Washington watch

Watch out for George Tenet's new book, which threatens to "take the lid off" Rumsfeld's Pentagon. Plus, why Britain's new ambassador to the US may not be warmly welcomed
May 25, 2007
Tenet recants his slam dunk

Washington's next obsession is likely to be the new book by former CIA director George Tenet, At the Centre of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. With an initial print run of 300,000, the fuss will be enormous. Tenet is booked for two appearances on 60 Minutes, America's most-watched current affairs show, and for the Today Show and Meet the Press. He also has a magazine deal with Vanity Fair. Tenet, best known for assuring President Bush that it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, is telling friends that he has "taken the lid off" Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon for its back-channel ways of inserting dubious intelligence into the White House. Conservatives are likely to half-forgive him, however, because of the battering he gives to Sandy Berger and Madeleine Albright for downplaying Saddam's machinations and the al Qaeda threat during the Clinton years. Oh, and Tenet now adds that he wishes he hadn't used the phrase "slam dunk." This is probably as close as we shall get to an apology.

Newt goes green

No sooner will the fuss over the Tenet book have faded away than Newt Gingrich will return to the stage in the autumn with his own new tome, which reveals that he has become a passionate environmentalist. Carefully timed to appear just as the former speaker of the house announces whether he plans to toss his hat into the presidential ring, the book claims that market forces and new technologies will save us all from global warming. This is basically the Bush position, so it may come as a surprise that the book has been endorsed by the head of the Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick, and Mike Hutchins, director of the Wildlife Society.

The appeasement ambassador

Nigel Sheinwald, Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser, will doubtless soon be honoured as Lord Sheinwald of Shatt al-Arab after his adroit diplomacy secured the release of the Royal Navy's 15 heroic victims of the crazed ayatollahs. But he may not receive the warmest of welcomes when he arrives in Washington this summer to replace David Manning as British ambassador to the court of King George. John Bolton, Bush's former ambassador to the UN, is not the only conservative fulminating about Britain's "appeasement." An article in Commentary by Fleet Street's own Daniel Johnson, which began, "Words cannot express how sickened, humiliated, soiled, contaminated and ashamed I feel," is being widely circulated around the think tanks and blogs. And a fairly senior White House official, when discussing Sheinwald's arrival with Tumbler, asked, "Will he be bringing Neville Chamberlain's umbrella with him?"

Hillary's defectors

Hillary Clinton is not pleased with Robert Rubin, her husband's respected treasury secretary, for inadequate supervision of his son and heir James, a partner with JP Morgan's private equity fund. Young Rubin, who had been tapped for preferment in a Hillary administration on account of his genes and the annual donations he used to make to Hillary's campaign coffers, has gone over to the dark side. Now he's giving money to her arch-rival, Barack Obama. And he's not the only one. After being flown into Hillary's home town New York to tape an interview with David Letterman, Obama laid on three fat fundraisers and raised another $1m. The first session was at the offices of the Abacus & Associates investment firm, where CEO Frank Weil invited a group of potential donors with a combined net worth that the host estimated at close to $100bn. Then it was down to SoHo for the less wealthy but much more visible arts and fashion crowd. Obama ended up on Park Avenue, at the very large apartment of George Hornig of Credit Suisse. Hillary, who had been given to understand that she virtually owned the Wall Street donor base, remains powerful enough for George to ensure that his name was left off the invitation. Instead, the cards went out in the name of his wife Joan, a jewellery designer. But that is unlikely to spare Hornig (or young Rubin) the wrath of the tigress, if she clambers over Obama's eviscerated body and into the White House.

Cheney not wanted in Utah

Dick Cheney waited in vain this year for the usual rash of invitations to give one of the ritual speeches without which no US college graduation ceremony is complete. So eventually Cheney's office contacted what they believed would be the safest campus in the country for his appearance. The Veep invited himself to speak at the soundly patriotic, and Mormon, Brigham Young University in the thoroughly conservative state of Utah. (Brigham Young rivals the ivy league as a source of CIA and state department recruits, thanks to the missionary obligations of the Mormon faith, which require the young to learn foreign languages.) But the place erupted in protest—although "erupted" may not be quite the word. The protesters were allowed three hours of silent demonstration. At the stroke of 1pm, university officials turned up to confiscate the banners.