By The Prowler on 6.4.04 @ 12:06AM
Also: Convention media moved outside security perimeter.
BREAKING AWAY
CIA head George Tenet's surprise resignation was
in fact motivated by family reasons, but the political realities of
the past six months and the next month and a half helped make his
decision a little bit easier.
Tenet started getting calls last week from several Democrats on
the Senate Intelligence Committee who had been reading the
committee's report on intelligence failures leading up to Operation
Iraqi Freedom. According to a Senate Intelligence staffer, the
Democrats told Tenet that their support of him probably could not
be sustained given what the draft report had to say about the CIA's
performance a little over a year ago.
That report, which is currently being vetted by the CIA and by
intelligence committee staff, and which may be declassified before
the end of the month, was one reason why Tenet may have accelerated
his retirement plans.
Beyond the Senate report and another intelligence committee
report in the House, there is also the upcoming 9/11 Commission
final report, which will be handed in to the White House sometime
in July and which will also have to be vetted for classified
material by the intelligence community. The fact that Tenet's
people may be called upon to vet reports critical of their own
performance and his as well might have been too embarrassing for
the agency and its long-time director.
BOSTON MASSACRE
The Democratic National Committee is being squeezed so tightly for
cash for its convention in Boston, that it is penalizing the very
people who will be there to make them look good: the press.
On Thursday, most newspapers and TV outlets learned that their
offices will not be quartered within the security compound of the
Fleet Center, where the Democratic Convention will be held.
Instead, for budget reasons, the DNC was giving up its
54,000-square-foot space originally intended for the media center,
and placing the journalists in a 42,000-square-foot facility about
a block from the Fleet Center.
The decision saves the DNC about $2 million, and means that
journalists, cameramen and others associated with the media will
most likely have to endure security check-ins at least twice a day,
as the media center will be outside the convention's security
perimeter.
The decision to save money came as a surprise to most of the
media elites who only a month ago had complained about the poor
facilities the Democrats were giving them. The new media space must
be adapted for more than 1,000 journalists and their support staff.
"It's worse than what we were giving them six weeks ago," says a
DNC events planner in Boston. "But we can't afford to give them
anything else. We need to find savings someplace. We're already
looking at cost overruns for the week."
The announced plans for the press working area are yet another
indication that the DNC is not pulling in the kind of money it
claimed to be raising for its Boston convention. And it also
appears to reveal the growing rift between the party and Boston's
city government. The larger building the DNC had been considering
within the security perimeter was found for it by the Boston
mayor's office. But that space would have required almost $2
million in renovations to make it usable for the press.
"I don't get the impression that the Boston Democratic
establishment is bending over backwards for us," says the DNC event
planner. "As things have moved along, the relationship between us
and them has gotten worse."
topics:
Iraq
