Will Bush Retain Tenet as CIA Chief?

W A S H I N G T O N, Jan. 5 -- CIA Director George Tenet is not commenting publicly on speculation that he may be asked by the Bush administration to stay on as director, at least for the first few months.

But, hewing to a vaunted Washington tradition of telegraphing one’s desires, Tenet is allowing his friends to let it be known that he would love to accept, should the offer materialize.

“Those who know George Tenet and know how much he loves his job and cares about the future of U.S. intelligence know that he would willing to stick around for a while, if he were asked to do so,” one person close to Tenet tells ABCNEWS.

A Laid-Back Sort of GuyTenet 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.