OUT OF THE LINE OF FIRE

摘要

On the first floor of cia head-quarters in Langley, Va., below the seventh-floor office of Director George Tenet, there is a hallway lined with signed photographs of all the Presidents who have served since the agency was established in 1947. The inscription from the first of them, Harry Truman, says it all: TO THE CIA, A NECESSITY TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM ONE WHO KNOWS. More than a half-century later, George W. Bush could sign a picture to the CIA with practically the same sentiment. In the world after 9/11, in which intelligence has an importance like never before, so does the CIA, and not just to the President. Nothing proved its significance like the invasion of Iraq, the first time the U.S. has gone to war largely on the basis of intelligence alone-much of it faulty, flimsy or grossly misread. For months now the failures of U.S. intelligence have been at center stage as Congress has raked through the missteps that led to 9/11 and the misevaluation of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. With Tenet and his CIA at or near the focus of every inquiry, most of Washington assumed that he would be out of a job after the election -but not before. Tenet took Washington by surprise last week. On Wednesday night, after conferring with White House chief of staff Andrew Card, he spent 45 minutes alone with Bush in the White House family quarters. What he brought to the President was his letter of resignation, effective July 11, his seventh anniversary as director.