Book: Tenet drunkenly mocked Bush neocons, right-wing Israelis Mike Sheehan

Published: Wednesday December 17, 2008





Print This Email This Swimming trunks? $25. Bottle of fine scotch? $60.



The director of the CIA in the pool of a Saudi prince, ranting drunkenly about neocons and Jews? Priceless.



In a scene described in the upcoming Patrick Tyler book A World of Trouble, former CIA director George Tenet was visiting the house of Prince Bandar bin Sultan when he allegedly let loose after imbibing on whiskey, reports Jeffrey Goldberg on his blog at The Atlantic.



Tenet, Tyler writes, was in Bandar's swimming pool complaining loudly about Bush administration officials "who were just then trying to pin the Iraq WMD fiasco on him."



After quickly consuming half of a bottle of scotch given to him by one of Bandar's servants, Tenet said, "They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up, [but] I am not going to take the hit."



Tyler then writes that, according to one witness, Tenet "mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the right wing of Israel's political establishment, referring to them with exasperation as, 'the Jews.'"



Goldberg says that in Tyler's footnotes, Tenet denied much of the account, including the remarks and a report that he had taken a sleeping pill in addition to alcohol.



It wasn't made clear by Goldberg just when the alleged incident occurred according to the book. Tenet retired from the CIA in 2004. Shortly thereafter he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush, despite criticism from Congressional Democrats that Tenet was responsible for intelligence failures regarding Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction.



Goldberg's blog post can be read in full at this link.



