Michael P. Wright — Norman, Oklahoma, USA mpwright9@aol.com

The annual yearbook of the University of Oklahoma, located in Norman, is called Sooner. OU’s president is former U.S. Senator David Boren. The 2003 volume of Sooner devotes two pages to Ken Levit, currenty president of the OU campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Sooner reports that Levit left his hometown of Tulsa in 1998 to work for CIA director George Tenet. In 2000 he returned to Tulsa, and was recruited by Boren for the OU position. Boren, who was Chairman of the Intelligence Committee until he resigned from the Senate in 1994, is widely known as Tenet’s mentor and patron. Shortly after 9/11, Time magazine reported that the two of them were having a "leisurely breakfast" in a Washington hotel on the morning of the attack.

Boren has made a life-long practice of placing his close friends in government jobs. While introducing Tenet at a speech on the OU campus in March of 2005, Boren said that in 1987 Tenet was given the job of chief of staff for the Intelligence Committtee, even though several other staff members outranked him. At the time, Tenet had no background in intelligence or espionage.

Boren’s favor to Tenet is what launched him on his career path to becoming CIA director, during the Clinton administration. In January 2001, Boren called the newly inaugurated George Bush and convinced him to keep Tenet in that position. The failure to prevent 9/11 and the lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are two consequences. These should be seen as the legacy of David Boren.

Similarly, the appointment of Levit to the presidency of an OU campus appears to be accounted for entirely by the fact that he is a friend and loyalist to Boren. Levit managed Boren’s re-election campaign for the Senate in 1990. The yearbook does not mention Levit having any experience in higher education prior to being given the OU job by Boren. It does say that he received "many" awards from Tenet, but does not provide details of any of them.

Another close CIA friend of Boren is David Edger, whom he brought to the OU campus with a "visiting professor" appointment during the summer of 2001. Earlier, Edger had responsibility for CIA surveillance over the Hamburg Al Qaeda cell. See this for more information about Boren, his CIA friends, and 9/11:

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