NYTimes | The
last time George Tenet was asked about torture on television, he
sounded defiant and jabbed his finger in the air. The year was 2007, and
Mr. Tenet, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was promoting his memoir when a question about waterboarding came up while he was being interviewed on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
“You
know, the image that’s been portrayed is we sat around the campfire and
said, ‘Oh boy, now we go get to torture people,’ ” Mr. Tenet said,
growing angry as the newsman Scott Pelley challenged him on how the
agency interrogated terrorism suspects. “We don’t torture people. Let me
say that again to you, we don’t torture people. O.K.?”
This
week the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a long-awaited report
detailing the gruesome interrogation techniques employed by the C.I.A.
on Mr. Tenet’s watch as well as the false claims the agency made about
their effectiveness. But Mr. Tenet, now a managing director of a
secretive New York investment bank, has been nowhere in public view,
leaving it to one of his successors — Michael V. Hayden, who was much
less involved with the brutal interrogation program — to serve as the
C.I.A.’s most vocal defender.
While
Mr. Hayden has been all over television this week, Mr. Tenet has
responded only in writing. But they are working in concert; their
disparate approaches are part of an orchestrated campaign by the two
former directors — and a third, Porter J. Goss — to defend the agency
they all worked for by attacking the report’s credibility.
Other
former Bush administration officials — notably former Vice President
Dick Cheney — have also defended the C.I.A., but Mr. Hayden, who served
as C.I.A. director from 2006 to 2009 and whose folksy manner makes for
lively quotes, has emerged as their smoothest — and most willing —
spokesman.
“He’s
always been a great communicator, he has a way of turning a phrase,
he’s very energetic and willing to engage and we’re lucky to have him on
our team,” said Bill Harlow, a former C.I.A. official who is acting as
the spokesman for Mr. Tenet and helping coordinate the response effort.
“When it comes to TV it’s hard to match him.”
