George Tenet

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George Tenet

George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953 in Flushing , New York City ) is a retired American government official. He was director of the CIA from July 11, 1997 to July 11, 2004 . On June 3, 2004, he announced his resignation; John E. McLaughlin took over the office of the director on July 11, 2004 acting.

Youth and family

George Tenet was in Flushing , a district of Queens in New York City as the son of John and Evangelia Tenet. His mother was a Greek from the Greek region of Epirus , his father was a Greek from Northern Epirus . He grew up in Little Neck, Queens, New York, attended public schools and worked in his family's fast food restaurant. Tenet holds a bachelor's degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a master's degree from the School of International Affairs at Columbia University .

He is married to Stephanie Glakas-Tenet; the couple has a son.

CIA

Since June 1995 Tenet was Deputy Director of the CIA; on July 11, 1997, he was unanimously named director by the United States Senate . Once a new government comes to power, the CIA director is usually replaced. Tenet, however, continued to work under George W. Bush after the end of the Clinton administration .

During the 1998 Middle East peace talks in Wye River , Tenet threatened to resign if Clinton granted amnesty to the convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard . It is believed by some that the independence that became evident here in his position as director of the CIA contributed to Tenet remaining in office after the Republicans came to power .

Long before the 9/11 attacks , Tenet raised the issue of the growing threat from terrorism , particularly from the Al-Qaida group , and the potential threat from nuclear weapons owned by North Korea and Iran . In July 2001, two months before the 9/11 attacks, he and the head of the CIA's anti-terrorism department, Cofer Black, warned George Bush's security advisor, Condoleezza Rice , that an al-Qaeda attack was taking place on the US is imminent.

In December 2002 Tenet received information from BND President August Hanning that the information provided by the informant “ Curveball ” about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could not be confirmed. Nevertheless, US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented this uncertain source to the UN Security Council in February 2003 as a rationale for the Iraq war .

According to official reports, George Tenet announced his resignation as CIA chief on June 3, 2004 for "personal reasons". Assumptions from other sources that his resignation had also had political reasons, he only confirmed on April 29, 2007 in an interview with CBS . In this televised interview, he made grave allegations against the White House of the current Bush administration, taking the view that a statement about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction by him and, for example, by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, taken out of context to justify the Iraq war had been abused when the decision to go to war had already been made. That controversial statement was first recorded in Bob Woodward 's Plan of Attack , and when it became known that it was unsettled, the White House dropped it. Tenet said: "People with a sense of honor would not just throw someone overboard as a diversion."

Honors

2004 gave US President George W. Bush Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom ( "The Presidential Medal of Freedom"), the highest civilian honor in the United States.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Profile of George Tenet. Goodreads.com, accessed January 5, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Steve Coll: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 . Penguin Group US, 2004, ISBN 978-1-101-22143-3 ( online version [accessed January 5, 2013]).
  3. ↑ James Bamford: A Pretext For War: 9/11, Iraq, And The Abuse Of America's Intelligence Agencies . Anchor Books, 2005, ISBN 978-1-4000-3034-7 .
  4. ^ Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice. In: washingtonpost.com. October 1, 2006, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Bad Information: US Officials Accuse German Intelligence of Pre-Iraq War Failures. In: Spiegel Online . March 20, 2008, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  6. ^ Ed Pilkington: Colin Powell demands answers over Curveball's WMD lies. In: theguardian.com. November 11, 2016, accessed January 7, 2017 .
  7. ^ Story of a quote . Deutschlandfunk (broadcast time: April 30, 2007 05:18 AM) accessed on April 30, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Tenet, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tenet, George John; Koka, Gjërgj
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American intelligence officer, director of the CIA
DATE OF BIRTH 5th January 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Flushing , New York