Bush Grants Tenet Rare Chance to Remain CIA Chief

George J. Tenet has agreed to remain as director of the CIA, President-elect George W. Bush announced Tuesday, making Tenet the first director in 28 years to remain in office after a new party entered the White House.

Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Tenet has agreed to continue for an undetermined period. Fleischer said Bush will decide Tenet’s tenure later and said he did not know whether the search for a successor will continue.

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said Tenet “is pleased and honored to have the opportunity to continue to serve.”

The last director whose tenure was extended when the White House switched parties was Richard M. Helms, who was appointed by President Johnson in 1966 and served until 1973 under President Nixon.

With more than three years in office, Tenet is also the longest serving director since William H. Webster bridged the gap between the Reagan and Bush administrations and served a little over four years from 1987 to 1991.

Bush’s father, the former president, served as CIA director for slightly less than a year at the tail end of the Ford administration. He was disappointed that President Carter did not ask him to stay on and believed that the director’s post should have been depoliticized and taken out of the partisan transition cycle.

CIA headquarters was renamed the George Bush Center for Intelligence in honor of the former president in April 1999. Tenet threw a huge party for the former president at dedication time and later staged a major Cold War intelligence conference at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M; University.

Tenet’s reappointment was opposed by some conservatives, particularly Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who said last month that he thought Bush should have “his own person there.”