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At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA | 
 enlarge | Author: George Tenet
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
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Rating:  75 reviews
Sales Rank: 64433
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 576
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 2
ISBN: 0061147788
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.12730092
EAN: 9780061147784
ASIN: 0061147788
Publication Date: April 30, 2007
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Product Description
In the whirlwind of accusations and recriminations that emerged in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq war, one man's vital testimony has been conspicuously absent. Candid and gripping, At the Center of the Storm recounts George Tenet's time at the Central Intelligence Agency, a revealing look at the inner workings of the most important intelligence organization in the world during the most challenging times in recent history. With unparalleled access to both the highest echelons of government and raw intelligence from the field, Tenet illuminates the CIA's painstaking attempts to prepare the country against new and deadly threats, disentangles the interlocking events that led to 9/11, and offers explosive new information on the deliberations and strategies that culminated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Beginning with his appointment as Director of Central Intelligence in 1997, Tenet unfolds the momentous events that led to 9/11 as he saw and experienced them: his declaration of war on al-Qa'ida; the CIA's covert operations inside Afghanistan; the worldwide operational plan to fight terrorists; his warnings of imminent attacks against American interests to White House officials in the summer of 2001; and the plan for a coordinated and devastating counterattack against al-Qa'ida laid down just six days after the attacks. Tenet's compelling narrative then turns to the war in Iraq as he provides dramatic insight and background on the run-up to the invasion, including a firsthand account of the fallout from the inclusion of "sixteen words" in the president's 2003 State of the Union address, which claimed that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium from Africa; the true context of Tenet's own now-famous "slam dunk" comment regarding Saddam's WMD program; and the CIA's critical role in an administration predisposed to take the country to war. In doing so, he sets the record straight about CIA operations and shows readers that the truth is more complex than suggested in other versions of recent history offered thus far. Through it all, Tenet paints an unflinching self-portrait of a man caught between the warring forces of the administration's decision-making process, the reams of frightening intelligence pouring in from around the world, and his own conscience. In At the Center of the Storm, George Tenet draws on his unmatched experience within the opaque mirrors of intelligence and provides crucial information previously undisclosed to offer a moving, revelatory profile of both a man and a nation in times of crisis.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 70 more reviews...
 The Scary State Of Our World April 30, 2007
Ellie Reasoner (Ever On The East Side)
204 out of 250 found this review helpful
Like I imagine so many thousands of others, I spent the last month counting down the days till the release of this book, contenting myself alongside everyone else with the tidbits revealed in the media. Ultimately, like some sort of hard-core Harry Potter fan, I used a connection at a local bookstore to get a copy at five AM, and spent this morning reading five-hundred of the most disturbing pages of revelations I've seen since the publication of Bob Woodward's State of Denial last year.
Anyone who claims this book is former CIA director George Tenet's self-exonerating backlash against his former agency or his one-time boss, President George W. Bush, has not yet read At the Center of the Storm, and is in for a surprise. If no other part of this book is read, I'd urge anyone to turn to the chapter entitled "They Want To Change The World" and then defy anyone to walk away without feeling slightly less secure. Yes, Tenet does give his side of the story for his now-infamous "slam dunk" remark, and has select critical words for the current administration, particularly Secretary of State Rice, and Vice President Cheney, but instead of using this work as a vituperous denunciation of Washington insiders, he makes what I found to be a responsible criticism of exactly what was mishandled in the time between September 11, 2001, and the period that followed the end of the (first stage of the) Iraq War, and what has come to be termed the occupation of that country.
Still, what kept me glued to these pages, what frightened and disturbed me, and what is sure to outshine the revelations on the conduct of the Bush administration and be most discussed in weeks ahead, is Tenet's revelations on the tenacity of the west's greatest foe, al-Quida (to use this book's spelling), its murderous ambitions, and the scope of what he maintains are some of its plots for mass-homicide. In At the Center of the Storm, Tenet writes of al-Qaida's 2003 plans for a gas attack on New York City's mass transit system. He tells of that organization's efforts to persuade scientists in Pakistan to sell it nuclear materials, and Tenet writes with a chilling detachment as he tells of bin Laden's meetings with Pakistani leaders with a goal of attaining that same technology. Most disconcerting of all is Tenet's statement that these meetings, including a face to face session between bin Laden and the Pakistani president, took place in the summer of 2001, mere weeks before 9-11, leading to the conclusion that things could actually have been so much worse than they were.
Tenet also has a mixed opinion on the Saudis as partners in the fight against global terrorism. On one hand he is critical of Prince Naif's frequent unwillingness to provide names of suspects, and accuses him of indifferent vacillation, and yet Tenet also has praise for (now) King Abdullah, and writes that without Saudi cooperation, US efforts to defend itself would be greatly hampered, perhaps past the point of effectiveness.
At the Center of the Storm is an engrossing read written by a credible source who one feels is coming clean here, as well as telling his side of things. Part insider's take on recent politics and policy, part revelation of the state of danger in our tumultuous world, it will become a best seller, and deserves to be.
Deceptive Beginning, Vital Middle, Disappointing End May 5, 2007
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
60 out of 82 found this review helpful
This is a very good book. There are some extremely important nuggets in here that essentially put the final nail in Dick Cheney's coffin while certifying the importance of holding Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Cambone accountable for their high crimes and misdemeanors. Condi Rice continues to be depicted, in this book and others, as a zero in the sense of having been ignored, sidelined, or run over by Dick Cheney and his minions.
The book loses one star for a lack of prior context. George Tenet was Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) for many years, and then Intelligence Director for Bill Clinton. He avoids any mention of his long-standing role in helping dismantle the very IC he ended up leading, and he is terribly deceptive when he says he asked for more funding for anti-terrorism, but fails to mention his inability to redirect funds within the $35-40 billon he had at the time. Today the IC has $60-70B and we are no safer--these clowns cannot even put together a consolidated accurate terrorist watchlist five years after 9/11.
The bottom line on the author is that he is a big-hearted staffer, not a leader and not a strategic thinker. He was a place-holder in a job that two presidents saw fit to relegate to losers--a mouse, a pit-bull, and a turtle.
He takes credit for months of redesign dialog but fails to point out that there was no substantive contact with iconoclasts, published author-practitioners. I am especially angry that he placed Buzzy Krongard in as Executive Director. In my view, Krongard was there to look out for Wall Street interests and ensure Brown and Root did not get caught smuggling drugs into the USA through New Orleans and heavy equipment being returned to the USA "for repairs." I've come to the conclusion, after thirty years in this business, that there are four CIA's: 1) White House sychophants; 2) Wall Street support via Carlyle Group and a small network of retired intermediaries; 3) the "front" of earnest people working out of official installations, incapable of actually doing serious spying (I was part of this group); and finally, a multinational "dirty deeds" arm that does terribly immoral and illegal things with Saudi money, Egyptian sodomy of children (photographed so as to force them to spy on their fathers), and so on.
In many ways, this book is a capstone account of the death of US secret intelligence. It's gone. The DNI, DCI and USDI are earnest men, but they will fail because they simply do not comprehend the "paradigms of failure" (essay online) and are not willing to contemplate a clean-sheet fresh-start. On page 26 the author confirms that "time and technology [have] passed us by."
As fascinating as his claims are of ramping up on Bin Laden, I go with Michael Sheuer's damnation as published by the Washington Post. Condi Rice blew off warnings, Dick Cheney focused on energy conspiracies with Enron and Exxon, and the plain truth is that the CIA refused to read the book by Yossef Bodansky or view the PBS broadcast in 1994 by Steve Emerson. They closed themselves off from open sources (called "Open Sores" within the now near-moronic secret world).
The middle of the book is sensational. Chapter Thirteen on "The Threat Matrix" and the succeeding chapters in Part II of the book are superb and contain many nuggets that restored much of my respect for the author.
The author damns Cheney on page 138 for taking over the National Security Council and it is clear that if there is one person to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, it is not the President, but rather the Vice President.
On page 317 he tells us that "Policy makers have a right to their own opinions but not their own set of facts."
He slams Rumsfeld for blocking several 737's full of State people and language-qualified individuals specifically trained and organized to get the post-war reconstruction off to a good start. He does not mention Rumsfeld's idiocy in allowing Pakistan to evacuate 3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda people from Tora Bora, but he does mention that General Tommy Franks refused to put the Rangers in Bin Laden's path, claiming he needed weeks to set it up (this is of course baloney, they could have been air-dropped in 24 hours with a 3-day resupply 24 hours after arrival).
He defends himself on the "slam dunk" as applying to the presentation plan for the UN, not the intelligence. I want to believe this, but the fact that he took imagery and other materials to the first NSC meeting, significantly on Iraq rather than terrorism, gives me pause. I certainly do believe that Dick Cheney hijacked the White House and closed out the entire policy process, but George Tenet, Colin Powell, and our generals all failed us by not resigning and screaming out at the top of their lungs against the high crimes and misdemeanors they witnessed Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Steve Cambone commit, day after day.
He lays bare Cheney's misbehavior in stating on 26 August 2002 that "there is no doubt" on Iraq's having weapons of mass deception but very strangely does not mention that both Hussein's son-in-law who defected to the US, and every one of the 25+ line crossers that Charlie Allen sent in, all said the same thing: kept the cook books, destroyed the stocks, bluffing for regional ego's sake.
He slams Paul Bremer for de-Bathification and confirms that "Iraq came at exactly the right time for Al Qaeda."
The author avoids major criticism of Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, but he reveals the DoD operations against Iran. He tells us about Chalabi hoaxing DIA for millions, and that President Bush ordered Chalabi off the payroll.
He confirms Paul William's view on Al Qaeda having nuclear capabilities.
Pre 9/11 air travelers believed "be calm, see Cuba" when hijacked. Pre 9-11, and today still, our senior government executives are still confusing loyalty with integrity. We can do better. We need, right now, a "Smart Nation."
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Intelligence Failure: How Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Osama's Revenge: THE NEXT 9/11 : What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You
The True Cost of Conflict/Seven Recent Wars and Their Effects on Society
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
The importance of having "a sense of where you are" May 1, 2007
Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas)
49 out of 80 found this review helpful
The "storm" metaphor seems to have almost unlimited applications to various circumstances and developments during the first six years of George W. Bush's presidency, beginning with the Supreme Court decision which (in effect) confirmed his election in 2000 and continuing through tragic events in the World Trade Center area (the bombing in 1993 and the air attack in 2001) until today (April 30, 2007) when there are bipartisan pressures on Alberto Gonzales to resign as Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice and international pressures on Paul Wolfowitz to resign as president of World Bank. Also today, George Tenet's At the Center of the Storm was published. It provides his account of the years during which he served as the Director of Central Intelligence for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Tenet held that position from July 1997 to July 2004. Already, this book has created a "storm" of positive as well as negative reactions that presumably will continue, at least for a while.
Frankly, although I have read a number of books and articles about the current Bush administration, I do not consider myself sufficiently qualified to verify or confront most of Tenet's allegations. For example, what he claims to be a deliberate, almost evil misrepresentation of his reference to "slam dunk" insofar as intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq is concerned. He concedes that, in 2001, he believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but continues to insist that there was no indisputable proof of that, then or now. Here are two reasons why I rate this book so highly:
1. As an outsider" to the culture in which the federal government (especially the executive branch) functions, I was fascinated by what I learned about the process of obtaining information worldwide, then converting it into "intelligence" by evaluating and verifying it. Of course, facts are most preferable but immensely difficult to determine. Hence the importance of obtaining as much information as possible from the most reliable sources, then exposing that information to rigorous and redundant evaluation to reveal trends patterns, variances, and contingencies of highest probability.
2. In On War (first published in 1832), Carl von Clausewitz observes: "The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently -- like the effect of a fog or moonshine -- gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance." I include this brief quotation because, as I read Tenet's book, I developed a much greater respect for the challenges of dealing with so many sudden uncertainties during a given crisis. I vividly recall that September morning in 2001, watching Good Morning America, and observed one tower burning and then the second tower struck! Although the effects of "a fog or moonshine" concealed for several hours the truth of what had happened there, then in Washington and later in rural Pennsylvania, Tenet insists he knew immediately that the attacks were by al-Quida (his preferred spelling). Perhaps his reaction is an example of what Malcolm Gladwell characterizes as a "blink" of cognition.
I remain curious why Tenet has waited so long to come forward with this account of his public service during the first term of the George W. Bush administration. I also wish he had developed in much greater depth his thoughts about lessons he learned that may be of value to the next President or at least to the next Director of the C.I.A.
Years ago in a book he wrote about Bill Bradley, John McPhee observed that Bradley demonstrated the importance of having "a sense of where you are." We expect so much of public service at all levels - and we should - but are well-advised to keep in mind that all of them are imperfect human beings, be they in the Oval Office, 10 Downing Street, or wherever. That is one of the key points in Theodore Roosevelt's speech at the Sorbonne, "Citizenship in a Republic" (April 23, 1910), when discussing "the man in the arena":
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
In this volume, Tenet is remarkably effective when explaining his "sense of place" while Director of the C.I.A., then and now, after having had what may have been a necessary period of reflection. Whatever we may say about his public service, he was definitely "in the arena" and much of the time, having to contend - each day -- with "a fog or moonshine" of uncertainty amidst the turbulence of various perils.
Don't Judge This Book From Talking Heads or Dust Jacket Blurbs~~Read It! May 3, 2007
Frederick S. Goethel (Central Valley, CA)
37 out of 42 found this review helpful
Having spent the last 2 days reading this book, I have a completely different prospective on the war on terror, on how the CIA functions (and sometimes doesn't) and how the Bush Administration views 9/11. The book is fascinating, goes into much more depth than expected and isn't the "blame game" book that people are being lead to believe.
To be sure, this is not any easy book to read. It is certainly long, and at times tedious, but that is the nature of this type of book. The names of the al-Qa'dia (as spelled in the book) members alone are enough to twist the brain, however those names are important to understand how the organization moved people through and around the world.
Two chapters that were fascinating to me were "They Want to Change History" and "Casus Belli". They contained information that changed, in some ways, how I perceive just what has happened, and how what happened did happen. I won't reveal more, as I think it is important for people to read the actual book.
Unlike so many people that are condemning the book before reading it, I found it to be as well balanced as any autobiography is. Mr. Tenet spreads blame to himself, as well as to a number of other people for failures that occurred. And it is important to realize that, while he made mistakes, others made larger and more costly mistakes, including Saddam himself.
This book has good information that will be helpful to the historians that will eventually write the entire story of this administration and the history of the world after 9/11. I realize this review won't change the minds of most people, but to condemn the book without reading it would be a shame.
Still at the center of the storm May 1, 2007
JPWR3 (California)
35 out of 56 found this review helpful
As someone that likes to read all side of a story, I find this book well written. It is definitely worth the read beyond the 60 Minutes sound bites. But the cloud will still persist over George Tenet head as only a part of the story. When it comes to understanding Saudi Araba and what the CIA was doing there, I find the book If Olaya Street Could Talk -- Saudi Arabia: The Heartland of Oil and Islam as a more objective book on the subject.
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