George Tenet - the great survivor
The survival of CIA director George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, continues to amaze. He avoided the blame for 9/11 by pulling off the CIA's stunningly successful $70m mission to buy the Afghan tribes in the Taleban war, which restored the agency's battered morale. Now he seems to be surviving the embarrassments over Iraq's elusive WMD, the collapse of his personal liaison mission between Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs, and the leak to the press of the name of Joseph Wilson's wife, hitherto a covert CIA official on the science circuit. Tenet himself, however, is counting the days. If he survives until the end of the year, he will be the CIA's second longest serving spymaster. If he clings on until July 2005, he will have beaten the record of the legendary Allen Dulles. But Tenet already has a retirement deal: partnering his old chum Herb Allen in the latter's eponymous private investment bank in New York. Allen owes him two big favours. This year and last, Tenet has slipped into Allen's annual media bigwig conference in Idaho to give off the record briefings on the global situation to the titans of telecoms. This summer, Bill Gates (Microsoft), Richard Parsons (AOL/Time Warner), Michael Eisner (Disney), Howard Stringer (Sony) and many more showed up. (It was while attending this annual retreat in 2001 that the Washington Post's late great Katharine Graham died.)
Neocons in retreat
There's a whiff of desperation about the neocons these days now that Iraq has turned sour. No longer inside the tent pissing out, they are outside and pissing in. Dubbed "secretary of stubbornness" for his "mulish opposition to increasing the number of American soldiers in Iraq" in the neocon journal Weekly Standard, Donald Rumsfeld says the neocons don't know the half of it. He has already slashed the number of US troops in Iraq by over a third, down to 127,000, and he wants the figure down below 100,000 by Christmas. And Karl Rove, the top White House political aide, is fuming at the neocon attacks on him for the new policy of "no more wars this term." The neocons are aghast at the way Bush has ditched the muscular unilateralism that is failing him in Iraq and is being as multilateral as possible over Iran and North Korea. In Iran he's going through the UN's International Atomic Energy Authority; in North Korea he's working with the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans. But what really annoys the neocons is that the White House is visibly losing patience with Israel and the threat to hold back any of the latest $9bn credit that Israel spends on its new West Bank wall.
Congress gets cross
Still, for the White House the neocons are a mosquito bite compared to the trouble they have run into in congress, where usually loyal Republicans are in revolt. Senate intelligence committee chairman, Republican Pat Roberts, complains that the Iraq war has undermined the war on terror: "If Iraq was not a sanctuary for al Qaeda before, it certainly is now." Chairman of the foreign relations committee, Republican Dick Lugar, backed by another influential GOP member, Chuck Hagel, accuses the Pentagon of failing in Iraq. They want the state department to run the occupation, and are planning committee hearings to push this plan.
Democratic jocks
It's the hockey jock versus Speedo man as the Democratic candidates put a new spin on competitive sports. Howard Dean is a keen fan of women's hockey. He coached his daughter's team and back in his home state of Vermont is credited with building the first state-wide league for high schools. Wesley Clark, on the other hand, was a ferociously competitive swimmer at school and West Point and still swims a mile a day. But Clark's aides have firm orders to keep the photographers away from the swimsuit shots. Back in the 1992 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Paul Tsongas made a famously silly video of himself in a swimcap and goggles doing a belly flop to "prove" that he had recovered from cancer. Ever since, political advisers have enforced a no-swimsuit rule.
A sinner repents
"The federal government has overreacted to the terrorism threat and, in doing so, has traded freedoms of all Americans for an illusion of security," ran a recent book review in the Los Angeles Times. The reviewer was writing about a number of new books on attorney general John Ashcroft's Patriot Act and civil liberties in the US-and he ought to know. He was Richard Nixon's White House counsel during Watergate: John Dean.
Fuming at the French, again
France and the EU were proud of their swift decision to send troops to Bunia, stopping the latest outburst of refugee slaughter in Congo. The Pentagon, though, is furious. Why? The French initially approached deputy assistant secretary of defence Ian Brzezinski (son of the legendary Zbigniew, Jimmy Carter's hawkish national security adviser), looking for a coalition of the willing. Brzezinski said fine - but go to Nato first and start the usual force generation process. But the French went to the EU, breaking the agreement under which the EU acts alone only if Nato has declined to get involved. Worse still, it looks as if the French-led operation is working.
