Remember how Colin Powell insisted Tenet sit behind him, right in the camera shot, when he spoke to the UN in February last year? Powell was sharing the responsibility for what he said that day. Will the world remember? I doubt it. [Tenet's resignation and departure] will devastate morale [at the Agency], I think, partly because he was so popular there himself, and partly because there is no prospect of a strong, effective successor coming on the scene any time soon. Question from Los Angeles: Do you see any connection to the news that Chalabi told the Iranians that their code had been broken? Kaiser: Maybe. To me this is a very big story. I can imagine him thinking this was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. Ashcroft's odd recent press conference, announcing that al Qaeda is "90 percent of the way" to launching an attack on the USA, really troubled me. What on Earth is he talking about? |