Given the clouded evidence for sending our troops to Iraq, controversy over the war's justification, mission, and execution has hardly begun to clear. As director of the CIA from 1997 to 2004, George Tenet watched the decisions unfold from a unique perspective. Tenet divulges his side of the story in At the Center of the Storm, a book that begins with a secret meeting that, Tenet writes, "was like something out of a spy movie."
[Excerpt from At the Center of the Storm]
Chapter One: The Towpath
It was like something out of a spy movie. The date was March 16, 1997, a Sunday. I was at home, on a rare day off, when the phone rang. "Meet me by the C&O Canal, near the Old Angler's Inn in an hour," a voice said, almost in a whisper. "Come alone." That was all. He didn't have to identify himself; he knew I would be there. The voice belonged to Anthony Lake, who had stepped down as national security advisor two months earlier, when Bill Clinton nominated him to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Back in 1992, at the start of the Clinton administration, Tony had made me part of his National Security Council staff. Prior to that I had served as a Senate staffer, and for the previous four years had been staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Over the course of three years on the NSC staff, I had formed a warm personal and professional relationship with Lake and his deputy, Sandy Berger. Then, in May 1995, John Deutch, who was about to become CIA director, tapped me to be his second in command. We had gotten to know each other when Deutch was deputy secretary of defense and had even traveled together once overseas to deal with a sensitive intelligence matter. But now, after only a year and a half in the job, Deutch was leaving CIA, and my friend and former boss Tony Lake had been picked to replace him.
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