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I'm afraid that there will never be an answer to the questions you've raised Mr. Johnson. There is no one in our government who has the spine necessary to ASK the questions, let alone attempt to find the answers.
Right or wrong, I have believed that George Tennant was a "plant" by the Clinton Administration to do specifically the kind of damage to our intelligence gathering capability that he did. For the life of me, I don't know why George Bush kept him on. I don't believe any other President including Clinton would have kept him on. I kind of look at Tennant as Mr. Inside, While that other sleazeball who stole Clinton Era papers from the National Archives was Mr Outside.

I love it.
With nearly two full disastrous terms of GW Bush coming, thankfully, to an end, neo-con apologists are still trying to blame
Bill Clinton for Junior's mistakes.
The Bushies and their neo-con enablers are genetically incapable of taking responsibility for their own fiascos.
Just imagine if Jack Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs disaster, went on national TV and said, "Yeah, I may be president now, but the truth is it was the Eisenhower-Nixon team that put this thing in motion. By the time I came along, the thing was so far along in the pipeline I could not stop it, even though I had grave misgivings about it.
Even though that was all true, Jack Kennedy went before the American people and took full responsibility for a disastrous military operation that, for the most part, had been planned and organized on his predecessor' watch.
That was leadership, a quality draft dodging neo-cons like Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Perle, and our often AWOL comander in chief know nothing about.
And as for Ken Johnson's question as to why we should believe the latest NIE on Iran when the intelligence communities got so much wrong in relation to both Iraq and Iran in the past, the truth is there were dissenting intelligence voices in 2003 and 2005 but the administration did not want those voices to be heard, and much of the so called "liberal" media, out of fear of being called "unpatriotic" or "soft on terror", went along with the whole scam.
A little over a year to go, let's just hope as the neo-cons and Republicans grow increasingly desperate, they don't do some truly irreparable harm to the nation and the world.

Face it, Ken, Michael Cook is right. Clinton has his successes and failures, but it's ridiculous for people to suggest that he planted someone in W's cabinet to cause sabotage.

Apparently neither Mr Cook nor Mr Brenner read what I wrote. Instead they unleashed the typical liberal response of attempting to besmear someone and in Mr Cooks case let loose a torrant of unintelligible hogwash.
My posting did not say Clinton planted anyone (for Tennant was already there) rather I said I couldn't understand why Bush kept him on. I guess my first statement did refer to him as a "plant" but it was in the context of Bush not firing him.
I notice neither of these astute gentlemen referenced my characterization of the other sleazeball who stole Clinton papers from the national archives. Wonder what those papers said.
By the way Mr. Cook, I am neither a neo-con nor a Republican.
I'm just a patriotic 70 year old conservative who has already seen the irreparable harm done to this nation by the liberals who have been calling the shots since about 1932. Their Republican clones have done nothing to mitigate the damage.

"Unintelligible hogwash"?
What, pray tell, was unintelligible about what I wrote?
Look at the record Mr. Carlson and Mr. Johnson.
There was plenty of other intelligence that called into question the "intelligence" the Bushies used to justify their unnecessary invasion of Iraq and their nuclear claims about Iran.
Members of the intelligence community were warning the administration that the head of the Iraqi National Congress, Chalabi, his first name escapes me, was a fraud. Almost all the information he provided was known to be bogus long before the invasion began.
The Bushies would have none of it. He was their man, and like Tammy Wynette, the Bushies stood by him and believed all the mullarkey he fed them, or they claimed to believe it because the BS fit in with their policy agenda.
So did much of the so called "liberal" media as well.
Both US intelligence and US & UN weapons inspectors were sounding the alarm that the Bushies' WMD claims were, at the very least, overblown and, at worst, dead wrong.
US inspector David Kay has been blunt about it. When asked about the WMD after this misbegotten invasion began, he simply said, "There weren't any."
Colin Powell has called his fiction filled speech at the UN, a speech the Bushies once thought would be an "Adlai Stevenson UN Moment", an ..."indelible stain..." on his career and reputation.
Intelligence experts were urging the Bushies to cool their anti-Iran rhetoric before the Iraq invasion, and into 2004/2005 when serious questions remained as to how far along Teheran's nuclear weapons program may or may not have been.

Many inteligence and foreign policy experts believe the Bushies played a major role in bringing the current crackpot of an Iranian president to power.
Now, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Carlson, don't faint dead away - at least not yet.
After 9-11, as it became clear the Bushies were going to use that tragic day as a pretext to launch their long longed for invasion of Iraq, Ahmadinejad's predecessor, whose name escapes me too, ( I think that has something to do with turning 50), allowed the US Navy to use at least one Iranian port as a staging area.
When US pilots, whose planes were damaged flying sorties in Afghanistan, were forced to abandon their craft over Iranian territory, the former president dispatched the Iranian military to rescue them and return them to the proper American officials.
When the Taliban fell in Afghanistan, the former Iranian president was a key, behind the scenes, player in brokering the deal that brought the Bush backed Ahmed Karzai to power.
Many veteran Middle East hands at the State Department saw those olive branches as opportunities to begin to thaw out the long frozen relations between the two countries.
The Bushie neo-cons would have none of it.
Instead of displaying even quiet, private gratitude for the Iranian president's assistance, the neo-cons ratcheted up the anti-Iran rhetoric to unprecedented levels, culminating with Junior's reckless and regrettable "axis of evil" speech. Such public, verbal asaults, most analysyts of Mid East politics say, fueled a wave of angry Iranian nationalism that helped to defeat the moderate, helpful incumbent and bring the crackpot we deal with today to power.
Funny thing though, all the rhetoric about Iran being such an "evil" country didn't stop Dick Cheney's company, Halliburton, from doing a very lucrative business inside Iran in direct violation of US law.
But that's for aother posting.
Finally, I just want Mr. Carlson to know that, yes, I am a liberal.
And, as a liberal, I am as offended and disgusted by all the sleazy things we saw go on in the Clinton years as he is.
That is why you won't find me voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton on a bet.
In fact if, come next November, my only choice is between America's Eva Peron and Ragin' Rudy, or Matinee Mitt, or Holier Than Thou Huckabee, I may, for the first time in the 32 years since I've been able to cast a ballot for president, sit this one out.
I might even make my part time expat status in Costa Rica permanent.

Mr. Cook:
It is clear from your latest diatribe that no amount of reasoned logic will penetrate the democrat fog surrounding you. You (they) have spent 7 years attempting to pin Bush's ears back and have come up with mostly nothing, You fail to see the similarity between the so called "outing" of a covert CIA covert agent who by the way wasn't a covert agent and and the CIA excuse for destroying the tape. i. e. It might "out" their covert agents doing the questioning.
Geoge W. Bush is far from being a good President, in fact he is borderline "poor" President however he is far better than the Congress who constantly malaigns him and the democrats who mistake the trial period they were given by the American people for a "mandate"
Good luck to Costa Rica, but you should beware their illegal
immigration laws.

Mr. Carlson, with all due respect, it is you who is operating in a fog.
You failed to address a single one of the issues I raised.
Halliburton, the company once headed by Dick Cheney, was reaping large profits doing business with Iran at a time when such practices were illegal and Cheney's current boss, our Supreme Court appointed president, was calling Iran "evil". It is a major reason why Haliburton not long ago moved its corporate hdqtrs to Dubai. That way they can operate aywhere they want and not have to abide by anything so archaic as US law.
How "patriotic" is that?
The Bushies had an opportunity to, if not fully normalize relations with Iran, at least improve them and they blew it.
We now have enemies thru out the Middle East because of a war that never should have been launched.
As for the Valerie Plame thing, there is really no difference between revealing the identity of a CIA employee, who in fact, was operating under cover, by senior member/members of the Bush administration in a fit of political revenge, and destroying a tape that is evidence of the fact the US had been employing torture at the very same time the president was saying torture was something the US did not engage in or condone.
They are both examples of the kind of sleezy, often illegal tactics this administration engages in with reckless abandon.
I am sorry Mr. Carlson that you cannot admit you and others of your ilk got sold a big old bill of goods when you threw your support behind this incompetent, ne'er do well son of great privilege who's been bailed out of every mess he ever got into, up until this one, by his daddy and daddy's cronies.
But then I guess it's always hard to admit when you've been played for a sucker by someone you thought you could trust.
Happy Holidays!