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George Tenet: Bush's Middle East Envoy

(New Republic) - CIA Director George Tenet, the Bush administration's de facto envoy to the Middle East, began mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict six years ago. After a spate of Hamas suicide bombings rocked the peace process in early 1996, Tenet -- then CIA deputy director -- was sent to help Yasser Arafat combat the terrorists by professionalizing the Palestinian security forces. In October 1998, when former President Bill Clinton dragged Benjamin Netanyahu to Wye River to revive the faltering Oslo process, Tenet (by then CIA director) was present throughout the nine-day-long talks. Netanyahu only agreed to additional Israeli withdrawals because Tenet assured him he would personally oversee Arafat's crackdown on terrorism. After an initial six months in which the George W. Bush administration tried to distance itself from the Israeli-Palestinian train wreck, a hideous June 2001 bombing at a Tel Aviv discotheque led Bush to turn to Tenet -- the only prominent peace processor left over from the Clinton administration -- to forestall massive Israeli retaliation. In the absence of a peace process, Tenet's security process -- his ongoing efforts to get Israeli and Palestinian security officials to cooperate to prevent terrorism -- became the only game in town. According to the oft-repeated formulation, the parties had to agree to "Tenet" (the security agreement) before they could proceed to "Mitchell" (the road map to talks about land-for-peace). But the parties never really got to Tenet -- the violence never stopped for very long -- and the CIA director kept shuttling back to the region to put his finger in the dike.
2002-06-22 00:00:00
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