CIA chief resigns amid Iraq criticism

WASHINGTON — CIA Director George Tenet's resignation was announced Thursday amid criticism over his agency's mistaken intelligence about Iraq's weapons and missed opportunities to detect the Sept. 11 terrorist plot.

Tenet submitted his resignation before the release of two high-profile reports expected to be critical of the CIA.

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee is a reportedly "scathing" assessment of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. A second report, by the independent Sept. 11 inquiry, will review CIA missteps before the terrorist attacks. A third assessment, by a bipartisan seven-member commission appointed by Bush, is scheduled to report on Iraq intelligence errors by next March.

Bush stood alone on the White House lawn to announce Tenet's resignation before starting a three-day trip to Rome, Paris and Normandy to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings during World War II.

"He told me he was resigning for personal reasons," Bush said. "I will miss him."

Tenet, 51, said the decision to step down was "the most difficult decision I have ever had to make," adding in emotional remarks at CIA headquarters in nearby Langley, Va.: "I know in my heart that the time is right to move on to the next phase of our lives."

Tenet called his departure "a personal decision" but admitted unnamed officials in Washington and the news media would "put many different faces on the decision."

A senior administration official traveling with Bush to Europe told reporters aboard Air Force One that the president had "absolutely not" hinted to Tenet that he should step aside.

"The president did not want him to step down," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But sometimes you have to do what you have to do for personal reasons."

Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner, who served President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, said Tenet was "pushed out."

"I don't think (Tenet) would pull the plug on President Bush in the midst of an election cycle without being asked by President Bush to do that," said Turner, a political ally of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Bush administration officials and allies in Congress noted that Tenet, a former Senate staffer and National Security Council officer, had led the nation's estimated $35 billion-a-year intelligence apparatus during an exhausting seven-year period.