George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, foreground, in March 2003. Mr. Tenet now says there was never a “serious debate” about the Iraq threat. Credit Eric Draper/The White House
Washington Times: George W. Bush inherited ‘crumbling’ intel community from Bill Clinton: Tenet
GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump blames Bush for failing to stop 9/11 attacks
As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump hammers away at former President George W. Bush for not stopping the September 11 attacks, another factor could be added to the debate: Mr. Bush inherited from Bill Clinton an intelligence community in terrible shape.
This fact comes not from a Republican partisan but from George Tenet, President Clinton’s CIA director, a post that at the time made him the country’s top intelligence officer.
Mr. Tenet wrote in his memoirs, “At the Center of the Storm,” that Mr. Clinton left Mr. Bush with a CIA that was in “Chapter 11.” The eavesdropping National Security Agency was “crumbling” and “going deaf,” he said.
It is one explanation for why the intelligence community failed to discover and stop the September 11 plot.
Mr. Clinton is an integral part of Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign. The record shows that, as commander in chief, he shrunk the CIA at the very time al Qaeda was expanding.
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WNU Editor: And is it better today? Conducting surveillance on us .... definitely. Conducting surveillance on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda .... I have to wonder.