George Herbert Walker BushIn James Risen’s new book, State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, the author discusses a conversation that George Herbert Walker Bush had with his son, the current President, in 2003. According to Risen, George W. Bush "angrily hung up the telephone on his father" who was complaining to the President about the excessive influence wielded by the neoconservatives over American foreign policy. Here is what Risen writes: "George Herbert Walker Bush was disturbed that son was allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a cadre of neoconservative ideologues to exert broad influence over foreign policy, particularly concerning Iraq."

In a review of the Risen book for the New York Times, James Bamford describes how the then head of the CIA, George Tenet, was torn between the views of his mid-level CIA analysts and station chiefs who were reluctant to go to war in Iraq and the neoconservative "hawks" who were pushing hard for military action against Iraq. Tenet in the end sided with the neoconservatives. Here is what Bamford has to say:

"The book also provides a close look at how George J. Tenet, then the tough-talking, cigar-chomping CIA director, had to decide between the counsel of many of his middle-level analysts and station chiefs who advised caution when it came to Iraq, and the Pentagon’s hawks and neoconservatives who were hungry for war. ‘George Tenet liked to talk about how he was a tough Greek from Queens’, Mr. Risen quotes a former Tenet lieutenant as saying. But the former official added that in reality, ‘he just wanted people to like him.’

With regard to Iraq, Mr. Risen writes, it was the hard-line Israelis that Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, were listening to, not the cautious CIA. ‘Israeli intelligence officials frequently traveled to Washington to brief top American officials,’ he writes, ‘but CIA analysts were often skeptical of Israeli intelligence reports, knowing that Mossad had very strong – even transparent – biases about the Arab world.’ After their visits, CIA officials would often discount much of what the Israelis had provided. ‘Wolfowitz and other conservatives at the Pentagon became enraged by this practice.’ Mr. Risen writes."

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