Digby points out, though, there is no reason to believe Bush would've listened since he already blew off the CIA for telling him the same thing by famously saying, "All right, you've covered your ass, now."

With the serial lies that come out of this administration, it's hard to tell who's the more full of shit.