Cover Up: The Senate-House Investigation into Intelligence Failures to Be Run by George Tenet’s Long-time Subordinate

(Washington, D.C.): So much for a rigorous review of the policy and other failures that contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s inability to detect and prevent the deadly attacks of September 11th. No sooner had members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee’s decided that these problems required a comprehensive review — a review that would almost certainly implicate CIA Director George Tenet for his role in implementing defective policies, if not in every case initiating them — than they turned over its conduct to one of Mr. Tenet’s most trusted subordinates: L. Britt Snider.

This personnel decision sets the stage for a whitewash of epic proportions — as if Sen. Sam Ervin had hired John Erlichman to run the Watergate investigation or Ken Lay’s general counsel were tapped to run all the congressional investigations into the Enron debacle.

These invidious comparisons are hardly exaggerations. Britt Snider was, until last year, the Inspector General of the Tenet CIA. From 1997-98 he served as Special Counsel and advisor to Mr. Tenet. From 1989 to 1992, he was general counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when Mr. Tenet was its Staff Director. It is hard to imagine how such an individual could bring the sort of independence and dispassionate objectivity to the task that the Committee so clearly requires — especially with respect to one of the Clinton and serving CIA Director, whose activities and judgment most demands the Congress’ consideration.

It is, moreover, unclear at this writing whether Mr. Snider will be allowed to hire the rest of the staff charged with conducting this investigation. If so, it is entirely possible that none of those retained for that purpose will be able or willing to find fault with the intelligence community’s past direction, priorities or conduct — let alone that of the elected and appointed officials whose political and policy proclivities appear to have contributed to the 9/11 failure.

The Bottom Line

If the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are determined to give a complete pass to George Tenet and the direction he gave the community over the past five years, they might as well spare the taxpayer the expense of going through the motions of an investigation. If, on the other hand, they really do want to learn and apply the lessons of September 11th, they would be well advised to secure the services of those who have at least as much expertise in the field of intelligence as Mr. Snider, but not his disabling baggage of past institutional and personal loyalties.