The Prosecution (Never) Rests - I just finished watching Scott "Golden Boy" Pelley's 60 Minutes interview with ex-C.I.A. director George Tenet, and I have never felt more sorry for an interview subject in a great long while. To be sure, I am no cheerleader for America's intelligence apparatus, to include the C.I.A. (as noted here and there), nor am I a fan of Tenet personally; I've always felt that he was the same sort of Clinton-era amateur who was quite content with the Reno-Gorelick "wall" that existed between intelligence and law enforcement at the time. But, after having had his actions and motives examined repeatedly by various and sundry government agencies and commissions, it must serve as an insult for Tenet to be cross-examined further by Mr. Pelley.

Pelley's sitdown with Tenet was a guided tour through the clouded thinking undergirding the media's September 10th mindset, with Pelley asking how the C.I.A. could have been so throughly unable to preempt the attacks of September 11, 2001. In his response, Tenet resorted to the other last refuge of scoundrels: the "nobody listened to me" defense, in that - a la Richard Clark - he claims to have told then-NSA chief Condoleezza Rice that a spectacularly horrific event was imminent. Predictably, the conversation turned quickly to Iraq, as Pelley wondered how Tenet's C.I.A. got the issue of Saddam's WMDs so "wrong" in its National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002.

As best as he could, Tenet explained to that intelligence gathering is not an exact science (like say, asking bogus questions about matters of which you are ill informed), and that intel agencies are ultimately balancing knowledge against risk when they come up with an intel estimate. (What Tenet neglected to mention was that the Clinton administration also believed that Saddam had or was close to having WMDs; this view was also shared by British, French and German intelligence, by Israel's Mossad, and for that matter, by Saddam himself.)

Incidentally, Pelley also asked about the famous "16 words" from President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, claiming that any thought that Iraq sought nuclear material from Niger was debunked by Ambassador Joe Wilson's 2002 trip to that country to "verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs." At the request of Vice-President Dick Cheney, the C.I.A. was attempting to establish the veracity of an intelligence report regarding the sale of uranium "yellowcake" to Iraq in the late 1990s. While no sale of yellowcake by Niger to Iraq has ever been substantiated, the Butler Committee Review of Intelligence on WMDs does in fact confirm that Saddam Hussein did attempt to obtain uranium from Africa.

We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa…were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well-founded. (Emphasis added.)

As part of the media storyline, Pelley's report regurgitated the since-disproved charge that after the publication of Joe Wilson's July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed, the White House retaliated by leaking information about Joe Wilson's wife to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who within days wrote a column suggesting that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA operative. At the time, the "leak" was said to have been a potential violation of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), which makes it a federal crime, under specific circumstances, to reveal the identity of a covert agent. To top it all off, Pelley grilled Tenet about what he knew about C.I.A. "torture" of captured al-Qaeda operatives, Pelley evidently sharing Rosie O'Donnell's concern for the well-being of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.

In as much as we are informed by what Pelley asked about, we are equally edified by observing what Pelley didn't ask about. He didn't ask Tenet if Valarie Plame was actually a Non-Official Cover operative (as would have had to have been the case for the "leaker" to have been prosecuted under the IIPA), nor did he inquire about the "politicization" of intelligence gathering - a hackneyed and oft-repeated charge that has been absolutely debunked by both a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee Report and the Robb-Silberman Report of 2005.

Unlike journalists, intel officers cannot bury their mistakes the the back of the newspaper. When the C.I.A. gets it wrong, it does so dramatically and publicly, and no one else will be held to account for its errors. In the main, America's intelligence personnel are tasked with a most difficult job; it is certainly no easier than trying to divine the future by looking at an animal's entrails. For all of their abundant and evident failings prior to 9/11, the intelligence community has acquitted itself well in recent years, as we have had no terrorist attacks on American soil since then. We would certainly be better served as a nation with more intelligence officers and fewer unintelligent reporters.