June 4, 2004 - George Tenet, citing the usual “personal reasons”, resigned less than 24 hours after the White House announced that the President was consulting with a private outside attorney to represent him in connection with the Grand Jury investigating the public exposure of Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA operative. That the President feels that the prudent course is to seek the advice of a lawyer indicates that the grand jury’s probe is getting closer to the Presidential posterior. Washington, more than anywhere else in the country, is a place where actions are often driven by rumor and Dame Rumor has been very active in DC social circles of late. Some of her tales are making it onto the internet. One found a wider currency on Capitol Hill Blue, the self described oldest, established, news site on the World Wide Web. It claims that grand jury testimony indicates that Karl Rove engineered the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity and the President knew of the planned leak in advance.

Now before you dismiss web exclusives based on Washington rumor and appearing on obscure web-sites out of hand you should recall that it was just such a web publication on of Dame Rumor’s tales on The Drudge Report that set in motion the Monica Lewinski scandal and brought President Clinton before a Washington Grand Jury on the road to impeachment. Rumor, even if unsubstantiated, is sometimes quite accurate. This one is at least circumstantially substantiated by the President seeking legal advice.

The Tenet resignation came as a shock to Washington cognoscenti. Tenet has been among the most loyal lieutenants in George W. Bush’s army of lieutenants. It was he who fell on his sword to take responsibility for not having excised the Nigerien Yellow Cake reference while vetting the President’s State of the Union Message. While Washington insiders expected the Director to depart his pressure filled position at the end of the term he was expected to soldier on with the team through the election and announce his retirement when the votes were in.

But Valerie Plame was one of the CIA’s own, an Agency veteran whose cover identity as an internationally recognized energy expert had given her access to information sources that had proved to be of lasting value. Exposing her as a CIA operative not only endangered her but also the network of valuable sources she had built up over her years of service to the Agency. George Tenet may be loyal to President Bush as he had been to President Clinton but his first loyalty has always been to the Agency. If Dame Rumor’s grand jury tale is true Director Tenet may well have been personally unable to reconcile his loyalty to the President and his loyalty to the agency and its personnel any longer.

Stories that the Director was forced out to discipline him for the Agency’s failure to detect 9-11 and the discredited intelligence that the Administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq ring hollow. Anyone who saw the President’s TV announcement of the resignation, watched his body language and listened to his halting delivery could not help but conclude that the resignation was as unexpected in the Oval Office as it was elsewhere in Washington.

Whatever the inside story is we are unlikely to ever know what it is. George Tenet is a professional and there won’t be a tell-all book coming from his pen. He may be inclined to publish a memoir but it won’t be grist for the Washington political mills. It will be a simple history of one man’s service to the Agency without a political axe grinding. Neither President Bush nor President Clinton will fare badly in the telling and it won’t give us any insight into the workings of the agency. There won’t be any leaks from George Tenet.