Let's see. He's now a professor at Georgetown -- prestigious but not the most highly paid job in the world. Thanks to us -- because they knew we'd buy it -- Tenet got a $4 million advance from his publisher. That's pretty sweet. The guy's going to be able to send his kids to college after all.
But there's some money Tenet is raking in which, as Tim Shorrock points out, we don't hear much about in those laudatory introductions to his book tour interviews:
While the swirl of publicity around his book has focused on his long debated role in allowing flawed intelligence to launch the war in Iraq, nobody is talking about his lucrative connection to that conflict ever since he resigned from the CIA in June 2004. In fact, Tenet has been earning substantial income by working for corporations that provide the U.S. government with technology, equipment and personnel used for the war in Iraq as well as the broader war on terror.
When Tenet hit the talk-show circuit last week to defend his stewardship of the CIA and his role in the run-up to the war, he did not mention that he is a director and advisor to four corporations that earn millions of dollars in revenue from contracts with U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense. Nor is it ever mentioned in his book. But according to public records, Tenet has received at least $2.3 million from those corporations in stock and other compensation. Meanwhile, one of the CIA's largest contractors gave Tenet access to a highly secured room where he could work on classified material for his book.
And you can bet the Carlyle Group factors in there somewhere. We're talking defense and intelligence contractors, private contractors, and the revolving door which catapults former CIA officials into cushy jobs and positions on boards.
I think I'll just mention here some of the names which crop up in Tim Shorrock's detailed research on former CIA director George Tenet and others. Tenet has made a nice bunch of bucks from his association with many of these.
L-1 Identity Solutions, Analysis Corp. (TAC), Guidance Software, QinetiQ (the British defense research firm that was privatized in 2003 and was, until recently, controlled by the Carlyle Group), Analex Inc, Blackwater, Total Intelligence, SpecTal, and the company known as the US "shadow government," Science Applications International Corp (SAIC).
Shorrock tells us:
Based on reporting I've done for an upcoming book, contractors are responsible for at least half of the estimated $48 billion a year the government now spends on intelligence. But exactly how much money will remain unknown: Four days before Tenet's book was published, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence decided not to release the results of a yearlong study of intelligence contracting, because disclosure of the figure, a DNI official told the New York Times, could damage national security.
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