George Tenet
Academic and former United States Director of Central IntelligenceWikipedia
178
MENTIONS
83
EPISODES
70
PODCASTS
Search complete. 178 mentions across 83 episodes found for "George Tenet".
Sep 22, 2026
Mark PolymeropoulosHOST
I think he did it successfully.
Mark PolymeropoulosHOST
And it goes back to, you know, one of my favorite former directors, my, you know, fellow Greek mafia member, uh, George Tenet, um, who was integral in the kind of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Mark PolymeropoulosHOST
So there's history of CI directors, you know, kind of go doing that, the, going a step forward.
Mark PolymeropoulosHOST
And, and we do see reports, um, I think it was, uh, in, in various Ukrainian outlets that maybe the Financial Times as well, that, um, that maybe Trump or the administration has soured a bit on Witkoff and, and Kushner, and that Ratcliffe may get involved.
Raza JaffreyHOST
[gentle music] November 9th, The White House, Washington, DC, mission day 24.
Raza JaffreyHOST
In the situation room, CIA director George Tenet is trying to control his temper.
Raza JaffreyHOST
He's watching as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld holds court in front of President Bush and a gathering of intelligence personnel.
Raza JaffreyHOST
Mr President, the Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment is Dostum's armies are unlikely to take Mazar-i-Sharif until 2002.
SeanHOST
Okay.
EricHOST
George Tenet.
EricHOST
He ran the CIA in the summer of 2001, later described that period to Congress using a phrase that has followed him for the rest of his life.
EricHOST
He said the system was, in his own words, blinking red.
Michael MorellGUEST
Or how? Just not, right? It wasn't, to the extent it was at all specific about where it was kind of Middle East focused, but no discussion of truck bomb, airplanes, none of that, and no sense of timing.
Michael MorellGUEST
And the president, the president, to his credit, whenever we showed him one of these pieces, he would say to me and to George Tenet, you know, the director of CIA at the time, the head of the intelligence community at the time, when those two jobs were the same thing, and who sat next to me every morning, the president always asked us, could this be the United States? Could this be the homeland? And we would always give him the same answer.
Michael MorellGUEST
We would say bin Laden would like nothing more than to bring the fight here.
Michael MorellGUEST
He has said that publicly, but we don't have any indication of where this threat reporting is talking about.
6 MINS LATER
Michael MorellGUEST
And it wasn't there prior to 9-11.
Michael MorellGUEST
I will tell you, And I believe this really strongly is that CIA strategic warning about bin Laden and Al Qaeda prior to 9-11 was the loudest and the longest strategic warning CIA ever did about anything in its entire history.
Michael MorellGUEST
And I know this from personal experience because in January of 1998, I went to work for George Tenet as his executive assistant.
Michael MorellGUEST
And up to that point, I'd spent my entire time in business.
Jason BermasGUEST
She was a stone-cold liar.
Jason BermasGUEST
George Tenet, then the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Joe Biden.
Jason BermasGUEST
who got on the Senate floor and threatened Pakistan in the days after 9-11, unless they got on board with the war on terror.
Jason BermasGUEST
And then possibly the most interesting of all, on the morning of 9-11 itself, this person who wired what is the equivalent of one-fifth of the funding of all the hijackers, if you believe the 9-11 commission report, there's no reason to believe that, but still a large chunk of change.
Condoleezza RiceGUEST
So every day after September 11th feels like September 12th.
Condoleezza RiceGUEST
On the day after the attack, we're sitting in the Oval Office, and because the FBI and the CIA had not really been able to talk to each other because of civil liberties and the like, for the first time we had to forge intelligence between them by having Bob Mueller and George Tenet come into the Oval Office every morning and show the president what they saw in the threat matrix.
George W. BushGUEST
Right.
Condoleezza RiceGUEST
A threat matrix that had been this big on September 10th was like a phone book on September 12th.
Gary BerntsenGUEST
He was horrified.
Gary BerntsenGUEST
And Kofor Black, the chief of counterterrorism, sitting behind George Tenet, the director of the CIA, said, Mr.
Gary BerntsenGUEST
President, if you put me in charge, I'll have flies walking on their eyeballs in six weeks.
Gary BerntsenGUEST
And the president said, you're in charge.
Jeffrey RobinsonGUEST
covers the real James Bond.
Jeffrey RobinsonGUEST
He was furious because there were four occasions, and I outlined them, I talk about them, when he and Richard Clark in the White House and George Tenet as head of the CIA went to Condoleezza Rice and eventually went to George Bush and said, Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are planning to attack the United States, probably in the United States and maybe even with airliners, with hijackings.
Jeffrey RobinsonGUEST
Condi Rice's answer was that their warnings were, I forget what she said, not too specific.
Jeffrey RobinsonGUEST
I don't know.
46 MINS LATER
Jeffrey RobinsonGUEST
You have to.
Jeffrey RobinsonGUEST
You don't say, well, it probably won't happen.
Jeffrey RobinsonGUEST
No, you plan for the worst case scenario, which gets back to Kofra Black and George Tenet and Richard Clark warning Condi Rice and her not understanding the idea of worst case scenario because it interfered with her political views.
Ralph PezzulloHOST
That's the key right there.
Jim AngleSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
But then officials decided to expand access to include CNN and possibly other cable networks, but not Fox.
Jim AngleSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
An email from Dag Vega, director of broadcast media at the White House, to Jenny LeCompte, then assistant secretary for public affairs... at Treasury, shed some light on this, with Vega writing to her saying, quote, let me know which cables you add, and we'd prefer if you skip Fox, please.
Jim AngleSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
It is not clear who we refers to, but hostility to Fox is obvious in the emails.
Jim AngleSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
One press aide talked of putting a dead fish in Fox's cubby.
46 MINS LATER
Dean KarayanisHOST
Whether you're a liberal Democrat or a very conservative Republican, I'm for dismantling any government agency that acts outside the law.
Dean KarayanisHOST
Isn't that the phrase? And it makes you wonder.
Dean KarayanisHOST
Is he referring to Iraq and everybody telling George W. Bush that, oh, yeah, yeah, there's weapons of mass destruction? What did he say to that CIA director, the Greek, George Tenet? It's a slam dunk.
Dean KarayanisHOST
Well, it bounced right off the rim, didn't it? They didn't have the WMD that you said that they had vast, vast stockpiles.
Warren WillsHOST
Did you know that? One flight went ahead.
Warren WillsHOST
A British government aircraft carrying Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of MI6, was permitted to enter US airspace so that he could meet George Tenet, the then director of the CIA.
Warren WillsHOST
The meeting in itself was extraordinary.
Warren WillsHOST
The significance, given what had happened that morning, was immense and another remarkable footnote to one of the most extraordinary days in modern history.
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