From Act III, Chapter 4

. . . Meanwhile, Richer was bringing the heads of the Iraq Operations Group--a diverse team of nearly two hundred CIA operatives whose sole focus was Iraq--into the fold. The team, which fell under Richer's Near East Division, included operatives who'd been working on Saddam and the Iraqi terrain since the mid-1980s.

"This was a huge opportunity," recalls John Maguire, one of two men who oversaw the IOG and who'd been working clandestine operations on the country for thirteen years. "It was a window into Saddam that doesn't have an external filter on it. You have an ability to directly reach the leadership."

Maguire and the other man atop the IOG, who's still undercover, started meeting almost daily with Ian McCredie, the head of British intelligence in Washington. From the first meeting forward, they began to plan ways to use their Iraqi contact and the secret back channel to its fullest. . . .

John Maguire was a long-time CIA officer and top official in the agency's Iraqi Operations Group prior to his '05 departure. Maguire's deep involvement in pre- and post-invasion Iraq gave him key insight into the Bush administration's handling of the war and full access to American intelligence on Iraq. In The Way of the World, he helps unpack the mentality and actions of the White House in going to war and properly contextualizes the astonishing story of Iraq's intelligence chief following the invasion.