The Concept of Ethical Obligations
Based on the case study, George Tenet and the Last Great Days of the CIA
August 1, 2013
Dr.

During the presidency of Bill Clinton, 44-year-old George Tenet was sworn in as the eighteenth director of central intelligence on July 11, 1997. Tenet served in this position through two White House administrations. With this new role as director, his focus was to begin a rebuilding process of the agency. The CIA was in disarray when Tenet took over. The agency had suffered inconsistent leadership since the fall of the Soviet Union, and he was the fifth Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in seven years. Morale sagged badly. Since 1991, the agency had lost more than 3,000 of its best people—more than 20 percent of its workforce—including many of its more experienced case officers (Weiner 2007, 470) “Tenet understood that managing a large and complex government bureaucracy would be difficult enough, but managing one that operates under a shroud of secrecy would challenge even the most talented and energetic leader. To complicate his task, the CIA at the time was really two separate agencies, each with its own operating procedures and organizational personality” (White, 2008). The agency budget was a mess, and there was no central accounting of funds spent. At the same time, the CIA had lost the technological edge that had enabled it to compete and triumph during the Cold War. The agency had not kept abreast of breakthroughs in private industry in communications technology, satellite surveillance, and supercomputing (Tenet 2007, 21). Though required to coordinate the intelligence community, the DCI had little real authority over other agencies and controlled less than 20 percent of overall intelligence spending. The ethical dilemmas George Tenet faced during his tenure as the CIA director had to deal with backing his statements of Iraq’s chemical weapons knowing that the information he was proclaiming was false. During the Iraq War buildup, he no longer served primarily as an honest broker of hard intelligence but instead allowed himself to be swept up in the politics of the day. According to one CIA official, he helped the administration use intelligence “not to inform decision making, but to justify a decision already made” (Pfiffner 2007a, 14). He tried to keep a low profile and stay out of the public limelight, but as a member of the president’s small war cabinet, he found himself increasingly involved in the policy debate. When faced with a major ethical decision he decided not to object when both the Office of the Vice President and the Defense Department developed their own intelligence units that pressured the intelligence community if intelligence did not fit their political expectations and stovepipe raw, unverified intelligence straight to the White House (Pfiffner 2007b, 1). Another major issue evolved which raised questions within the CIA concerning his loyalty; he ignored his field officers’ and allowed his personal desires to dictate his actions which supported the unfounded claims of weapons.
Meanwhile, despite Tenet’s efforts to rebuild his agency, the CIA continued to experience major intelligence failures. On May 11, 1998, India began its nuclear testing program, to the surprise of the U.S. intelligence community. “We didn’t have a clue,” Tenet confessed to Senator Richard Shelby after the test became public (Bamford 2005, 129). A year later, U.S. warplanes relied on faulty intelligence and mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Like a loyal soldier, Tenet again shouldered the blame. His role as DCI became more politically complicated, however, in the fall of 1998, when President Clinton hosted peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Tenet had always seen the role of CIA as an “honest broker that avoided direct involvement in foreign policy making” (Stillman 2000). During the Wye Oak negotiations, Tenet served as the go-between for Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. “We were the one entity both sides could trust,” Tenet explained (Goldberg 2007). This new role was more diplomat than chief spymaster, which made many insiders “distinctly uncomfortable” (Posner 1998; Tenet 2007, 74). When President Clinton agreed to release a spy named: Jonathan Pollard at the request of the Israeli Prime Minister, Tenet told the president that he could not remain DCI if Pollard were released. Late in 1999, Tenet utilized his political clout by maneuvering through back channels to Republican Congressmen Newt Gingrich and Porter Goss, who controlled the agency budget in the House of Representatives, and secured an “emergency”$2 billion supplemental appropriation, the agency’s biggest increase in 15 years (Weiner 2007). He focused on the CIA’s internal, institutional needs. His top priorities were a more clearly defined mission, improved morale, better execution of intelligence collection and analysis, more recruits, better training, and a substantial increase in funding. Before doing this Tenet requested the 2 billion over 5 years for the agency. The White House only gave him a small increase.
Strategies used in competing ethical obligations in relation to the many intergovernmental organizations that overlapped his office were; guaranteeing that all movements were legal, ethical and within guidelines. Having ethical strategies in places allows for monitoring of policies, avoiding legal and ethical violations. Tenet instituted ethics training ensuring the agencies leadership was well equipped with the tools to make sound decisions. The code of ethics reflects the importance of commitment to the ethical behavior throughout the agency highlighting the available methods of application of the values in a representative situation. These type of strategies make sure all activities are logical and that they fit the guidelines. Communication strategy was one of the most important strategies. Strong communication within the agency creates a strong ethical culture. It communicates behavioral expectations, establishes a work culture/environment which promotes compliance. Value strategy provides guidance to those within the organization. This strategy enhances employees understanding of the value of their input in an organization; it also identifies the value of their work performed. Then there is leadership strategy; Tenet was often seen by the rank and file, making himself available which spoke volumes of his desire to enhance communication across the board while getting to know the employees. This strategy’s sets the tone for an organization and build the trust which was other wised never fully developed with his leaders. Core leadership throughout the agency, allows the organization to perform optimally and produce top quality products. The CIA as an agency was faced with several failures. One of the key failures of the Intelligence agency was the terrorist attack of September 9, 2011. Tenet knew immediately that the attacks were the work of al-Qaeda. Two months before, Tenet visited the White House and briefed Condoleezza Rice on his concerns of an imminent terrorist attack. The information was based on intelligence that he received which really got his attention (Goldberg 2007). A week after the attack, Tenet wrote to top intelligence officials that “there can be no bureaucratic impediments to success. All the rules have changed. There must be an absolute and full sharing of information, ideas, and capabilities. Tenet’s felt that there was no time to hold meetings to fix problems—fix them—quickly and smartly.
George Tenet’s top priorities were defined goals and missions such as improved employee morale, work conditions, better execution of intelligence reports and analysis, he immediately started rebuilding. He called on the expertise of private industry, appointing a chief financial officer to straighten out the agency’s spending and a chief information officer to upgrade its computing capacity. To keep these top priorities, Tenet started building and appointing people. Those people consisted of retired veterans whom were called back from retirement lastly; some of the approaches involve creating a stable government regardless of the circumstance. Another notion would be the establishment of an agency that is sufficiently equipped to deal with unexpected situations such as when internal opportunities for voicing one’s dissent are not enough or diminishes. (Giraldi, 2007). There should be legislative oversight which provides greater checks and balances to avoid the misleading intelligence information which results in acts of war as with the Iraqi war, or unnecessary action by the United States. The creation of policies and strict guidelines and laws should be implemented so those who knowingly withhold or falsify intelligence information would be dealt with severely and swiftly.
Bamford, James. 2005. A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies. New York: Anchor Books.
Giraldi, Philip (2007). George Tenet’s Machiavellian Moment Mediterranean Quarterly, 18 (3) 31-38
Goldberg, Jeffrey. 2007. Woodward vs. Tenet: The New Intelligence War. New Yorker, May 21.
Pfiffner, James P. 2007b. Intelligence and Decision Making before the War with Iraq. In The
Polarized Presidency of George W. Bush, edited by George CEdwards and
DesmondKing, 213–42. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stillman, R.J. (2010).Public administration: Concepts and cases: 2010 custom edition

(9th ed.). Boston:Houghton Mifflin –Cengage Learning

Tenet, George. 2007. At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. New York:
HarperCollins.
Weiner, Tim. 2007. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday.