The Medal of Silence: Tenet

I was always a sucker for a well turned phrase or ankle, particularly when they are succinctly apt as we see in the title header. Or this one perhaps, The Whitehouse of Ill Repute, a nice ring to it don't you think?

Both are employed by Ray McGovern, a career intelligence officer, in this extended easy to follow article that maps out Tenet's, and others duplicity, in a seedy sordid tale of lies deceit and dirty dealings in the making of a case for Bush's war of aggression with Iraq.

Four-letter Word for Tenet: Liar

Mercifully, the flurry of media coverage of former CIA director George Tenet hawking his memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” has abated. Buffeted by those on both right and left who see through his lame attempt at self-justification, Tenet probably now wishes he had opted to just fade away, as old soldiers used to do.



Tenet’s book is a self-indictment for the crimes with which Socrates was charged: making the worse cause appear the better, and corrupting the youth. But George is not the kind to take the hemlock. Rather, with no apparent shame, he accepted what one wag has labeled the “Presidential Medal of Silence” in return for agreeing to postpone his Nixon-style “modified limited hangout” until after the mid-term elections last November. The $4 million advance that Tenet and Harlow took for the book marked a shabby, inauspicious beginning to the effort to stitch together what remains of Tenet’s tattered reputation. more