September 2002: CIA Director Allows Ad Hoc Intelligence Agency to Undermine US Intelligence Apparatus

After CIA Director George Tenet learns of the formation of the Office of Special Plans (OSP—see September 2002), he fails to challenge its existence and mission even though the OSP is working to actively undermine the other US intelligence agencies. In 2007, author Craig Unger will write, “The existence of the OSP effectively meant that [Vice President Dick] Cheney, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, and the [Bush administration] neocons had declared war on the CIA by creating a bureaucratic operation whose sole purpose was to circumvent and subvert the nation’s statutorily authorized intelligence apparatus.” Tenet, who Unger describes as “ever anxious to ingratiate himself with the White House,” does nothing to block the OSP’s inroads and depredations. According to the then-director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), Greg Thielmann, “That’s totally unacceptable for a CIA director.” Unger will note that while Tenet is following his orders to “do everything in his power to make sure the CIA gets the goods on Saddam [Hussein]… in effect, by remaining silent about the OSP, Tenet was betraying his own men at the CIA—and the Agency’s mission.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 245]