As for the neocons, they can take solace in getting another opportunity to remind people it was Tenet's CIA that authored the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate sanctioning the invasion. And it was Tenet himself who wrote a letter to Congress claiming there was a suspected link between al-Qaeda and Saddam.

But some of his own former employees at the CIA appear to have found very little to like in his controversial memoir. Six of those former officers wrote a letter to Tenet over the weekend condemning his "failed leadership" and "lack of courage" in going along with the Bush Administration's march to war. As a former CIA officer myself, I was asked to sign the letter as well, but chose not to because I'm convinced the problem with the CIA is much bigger than Tenet. The CIA was politicized long before he came along.

I have known Tenet for decades, ever since we were classmates at Georgetown University. When we met again, 20 years later, he was at the National Security Council, while I was at the CIA. After I had an unfortunate confrontation with a senior staffer at the NSC, Tenet came to my defense. When I resigned from the CIA, Tenet gave me a Career Intelligence Medal. When I wrote a memoir — largely about the decline of the CIA — he and the officers around him did their best to dismiss me and my book's message, as I expected them to do.

There will be flood of insider memoirs like Tenet's dealing with Iraq, and the narrative will change accordingly. So let's keep our eye on the ball. In the eight years Tenet led the CIA, he failed to reform it by rebuilding the directorate of operations or filling gaps in intelligence from Iran to China. As Tenet sorted through the raw intelligence in the run-up to the war, he knew the CIA did not have a single reliable source in Iraq. (Nor one in al-Qaeda for that matter.) The CIA relied on exiles, rumors and fabricators for its intelligence. The October 2002 NIE should have said only one thing: the CIA has no idea if Saddam has WMD or not.

Tenet also knew that Saddam's Iraq was an almost impossible nut to crack. During the first Gulf war, the dozen Iraqi generals captured said that they did not know about the invasion of Kuwait until 48 hours before it happened. If Saddam's generals didn't know he was going to invade Kuwait, how was the CIA supposed to know?

More than most, Tenet had to recognize that the CIA wasn't prepared for the occupation of Iraq. In March 2003 there were only a handful of officers who spoke fluent Arabic. Few had even served in the Middle East. Tenet also knew that the CIA didn't have any sources inside Saudi Salafi groups, who are believed to be largely responsible for kicking off the current civil war.

It's not that Tenet is responsible for getting us into Iraq. It's that he failed in not making a full disclosure to Congress and the White House that we were taking a leap into a bottomless black abyss. He should have resigned when he realized Bush would use bad intelligence to deceive the American people. This is what we get when we have a politicized CIA director.

Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East and Time.com's intelligence columnist, is the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down