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much for a rigorous review of the policy and other failures that
contributed to the U.S. intelligence community's inability to detect
and prevent the deadly attacks of September 11. No sooner had members
of the House and Senate intelligence committees decided that these
problems required a comprehensive review — a review that would
almost certainly implicate CIA Director George Tenet for his role
in implementing defective policies, if not in every case initiating
them — than they turned over its conduct to one of Tenet's
most trusted subordinates: L. Britt Snyder.
This personnel decision sets the stage for a whitewash of epic
proportions — as if Sen. Sam Ervin had hired John Erlichman
to run the Watergate investigation or Ken Lay's general counsel
were tapped to run all the congressional investigations into the
Enron debacle.
These invidious comparisons are hardly exaggerations. Britt Snyder
was, until last year, the inspector general of the Tenet CIA. From
1997-98 he served as special counsel and adviser to Tenet. From
1989 to 1992, he was general counsel of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence when Tenet was its staff director. It is hard to
imagine how such an individual could bring the sort of independence
and objectivity to the task that the committee so clearly requires.
It is, moreover, unclear at this writing whether Snyder will be
allowed to hire the rest of the staff charged with conducting this
investigation. If so, it is entirely possible that none of those
retained will be able or willing to find fault with the intelligence
community's past direction, priorities, or conduct — let alone
that of the elected and appointed officials whose political and
policy proclivities appear to have contributed to the Sept. 11 failure.
If the House and Senate intelligence committees are determined
to give a complete pass to George Tenet and the direction he gave
the community over the past five years, they might as well spare
the taxpayer the expense of going through the motions of an investigation.
If, on the other hand, they really do want to learn and apply the
lessons of Sept. 11, they would be well advised to secure the services
of those who have at least as much expertise in the field of intelligence
as Snyder, but not his disabling baggage of past institutional and
personal loyalties.
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