Power and the Man

Tenet has done an uncommon thing in Washington—uniting columnists on opposite sides of the Iraq war in their contempt for him. “Tenet presents himself as a pathetic victim and scapegoat of an administration that was hellbent on going to war, slam dunk or not,” the columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Post. In the Times, Maureen Dowd was coldly dismissive, writing, “If you have something deadly important to say, say it when it matters, or just shut up and slink off.” On the New Republic Web site, the international-relations expert Ronald Steel wrote that Tenet “exemplifies the rule that those in high places will endure virtually any humiliation before surrendering a position of power.”

The New Yorker