Bush Asks Spy Chief to Stay Indefinitely

W A S H I N G T O N, Jan. 17 -- President-elect George W. Bush has decided to keep CIA Director George Tenet on the job, asking him to stay in the post indefinitely.

Tenet has directed the CIA since July 1997, coming there after serving as senior director of intelligence programs for President Clinton's National Security Council.

There's no guarantee Tenet will keep the job permanently. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer says the president-elect spoke to Tenet by phone this week to ask him to "stay on the job for what will amount to an undetermined period of time."

Tenet made no secret about wanting to stay on the job, sending clear signals that he would accept if Bush asked him to stick around.

Bipartisan Background

Tenet worked in the Senate for both Republicans and Democrats, having handled arms control and foreign policy issues for Sen. John Heinz, R.-Pa., Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and having served as chief of staff for the bipartisan staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, then chaired by David Boren, D-Okla., and vice-chaired by William Cohen, R-Maine.

A native New Yorker who attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate and studied arms control as a graduate student at Columbia University, Tenet is known in the CIA for his laid-back demeanor — and for his habit of bouncing a basketball through the halls of the agency headquarters.

Tenet was tapped in 1992 by the incoming Clinton administration to move from Capitol Hill to the White House, to serve on the National Security Council, as the director in charge of intelligence. He was then promoted to deputy director of central intelligence — helping oversee the CIA and other agencies — by incoming director John Deutch.

When Clinton NSC adviser Anthony Lake was selected to succeed Deutch, Tenet expected to stay on as deputy under his former boss at the National Security Council. But when Lake's confirmation was torpedoed by the Senate, Clinton went with Tenet — a man largely unknown to the outside world but popular on Capitol Hill and within the corridors of the various intelligence agencies he oversees.