George John Tenet spent an unprecedented nine years as deputy director and then director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  His qualifications were slim: Tenet's background included stints as a lobbyist and congressional staffer.  He lacked any first-hand professional intelligence background or experience.  He didn't understand the black arts, wasn't a big-picture kind of guy, or have the chess-player's ruthlessness-Bill Casey comes to mind here--that thrust the leader of an intelligence organization from good to great.

But what George Tenet lacked in experience he made up in enthusiasm.  He'd walk the halls at Langley an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth glad-handing people like a Chicago alderman.  One of his executive directors instituted a concierge-like dry-cleaning service at headquarters as part of a Quality of Life program to improve morale.  He made sure that CIA retirees received email newsletters keeping them informed of what was going on.  Senior annuitants got a once-a-year briefing in CIA's secure headquarters auditorium known as "The Bubble."  Witty, bright, street-smart, profane, a world class schmoozer, Tenet loved to travel and spend time with heads of state or the directors of his sister services.

A former Amman station chief remembers Tenet dropping in for a short tête a tête with Jordan's King Hussein.  "George was in the region and he knew the king was leaving for treatment at the Mayo Clinic, so he diverted to Queen Alia International.  The plane lands and taxis to the airport's military area, where I'm waiting with the king.

"Then, from the rear of the aircraft there descend  like a dozen CIA Ninjas with automatic weapons, body armor-full assault gear.  Now you have to understand that the military sector of Queen Alia airport is probably the most secure place in Jordan when the King's there-Jordanian special forces, specially trained bodyguards-the works.  So anyway, the front hatch opens and George waves and bounds down the stairs surrounded by his Ninjas.

"And at that point, King Hussein nudges me with his elbow, points at Tenet and whispers, 'Dave, do you think he knows something I don't?'"

Indeed, during his seven years as DCI, Tenet made seventy-seven trips to thirty-three countries, which comes out to almost one a month.  And he truly loved his job.  Absolutely reveled in it.  "With all its burdens, and all its pressures, as Director of Central Intelligence," Tenet writes enthusiastically and with superfluous commas, "I believe I had the best job in government."

But enthusiasm is no substitute for competence.  And in the competency department, George Tenet's record as DCI is devastatingly clear.  He was a disaster.

· On George Tenet's watch, CIA mistakenly bombed the embassy of the People's Republic of China in Belgrade because Langley lacked the assets to provide the correct information.

· While Deputy Director George Tenet was busy overseeing a new fishpond outside The Bubble at CIA headquarters, al-Qa'ida bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen American service personnel and wounding 500 more.

· On George Tenet's watch, CIA missed any advance warning of India's May, 1998 nuclear tests because it had not recruited enough spies from within the Indian government and its nuclear program.

· On George Tenet's watch, Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan's network smuggled nuclear materials and expertise to Iran and North Korea.  But for years CIA was deaf, dumb and blind to the Pakistani's villainy because it had no agents close to Khan and no agents privy to the North Korean or Iranian nuclear weapons programs.

· On George Tenet's watch, CIA shut down many of its sub-Saharan stations and bases.  The resulting intelligence vacuum left America vulnerable to al-Qa'ida's August, 1998 attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed and wounded hundreds.

· On George Tenet's watch, unilateral agent penetrations of al-Qa'ida cells in the Gulf States and the Arabian peninsula were virtually nonexistent because CIA suffered from a dearth of language-capable officers and a culture of risk aversion and political correctness.  CIA was therefore unable to provide any prior warning about the October, 2000, attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 of our Sailors.

· On George Tenet's watch, America suffered 9/11, its most ignominious intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor.  9/11 resulted in the worst-ever loss of life from a hostile attack on American soil.

Now, almost four years after he resigned as DCI, George Tenet has taken time off from making speeches that bring him hundreds of thousands of dollars on the corporate rubber chicken circuit and written (with the help of CIA's former PR man Bill Harlow and probably a couple of book doctors as well) an Apologia Pro Vita Sua memoir.  It's a big ticket item--a book deal negotiated by Bill Clinton's personal lawyer and for which Tenet was paid in the low-to-mid seven figures  that says, in essence, that very few of the above-mentioned debacles, or any of the other scores of screw-ups, blunders, missteps, and Charlie-Foxtrots that occurred on his watch were actually his fault.

At the Center of the Storm [HarperCollins Publishers, $30.00, 549 Pages] is a whiny screed filled with disinformation, spin, inaccuracies and omissions.  It is a book authored by a man who made with a straight face (on 60 Minutes no less) the ludicrous claim that the president-the Commander-in-Chief; the only guy who can launch our nuclear missiles-is not an "action officer."  It is a book that spends much of a chapter parsing the words "Slam Dunk" in more detail than Bill Clinton ever tried to parse "is."

It is a book in which the first anecdote Tenet tells-about a chance September 12th 2001 meeting with Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle outside the West Wing of the White House-never took place.  On September 12, 2001,  Richard Perle was in France.
And yet, in spite of-or perhaps because of--these fatal flaws, At the Center of the Storm (hereafter "CotS") tells you a lot more about George Tenet's character than he probably ever wanted to reveal.  The book is an autobiographical Freudian slip, an unintentional but nonetheless hugely telling portrait of George Tenet's internal makeup.

Indeed, if you read "CotS" the right way, you will learn exactly what makes the real George Tenet-the one behind the George Tenet mask--tick.  And then you will be afraid.  Very afraid.  And if you read it the wrong way, you will get a masterpiece of trompe l'oeil; a kind of literary Three-Card Monte.  Except there are no aces in Tenet's deck, only jokers.

Which means the only way to read "CotS" is to evaluate every syllable the same way you'd deal with material offered by an unvetted, unpolygraphed walk-in who claims he has great information for sale.  In the world of intelligence, there are a couple of tradecraft principles that are as consistent as the law of gravity.  The first is that there are no coincidences.  The second is that if a walk-in tries to peddle you information so absolutely tantalizing it has to be true, it is most probably disinformation: a lie couched behind a thin veneer of truth.

An example?  Here's Tenet describing how he found CIA's Directorate of Operations at the time he became deputy DCI.  "Mid-and senior-level officers in the Agency," he writes earnestly "were haunted by the fear of being hauled before Congress or into court and asked to defend their actions."

The statement is true-as far as it goes.  What Tenet omits mentioning, however, is that he himself was in many...