By George, He Knows the Guy!

By Rick Horowitz

So there I was the other morning, just sitting at the kitchen table minding everyone else's business -- that's why newspapers were invented, yes? -- and reading one more tale of Washington intrigue. Anthony Lake, the president's pick for CIA director, was mad as hell and wasn't going to take it anymore. Find yourself another nominee, Lake had told the prez.

Which, the story said, the prez was about to do: In fact, he was leaning hard toward naming the Acting Director of Central Intelligence, some guy named George J. Tenet.

You could have knocked me over with an olive. I know the guy!

Knew the guy. When I knew him, he wasn't "Mr. Tenet, 44," the way the story had it. More like "Mr. Tenet, 26." Actually, more like "George." I didn't know him well, and I didn't know him long. But I knew him.

And now he'll be running the CIA? Somebody I knew will be running the CIA? It's like finding out your next-door neighbor conducts the New York Philharmonic in his spare time. It's like seeing the girl who used to sit behind you in Chemistry staring out from the cover of Vanity Fair.

What's another word for stunned? (Forget it -- stunned will do nicely.)

"The ultimate staff guy" -- that's what they're calling him now, and it makes perfect sense. After all, before he was Acting Director and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, he was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council. Before that, he was staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, after being a staffer there himself. Before that, he was a staffer for Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania, where he worked, among other things, on national security issues.

I, of course, knew absolutely none of this. It's in the papers now, along with his picture (I think he used to have a moustache), and it was hardly a secret before, but I didn't know any of it.

Impossible? Not really. Let's just say my own work over the years has had very little to do with intelligence. (And let's see if we can avoid the obvious jokes, OK?)

I met George Tenet before he had any of the jobs that are being mentioned in the papers. He was already a staffer, but not for the government, not yet. When I met George Tenet, he was working for a group called the American Hellenic Institute, a Greek-American public-affairs (read "lobbying") organization fighting the good fight for this or that issue on Capitol Hill.

Which is exactly where I was working at the time -- on Capitol Hill, I mean. I was a staffer myself (hardly "ultimate"), for a congressman who was a major player on some of those very same issues. We had meetings, George and I and our respective bosses did. We compared notes. We talked strategies.

He seemed to be a nice guy. Bright. Hard-working. Good sense of humor. But did I ever say to myself, one twenty-something looking across the conference table at another twenty-something, "That one has what it takes"? "That one's bound for glory"? Did it ever occur to me to wonder if somewhere down the line, this guy sitting across from me might become the country's Chief Spook?

Get serious. It never entered my mind. And then I left the Hill and never gave the matter another thought -- until just the other day, when suddenly there he was again: George Tenet in my morning paper, moving up.

Surprised? That's putting it mildly.

Maybe I could use a little intelligence.

3/20/97

©1997 Rick Horowitz. All rights reserved.