The drums have begun sounding for the long-awaited book by former CIA
director George Tenet, in which he gives his take on pre-9/11 days and on
Saddam's huge cache of weapons of mass destruction.

And the drums are saying that Tenet is not going to get too many
Christmas cards from Vice President Cheney's office after they read "At the
Center of the Storm." Folks from down the river at the Pentagon, including
former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz-- a guy who's already going
through a rough patch -- and former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith, might
also get some heartburn.

Former secretary of state Colin Powell comes out fine. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who was President Bush's key adviser in engineering the Iraq
invasion, doesn't come out so fine. Not fine at all.

The White House definitely won't be overjoyed, we're hearing. Tenet even
takes some shots at himself and for the first time explains his astute assurance
that "it's a slam-dunk case" when Bush asked him how solid the WMD evidence
was.

Tenet has never really explained his views on that comment. The 500-page
book -- or more likely his "60 Minutes" interview on April 29, the day before
the book goes on sale -- will be the first time he goes over that.

Tenet, who ran the CIA from July 1997 to July 2004, did the first of two
days of taping last week at Georgetown University, where he's teaching.

Tenet is a very interesting figure in this administration. A holdover
from the Clinton Administration, it appears that Tenet was overly grateful to
Bush for not firing him after the 9/11 Debacle and thus may have been overly
accomodating to hawks like Cheney in the run-up to the Iraq war.