CIA inquiry urged holding Tenet, others to account for 9/11

They do protect their own, don't they. This is, if true, a glaring dereliction of duty. What could have been more important in early 2001?

A two-year-old CIA inquiry urged holding former CIA director George Tenet and other top agency officials to account for leadership failures before the September 11, 2001 attacks, a summary released Tuesday said.

The CIA's inspector general recommended in June 2005 that CIA set up "accountability boards" to consider disciplinary action against Tenet and other top officials for the failures, but was turned down by then CIA director Porter Goss.

Michael Hayden, the spy agency's current director, said in declassifying the top secret summary that he saw no reason to revisit the inspector general's recommendations.

The report found that Tenet failed to produce a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaeda before the September 11 attacks, and did not make effective use of his authority to marshal support for a counter-terrorism effort that he had proclaimed as a top priority.

Via Agence France-Presse.

When Loyalty Is Not a Virtue: A Glimpse into Bush's Amoral World

This is a must read for sure. I've touched on this subject many times because allegiance to Bush is always Bush's top priority. He couldn't care less about Americans.

Although loyalty is always highly valued among our politicians, George W. Bush has shown himself exceptional in placing so high a priority on loyalty in assessing his people.

While in many contexts loyalty is rightly regarded as an important moral virtue, Bush’s excessive valuing of loyalty is less a sign of his appreciating a moral virtue than of his inhabiting a world in which true morality is scarcely relevant.

That’s what underlies Bush’s pronounced penchant for appointing cronies rather than well-qualified people, and of his bestowing honors on people who have stood by him while failing the country.

So when this president bestows the Medals of Freedom on a George Tenant, whose failures in the pre-war intelligence helped plunged America into a disastrous war, or on Paul Bremer, whose misjudgments helped squander what chances there were of avoiding disaster, it is indeed a scandal. For these honors are supposed to acknowledge achievements in the service to the nation as a whole, and to the nation’s values, and not just loyal service to an individual.

But while calling it a scandal is a valid moral judgment on this president’s actions, we should also understand that Bush’s excessive valuing of loyalty is a clue to why this president consistently works to advance his own power at the cost of the nation’s good order.

(read more)