The scapegoat?

George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, resigned yesterday, the Bush administration's de facto scapegoat for the fiasco of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and the heavy loss of US credibility that followed.

The timing of his departure, described as being "for personal reasons", stunned Washington. Mr Tenet, 51, is known to have wanted to step down before the presidential inauguration in January.

But his going - amid continuing violence in Iraq and new official warnings about possible terrorist attacks - represents the first big shake-up in President George Bush's once-vaunted national security team.

Mr Tenet will formally step down in mid-July, and his deputy John McLaughlin will take charge, almost certainly at least until early next year. The outgoing CIA director, who has held the post since 1997, told Mr Bush of his decision during an hour-long meeting at the White House on Wednesday evening.

Yesterday, as Mr Bush left for his four-day trip to Europe, he heaped praise on Mr Tenet, calling him a "strong and able leader," who had done "a superb job" for the American people. "I told him I'm sorry he's leaving," the President said.

Mr Tenet, once a senior aide at the Senate Intelligence Committee, was much liked on Capitol Hill. But for all yesterday's warm words, from Democrats as well as Republicans, the truth about his departure is almost certainly more complicated. Last night, it was not clear whether Mr Tenet was gently pushed, or whether he is going of his own volition. No warning appears to have been given to members of the Senate and House intelligence committees.

In an address to staff at CIA headquarters, Mr Tenet insisted he made his decision solely for family reasons; "nothing more and nothing less," he said, his voice choking with emotion. But apart from the WMD embarrassment, the Agency is also likely to be strongly criticised in the forthcoming report by the bipartisan commission investigating the 11 September attacks and why they were not prevented. That too may have contributed to his going.

"This is too important a decision at too important a time for this to be a personal decision," Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director, said. "He wouldn't pull the plug on the President in the middle of an election cycle without being asked by the President to do it. He's being pushed out; it's likely he's the scapegoat."

Within minutes of the news, senior Democrats were already pointing the finger at Mr Bush. The Massachusetts senator John Kerry praised Mr Tenet for his "extremely hard work" on behalf of the country. But the US had suffered "significant" intelligence failures, the Democratic challenger for the White House added. "The administration has to accept responsibility for those failures."

Mr Tenet, among the few holdovers from the Clinton administrations, was the second-longest serving director in the CIA's 57-year history, and served at a particularly gruelling time, as terrorism replaced the Soviet Union as the main threat to US national security. He is widely credited with restoring the morale and cohesion of the agency, and giving new teeth to the operations directorate, the CIA's clandestine arm. Mr Tenet also had a strong personal relationship with Mr Bush, whom he saw almost every day.

But, despite the changes he initiated, he has presided over several massive intelligence failures. The CIA did not predict Pakistani and Indian nuclear

tests in 1998, could not forestall the September 2001 attacks, and never managed to gather effective human intelligence in Iraq. Mr Tenet was also handicapped by long-standing jealousy and lack of co-operation between the CIA and the FBI.

But the coup de grâce was the WMD fiasco. Mr Tenet did not succeed in keeping already discredited allegations about Saddam Hussein's efforts to buy uranium ore in Africa out of Mr Bush's State of the Union address in 2003. In Plan of Attack, the journalist Bob Woodward's book on the run-up to the Iraq war, in 2002 Mr Tenet assured an allegedly unconvinced Mr Bush that the evidence Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons was "a slam-dunk".

Colin Powell the Secretary of State, made a case to the UN Security Council that proved totally false. General Powell demanded a full explanation from the CIA.Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, now accused of working for Iranian intelligence and pushing America into invading Iraq, revelled in the departure of the man he accused of being the source of his troubles. Mr Tenet "provided erroneous information about weapons of mass destruction to President Bush which caused his government massive embarrassment in the United Nations and his own country", Mr Chalabi said.

Mr McLaughlin is a highly esteemed career intelligence official with wide support within the agency, and is respected by Republicans and Democrats alike on Capitol Hill.

* The head of the agency's clandestine service, James Pavitt, plans to announce his retirement today ? a decision the 31-year CIA veteran made several weeks ago before he knew of Mr Tenet's decision, a CIA official said.