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NPR interviewed Tenet's second in command at the CIA, the Former Deputy Director JOHN McLAUGHLIN, about Tenet's interpretation of the infamous "slam dunk" comment.¹ Here's what he had to say:

Mr. McLAUGHLIN: Well, you know, to hear it described, you would think this was a meeting in which George Tenet said slam dunk and then everyone stood up and said, great, let's go to war. It wasn't that way at all.

This was a meeting that was intended to review some intelligence that might be declassified to help explain why analysts at that time thought - now, we know wrongly - that Saddam had WMD. And when George said those two words, I think he was saying them to convey the idea that there's more intelligence that can be declassified that we put on the table here.

I actually personally do not remember him saying those words. There were three or four of us there from the agency. One person remembers him saying them. And that person I think would dispute the idea that he said it in the way it's been described. It's been described that he jumped up from the sofa, threw his arms in the air, kind of, like a referee and yelled slam-dunk. It was an offhand, casual comment that, frankly, none of us thought about after we left that meeting.

McLaughlin confirms reports that we've had about tensions between the WH and the CIA, especially in one area:

But tensions began to grow as differences opened up between the administration and the intelligence community on a number of issues, chiefly on the question of whether there was a relationship between Iraq, Saddam and somehow, 9/11, which we stoutly(ph), firmly dismissed as a possibility. And there were many people in the administration who saw it differently.

Among those "many peoplee" was VP Cheney, who to this day still declares that there was link between Saddam and Osama.

¹National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Weekend Edition Saturday 12:00 PM EST
April 28, 2007 Saturday
LENGTH: 1360 words
HEADLINE: Former CIA Deputy Discusses Boss's New Book
ANCHORS: SCOTT SIMON