CIA Director George Tenet resigned as head of the U.S. intelligence agency, President Bush announced Thursday.

FOX News also published a memo George Tenet addressed CIA employees Thursday to tell them of his plans to resign in which he says: I have decided to step down as Director of Central Intelligence, effective July 11th, the seventh anniversary of my being sworn in as DCI.

The news made all the headlines as the media speculated why Tenet has stepped down.

In the U.S.

According to FOX News, Tenet's announcement came amid fresh controversy over intelligence issues, including an alleged Pentagon leak of highly classified intelligence to Ahmad Chalabi (search), an Iraqi politician. At the same time, a federal grand jury is pressing its investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's name, and Bush acknowledged he might be questioned in the case.

Reuters' correspondant in Washington also connects Tenet's resignation to months of mounting calls [...] because of his agency's erroneous intelligence. And the same analysis is made by NPR which cites failures in intelligence gathering leading up to the war in Iraq.

Washington Post Associate Editor Robert G. Kaiser offers some reasons that could have led to Tenet's decision. In my view Tenet has been hanging by a string for a long time. When Bob Woodward's new book came out, describing how he had reassured an uncertain President Bush that the intel on Iraqi WMD was "a slam dunk," I cringed for him. But he survived that revelation. But more are in the pipeline, particularly from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 Commission, both of which I expect to be crtical of the CIA. So there is no shock here that Tenet is out. [...] We have expected many of the senior Bush admnistration people to be leaving, but after the election not before.

On CNN, Tenet had faced heavy criticism over the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, and on the war in Iraq, in which pre-invasion U.S. estimates that Iraq was amassing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction now appear to have been incorrect. But David Ensor outilines I would like to point out one other thing about George Tenet and his longevity amid all the "failures" that have been talked about. In a way, it's been useful to President Bush to keep George Tenet. George Tenet has been a lightning rod, someone who could fall on his sword from time to time, be blamed for what seemed to be failures of U.S. intelligence. And it's allowed the president to deflect the blame in a different direction.

For the Christian Science Monitor, there's bad news and good news in CIA Director George Tenet's sudden resignation. The bad news is that it deprives President Bush of someone he insists has been a trusted adviser. The personal chemistry between the backslapping Mr. Bush and his gregarious chief of intelligence has always been good. The good news is that an official who attracted criticism as surely as if he were a lightning rod on top of the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters is now gone.

Around the world

Al-Jazeera concentrates on Tenet's failures: Tenet's position as DCI has been under increasingly critical scrutiny for months amid mounting controversy over the quality of US intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons programmes. In the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration repeatedly claimed its intelligence showed Saddam had active nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes. Those allegations formed the basis of Washington's justification for attacking Iraq to topple Saddam. But subsequent searches for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have yielded no evidence of any such weapons or active programmes - suggesting that US intelligence had either been wrong, misinterpreted or manipulated.

The Guardian offers nothing new as it just reproduces an Associated Press article (which can also be found on Yahoo!).

In its Exit George, Who Did his Best... paper, The Scotman is a bit more aggressive, concentrating on the fact Tenet was not cut out for the job.

The BBC concludes Mr Tenet's resignation coincided with a new political storm over the alleged leak of highly classified intelligence to Ahmad Chalabi, a disgraced Iraqi politician who was backed by the US until recently.

How blogs are reporting the news:

Boy From Troy - Tenet "resigns" from CIA: lists about every blog there is. Excellent roundup.
A Small Victory - 101 Reasons Why Tenet Left
Secular Blasphemy - Tenet resigns
iddybud - George Tenet Has Resigned
Notes on the Atrocities - October Surprise and The Times has a screamer headline...
Sisyphus Shrugged - now this is interesting
c0llision.org - CIA director resigns for "personal reasons"

Categorie(s)/Catégorie(s): World

Feedback/Réaction(s): TrackBack & pings(1) | Comments/Commentaires(0) | Referring Web Pages, last 5 days