‘George Tenet Is A Portentous, Self-Justifying Disgrace’ Says Non-Judgmental Ethics Counselor, Christopher Hitchens

When Christopher Hitchens calls your book a disgrace, it probably means you’re onto something.

Either that, or you really, really screwed up.

In the case of former CIA director (and current Georgetown professor/author) George Tenet, it seems to be a case of the latter.

Tenet, though best known for his lengthy tenure as the head of the CIA, will forever be remembered for not preventing September 11th, for personally attesting to the validity of intelligence reports accusing Saddam Hussein of harboring WMD, and for his well-documented** assurances—to President George W. Bush—that the case against Saddam would be a “slam dunk.”

And while we don’t find ourselves agreeing with Christopher Hitchens very often (mainly due to his propensity for brash, offensive and generally unsubstantiated shitshow rants) today we’d like to applaud his efforts, and praise him for handing Tenet the literary equivalent of an “old school bitch-slapping.” And alhough not all of Hitchen’s adversaries are deserving of his wrath, Tenet certainly has a lot to answer to in today’s Slate manifesto.

Though we enjoyed the piece overall (from Hitchens’ labeling Tenet’s memoirs as “self-justifying” and portentous,” to his willingness to take on respected journo Bob Woodward, to his weighty assessment of Tenet as “a rather mediocre man,”) Hitchens already had us with his slightly verbiose title: “A Loser’s History: George Tenet’s sniveling, self-justifying new book is a disgrace.”

And that’s a pretty loaded accusation, especially when it’s coming from the man who described Islam as “a mask for a very deep and probably justifiable insecurity, women as “humorless” and blowjobs as the most American thing since apple pie.

**Which were later conveniently rescinded!