US President George W. Bush announced at a hastily convened press conference Thursday morning that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet had tendered his resignation and he had accepted the resignation.

The announcement, made shortly after a joint appearance before the press with visiting Australian Prime Minster John Howard, cameas a surprise but not as unexpectedly.

The CIA has been under criticism since the Sept. 11 attacks for failing to provide credible and accurate intelligence to foil the plot, and for prewar intelligence failures on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration used to justify its war against Iraq last year. No such weapons have been found so far, and Tenet, as CIA chief, has become a target of public criticism. His departure has been seen as something certain,and the only question was when.

However, there were no signs indicating his resignation before the sudden announcement, and his departure, five months before the presidential election, caught many in surprise. Congressional officials said that until early this week, Tenet had been tentatively scheduled to appear before the Senate intelligence committee in a closed session Thursday. But Tenet had canceled that appearance, citing other commitments without giving a hint he was preparing to step down.

Announcing Tenet's resignation before departing for a visit to Europe, Bush said Tenet, 51, came to the White House on Wednesday night and told him he was resigning "for personal reasons."

In remarks to employees at the CIA headquarters, Tenet, who was appointed CIA director in 1997 by the then president Bill Clinton,said that it was the most difficult decision he had ever had to make. "While Washington and the media will put many different faces on the decision, it was a personal decision and had only one basis in fact -- the well-being of my wonderful family -- nothing more, and nothing less," he said.

Stansfield Turner, a former CIA chief, saw the official announcement unconvincing. The resignation was "too significant a move at too important a time" to be inspired by nothing more than personal considerations, he said in an interview with CNN.

"I think he is being pushed out," he said. "The president feels he has to have someone to blame."

A report posted on the New York Times' web site on Thursday said Tenet's resignation might have been hastened by a critical, 400-page report from the Senate intelligence committee that was presented to the Central Intelligence Agency for comment last month.

The report quoted officials and people close to Tenet as saying that the classified report was a detailed account of mistakes and miscalculations by US intelligence agencies on the issue whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons before last year's invasion by the United States.

Officials who have read the report described it as presenting an across-the-board indictment of CIA's performance on Iraq, whosecriticisms they said ranged from inadequate prewar intelligence collection to a sloppy analytical performance, that produced the mistaken conclusion that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons.

The report was among the factors that make Tenet step down, some people close to the CIA chief said.

"There are some things that are indefensible," a recently retired intelligence official familiar with the report said.

Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, also said he believed the report, which he had not read, had been a factor in Tenet's decision to step down.

There were lots of speculations on why the CIA chief chose to resign and why at this time. But there was one thing that seemed to be agreed by all -- that is, Tenet did not resign for merely "personal reasons."

Source: Xinhua