Two Questions for George Tenet

Finally, the spotlight has started to swing away from Lewis Libby and his allegedly perjurous grand-jury testimony toward where that spotlight should have focused all along: on the CIA�s incompetent, weird � and possibly treasonous�response to Vice President Cheney�s inquiry about Iraq�s interest in purchasing yellowcake from Niger.

All this raises two important questions for George Tenet, who was Director of Central Intelligence during all the time that �Plamegate� was going on:

� Why did the CIA, under your direction, treat the Vice President�s query about Iraqi efforts to purchase yellowcake in Niger so casually?

� When Joe Wilson started blabbing in public about his CIA mission to Niger � and lying about what he reported to the CIA upon his return � why didn�t you say something rather than allow the President�s credibility to be shredded?

These days George Tenet � to whom President Bush inexplicably awarded the Medal of Freedom, our country�s highest civilian honor�is raking in a fortune on the lecture circuit. Perhaps someone in his next audience will take the opportunity to ask these questions and insist on answers � which is more than any of the hot-shot reporters in Washington seems interested in doing.