John Kiriakou's Dead Drop - Mini Episode 1: Sadam's Shrink

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

THE BLURB: Talk about getting thrown into the deep end of the pool! When Iraq and Kuwait - John's new "area of expertise" - suddenly go to war (Iraq invaded Kuwait), John unexpectedly finds himself called to the White House - where, as a 25 year old newbie - he's asked to brief President George H W Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle and the the intelligence chiefs on what Saddam will do next. That's what happens when you become the CIA's Sadam Whisperer. Or his shrink.SHOW NOTESFor more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast, it's a costod and Touchstone production. Hi, I'm John Kariaku, and welcome to this mini episode of Dead Drop, What Makes a Spy Tick. You know, it takes us a couple of weeks to produce each episode, and we want each one of them to be absolutely perfect. So just to make sure that your appetite is wedded for the next episode, I'd like to harken back to 1990. I had just joined the CIA, and I was assigned to be an analyst in the office. of leadership analysis. My assignment specifically was to be Saddam Hussein's classified biographer. The CIA made an analytic conclusion on June the 30th, 1990, that Saddam Hussein was indeed going to invade Kuwait. We believed incorrectly, as it turned out, that he was simply going to

cross the border a few kilometers and take the southern tip of an oil field that was located almost entirely within Iraqi territory. That's not what ended up happening. What ended up happening was on August 2nd, 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait and took the entire country. The royal family fled to Saudi Arabia. Saddam named an interim occupation governor of Kuwait and the Kuwaiti people, mostly fled, the ones that couldn't mostly died.

Well, on the morning of August 2nd, 1990, I got to the office early, about the city. 6 a.m. My boss told me as soon as I walked in not to take my jacket off because we were going to the White House. I had never been to the White House before except as a tourist. I had taken that same tour that millions of tourists around the world take every year. A car was waiting for us outside of CIA headquarters. We got in and we drove downtown. A member of the U.S. Marine Corps was waiting for us at the entrance to the West Wing and he escorted us to the Oval Office. I had never seen the Oval Office before except on television. When we walked into the Oval Office, it was President George H.W. Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, National Security Advisor General Brent Skowcroft,

CIA Director Judge William Webster, my boss, and me. I was 25 years old. Well, the protocol in the Oval Office is such that you don't speak unless you're spoken to, and you certainly don't sit until the president sits. So I just stood there. Finally, the president came over and sat down in his very comfortable overstuffed chair. The vice president sat in an identical, comfortable looking overstuffed chair. General Schocroft and Judge Webster sat down in two less comfortable looking what looked to be dining room chairs, and my boss and I sat on the couch. Again, I was 25 years old. and the thought that was running through my mind at the time, and I still remember it like it was yesterday,

was that my friends from high school would not believe in a million years what I was doing right now. Well, the president says, gentlemen, please sit down. And then he looks around and he says, well, now what do we do? And everybody in the room turned and looked at me.

It took me a second to get my bearings. Well, Mr. President, As you know, at 0200 hours, Iraqi troops crossed the border into Kuwait. They've occupied the entire country, and the royal family has fled to Saudi Arabia. The president genuinely didn't know what to do about this. Later in the afternoon, he took a phone call that became somewhat famous. The phone call was from the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and she said something to him that was immediately leaked and also has become famous.

she said, George, now is not the time to go wobbly. And it was that that made George H.W. Bush finally decide to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait. But anyway, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. I told the president that Iraqi troops had taken over the whole of the country. And then he said, do we know anything about who is ruling Iraq today? As it so happened, I had written an article about a Kuwaiti physician, who was just an interesting character to me. His mother had been a Sudanese slave

of the Kuwaiti royal family in the 1950s. Slavery was only ended in Kuwait in the 1950s. And so he had great resentment for the royal family. Not only that, but he was black, which meant he was a minority in Kuwait, and so he was discriminated against. But he was also very, very bright. And so the Kuwaiti royal family gave him a scholarship

to study medicine at the American Union, University of Beirut. He had gone back to Kuwait, declared his support for communism, and was a thorn in the side of the royal family ever since. But while he was in medical school, his college roommate was a young Lebanese man named George Habash, and together they created a group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And when I said that to the president, he looked at me with a blank look, and the vice president shouted, Jesus Christ! It was then that the CIA director, Judge William Webster, stood up and said, gentlemen, thank you for coming in. Thank you for the briefing, which was my cue to get the hell out of the Oval Office. And my boss and I walked out,

got in the car, and drove back to CIA headquarters. I was on a cloud all day. I got to brief the president of the United States one-on-one, and not just the president, but the president, the vice president, the national security advisor, the CIA director, all in the same room. The funny thing to me was, nobody in the office really cared. They had all briefed presidents and vice presidents, maybe not all at the same time. It was worthy of a pat on the back, if nothing else. That day, when I got home, my wife said, how was work? I said, it was great.

She said, would you do? I said, nothing. Really? Did you talk to anybody interesting? Nope. Just sat at the desk all day, thinking the big thoughts. And then she said, I don't know how you do a job so boring. Just sitting at the desk. And I shrugged my shoulders. I hope that story was a little bit of interest to you. We have a lot more stories where that one came from. We're going to take you deep inside the CIA, not just analysis, but operations and everything in between. You have questions about disguises. We have answers. You have questions. about travel and crossing borders, we have answers. You have questions about double agents. We have answers. So please join us for another episode of Dead Drop, What Makes a Spy Tick?

Thanks again, I'm John Kirooku. This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production.