Crime against peace – planning and carrying out a war of aggression.
Complicity in the commission of a war crime – torture, ill-treatment of detainees.
Presented Bush with blueprint for "war on terror." Allowed erroneous information about WMD in Iraq to be used to justify attack on Iraq. Was CIA director when CIA was authorized to use waterboarding.
Primary Association:
Managing director, Allen & Company (investment bank), New York, NY
Secondary Associations:
Board of Directors, L-1 Identity Solutions (supplier of biometric identification software), Stamford, CT and Arlington, VA
Board of Directors, Guidance Software (forensic software), Pasadena, CA
Non-executive director, Qinetiq, a controversially privatised British defense and security technology company.
"How could [an intelligence] community without a strategic plan tell the president of the United States just four days after 9/11 how to attack the Afghan sanctuary and operate against al-Qa'ida in ninety-two countries around the world?1"
"They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up, [but] I am not going to take the hit.2"
1from At the Center of the Storm, by George Tenet
2Possibly apocryphal outburst in Patrick Tyler's book, A World of Trouble, about an inebriated Tenet in Prince Bandar's swimming pool in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Tenet denies the incident.
Tenet led the CIA when it established secret prisons overseas and tortured its prisoners using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” such as waterboarding. Beginning in early 2002, Tenet met with the National Security Council Principals Committee to obtain approval for the CIA’s use of specific interrogation techniques on each of the so-called “high value” detainees. Tenet reportedly gave detailed descriptions and photographs of the techniques to the Principals Committee, which included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Tenet signed written interrogation plans and conditions of confinement guidelines that authorized the CIA to use methods including stress positions, walling, slapping, wall standing, waterboarding, and sleep deprivation. Tenet also repeatedly asked for reaffirmation of the CIA’s use of specific interrogation techniques, both from the Principals Committee and from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.*