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War Criminal
George Tenet Cashes In On Iraq
The former CIA chief is earning big money from corporations
profiting off the war -- a fact not mentioned in his combative
new book or heard on his publicity blitz.
By Tim Shorrock
05/08/07 "Salon"
--- - May. 07, 2007 | If you go by the book jacket of his
new memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," George Tenet is
enjoying the life of a retired government servant teaching at
Georgetown University, where he was appointed to the faculty in
2004. The former CIA director played up the academic image when
he kicked off the recent media blitz for his new book by doing
an interview for CBS's "60 Minutes" from his spacious,
book-lined office at the university. His academic salary, and
the reported $4 million advance he received from publisher
HarperCollins, should provide the former CIA director with more
than enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his days
and leave a substantial fortune to his children.
But those monies are hardly Tenet's entire income. While the
swirl of publicity around his book has focused on his long
debated role in allowing flawed intelligence to launch the war
in Iraq, nobody is talking about his lucrative connection to
that conflict ever since he resigned from the CIA in June 2004.
In fact, Tenet has been earning substantial income by working
for corporations that provide the U.S. government with
technology, equipment and personnel used for the war in Iraq as
well as the broader war on terror.
When Tenet hit the talk-show circuit last week to defend his
stewardship of the CIA and his role in the run-up to the war, he
did not mention that he is a director and advisor to four
corporations that earn millions of dollars in revenue from
contracts with U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of
Defense. Nor is it ever mentioned in his book. But according to
public records, Tenet has received at least $2.3 million from
those corporations in stock and other compensation. Meanwhile,
one of the CIA's largest contractors gave Tenet access to a
highly secured room where he could work on classified material
for his book.
Tenet sits on the board of directors of L-1 Identity Solutions,
a major supplier of biometric identification software used by
the U.S. to monitor terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The company recently acquired two of the CIA's
hottest contractors for its growing intelligence outsourcing
business. At the Analysis Corp. (TAC), a government contractor
run by one of Tenet's closest former advisors at the CIA, Tenet
is a member of an advisory board that is helping TAC expand its
thriving business designing the problematic terrorist watch
lists used by the National Counterterrorism Center and the State
Department.
Tenet is also a director of Guidance Software, which makes
forensic software used by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence
to search computer hard drives and laptops for evidence used in
the prosecution and tracking of suspected terrorists. And Tenet
is the only American director on the board of QinetiQ, the
British defense research firm that was privatized in 2003 and
was, until recently, controlled by the Carlyle Group, the
powerful Washington-based private equity fund. Fueled with
Carlyle money, QinetiQ acquired four U.S. companies in recent
years, including an intelligence contractor, Analex Inc.
By joining these companies, Tenet is following in the footsteps
of thousands of other former intelligence officers who have left
the CIA and other agencies and returned as contractors, often
making two or three times what they made in their former jobs.
Based on reporting I've done for an upcoming book, contractors
are responsible for at least half of the estimated $48 billion a
year the government now spends on intelligence. But exactly how
much money will remain unknown: Four days before Tenet's book
was published, the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence decided not to release the results of a yearlong
study of intelligence contracting, because disclosure of the
figure, a DNI official told the New York Times, could damage
national security.
That may be a real break for Tenet. Under his watch, according
to former CIA officials and contractors I've interviewed, up to
60 percent of the CIA workforce has been outsourced. A spokesman
for the CIA told me last week that that figure "is way off the
mark," but wouldn't provide the actual figure, which he said is
classified. But publication of that number could prove
embarrassing to Tenet, particularly in light of his own deep
involvement in the privatization of U.S. intelligence.
Despite making himself available for plenty of airtime of late,
Tenet was not available for an interview with Salon, said Tina
Andreadis, his publicist at HarperCollins. She referred me to
Bill Harlow, Tenet's co-author and his former director of public
affairs at the CIA, who said Tenet's work on corporate boards
"is all a matter of public record."
Tenet's ties with contractors were underscored last week in a
dispute between two groups of former CIA officials over Tenet's
legacy. On April 28, six former intelligence officers wrote to
Tenet, saying he shared culpability with President Bush and Vice
President Cheney for "the debacle in Iraq," and suggesting he
donate half the royalties from his book to Iraq war veterans and
their families. All of the signatories had severed their ties to
U.S. intelligence, although three of them, Phil Giraldi, Larry
Johnson and Vince Cannistraro, work as consultants for news
organizations, corporations and government agencies outside of
intelligence.
A few days later, six recently retired officers responded. They
called the first letter a "bitter, inaccurate and misleading
attack" on Tenet and pointed out that it was drafted by officers
who "had not served in the Agency for years." Tenet, his
supporters said, "literally led the nation's counterterrorism
fight." And three of its six signatories were directly involved
in that fight -- as contractors. They included John Brennan of
the Analysis Corp.; Cofer Black, Tenet's former counterterrorism
director and vice chairman of Blackwater, the private military
contractor; and Robert Richer, the former deputy director of the
CIA's clandestine services. Richer recently left Blackwater to
become the CEO of Total Intelligence, a new company formed with
Black and other ex-CIA officials to provide intelligence
services to corporations and government agencies.
The company with the closest ties to the CIA -- and the biggest
potential financial payoff for Tenet -- is L-1 Identity
Solutions, the nation's biggest player in biometric
identification. L-1's software, which can store millions of ID
records based on fingerprints and eye and facial
characteristics, helps the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence "in
the fight against terrorism by providing technology for
insurgent registration [and] combatant identification," the
company says. L-1 technology is also employed by the State
Department and the Department of Homeland Security for U.S.
passports, visas, drivers' licenses and transportation worker ID
cards. L-1 clearly hired Tenet for the business he could secure
at the CIA. "We want the board to contribute in a meaningful way
to the success of the company," CEO Bob LaPenta told analysts
during an earnings conference call last year. "You know, we're
interested in the CIA, and we have George Tenet."
Last fall, as part of its push into intelligence outsourcing,
L-1 acquired SpecTal, a Reston, Va., intelligence contractor
with at least 300 employees with security clearances, gaining
instant access to several agencies where SpecTal had contracts,
including the CIA, the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Just recently, L-1 picked up another intelligence contractor,
Advanced Concepts Inc., where 80 percent of the 300 employees
have top-secret clearances. Tenet, according to company filings
with the Securities and Exchange Commission, was provided with
80,000 shares of L-1 stock when the company acquired Viisage,
where Tenet was also a director. At the company's recent price
of $19.79, those shares are worth more than $1.5 million.
According to an SEC filing on April 6, in 2006 Tenet received
director's compensation of $129,337, and $332,030 worth of
stock. "George has amazing experience," said Doni Fordyce, L-1's
executive vice president for communications. "We're in the
security business, right? So he's a tremendous asset." In 2006,
L-1 earned $164.4 million, up from $66.2 million in 2005.
Last October, Tenet continued to profit from the defense
industry by joining the board of directors of QinetiQ Group PLC.
QinetiQ, whose name draws from the fictional British spook who
made the gadgets in the James Bond movies, moved aggressively
into the U.S. market in 2003 after a majority of its voting
stock was acquired by the Carlyle Group. (Carlyle sold off its
remaining shares in February, making a $470 million profit on
its original investment.)
Here, too, Tenet is profiting from involvement in Iraq and the
broader war on terror. QinetiQ's recent acquisitions in the U.S.
market include defense contractor Foster Miller Inc., which
makes the so-called TALON robots used by U.S. forces in Iraq to
neutralize IEDs. QinetiQ also controls Analex Corp., an
information technology and engineering company that earns 70
percent of its revenue from the Pentagon. Among the clients
listed on Analex's Web site are the National Reconnaissance
Office, which manages the nation's spy satellites, and the
Pentagon's Counter-Intelligence Field Activity office -- a
secretive agency that has been criticized by members of Congress
for collecting intelligence on American antiwar activists.
According to QinetiQ's Annual Report and Accounts for 2006,
non-executive directors like Tenet are paid a minimum of
$70,000, with some paid up to more than a quarter-million
dollars.
At QinetiQ, Tenet is working with Duane P. Andrews, a former
assistant secretary of defense who is QinetiQ's CEO for North
America. Prior to coming to QinetiQ, Andrews served for 13 years
as a senior executive with Science Applications International
Corp. SAIC is one of the largest U.S. intelligence contractors
and a major provider of private sector analysts to both the CIA
and the National Security Agency. Vanity Fair recently referred
to it as a "shadow government."
There is an intriguing detail about SAIC buried in Tenet's
acknowledgements in his new book: "Arnold Punaro of SAIC," he
writes, "graciously provided me with a secure workspace to
review and work with classified material." Punaro is identified
on the SAIC Web site as the company's executive vice president
for government affairs, communications and support operations,
as well as general manager of its Washington operations.
Getting use of such a secure room is no small feat. In the
intelligence business, such rooms are known as sensitive,
compartmented information facilities, or SCIFs. To prevent
eavesdroppers from picking up top-secret conversations, a
typical SCIF has film on the windows, walls fitted with
soundproof steel plates and white-noise makers embedded in the
ceiling. Punaro must have had approval from SAIC and the CIA to
allow Tenet such access. Harlow, Tenet's co-author, explained to
Salon that Tenet could have used office space at the CIA to work
on the book, but that he "believed it would be better not to be
producing his memoirs at a government facility." It was "a
matter of convenience" to use the room at SAIC, Harlow said.
In 2006, shortly after he joined TAC's advisory board, Tenet
joined the board of directors of Guidance Software. One of
Guidance's products, EnCase, has been used extensively by U.S.
law enforcement, intelligence and military agencies to collect
evidence in criminal and counterterrorism cases, including the
prosecution of Enron executives and the British "shoe bomber,"
Richard Reid. Tenet's "years of experience fighting terrorism
and extensive knowledge of potential and existing threats will
expand Guidance's unparalleled expertise in computer forensics
and network investigations," the company noted in a press
release. According to SEC records, Tenet earned $58,112 in 2006
as a director and holds 9,700 shares of company stock. At its
recent price of $12.85 per share, that would make Tenet's stock
worth more than $124,000.
In his work at the Analysis Corp., Tenet has been reunited with
John O. Brennan, his former chief of staff and, according to the
book, one of his "closest advisers." Brennan spent 25 years in
the CIA, and was deputy executive director at the time of the
9/11 attacks. In 2003, he was dispatched by Tenet to run the
CIA's Terrorist Threat Integration Center. It eventually morphed
into the U.S. government's National Counterterrorism Center,
which Brennan ran from December 2004 to August 2005, when he
retired from government. (The center, which integrates
intelligence from various agencies, the Pentagon and the
Department of Homeland Security, is staffed primarily by
contractors.) In November 2005, Brennan joined TAC, which has
contracts with the State Department, Homeland Security and the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Brennan, the
company's CEO, also declined a request from Salon for comment
for this report.
In a statement TAC released when Tenet was appointed to that
company's board last year, Tenet said he would help the company
"address critical needs as government and industry work together
to fight terrorism." Serving with Tenet on the advisory board
there are Alan Wade, Tenet's former chief information officer,
and John P. Young, a former CIA senior analyst. TAC is a
privately held company and no public information is available
regarding compensation for its board members. But between the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and 2006, the company's
income quintupled, from less than $5 million in 2001 to $24
million in 2006.
-- By Tim Shorrock
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