Mini Episode 1: Sadam's Shrink
John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Costard & Touchstone Productions
4.9 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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 NOTES
For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production. |
| 0:10.0 | Hi, I'm John Kirooku, and welcome to this mini episode of Dead Drop, What Makes a Spy Tick. |
| 0:16.9 | You know, it takes us a couple of weeks to produce each episode, and we want each one of them to be |
| 0:22.7 | absolutely perfect. So just to make sure that your appetite is wedded for the next episode, |
| 0:28.5 | I'd like to hearken back to 1990. I had just joined the CIA and I was assigned to be an |
| 0:35.1 | analyst in the Office of Leadership Analysis. My assignment specifically |
| 0:39.6 | was to be Saddam Hussein's classified biographer. The CIA made an analytic conclusion on June |
| 0:47.2 | 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 |
| 0:58.4 | kilometers and take the southern tip of an oil field that was located almost entirely within |
| 1:03.9 | Iraqi territory. |
| 1:05.8 | That's not what ended up happening. |
| 1:08.1 | What ended up happening was on August 2nd, 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait and took the entire |
| 1:14.1 | country. The royal family fled to Saudi Arabia. Saddam named an interim occupation governor of |
| 1:20.9 | 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 |
| 1:31.1 | office early, about 6 a.m. My boss told me as soon as I walked in not to take my jacket off |
| 1:37.6 | because we were going to the White House. I had never been to the White House before except as a tourist. |
| 1:42.7 | I had taken that same tour that millions of tourists around the world take every year. |
| 1:48.0 | A car was waiting for us outside of CIA headquarters. |
| 1:51.0 | We got in and we drove downtown. |
| 1:53.0 | A member of the U.S. Marine Corps was waiting for us at the entrance to the West Wing, |
| 1:58.0 | and he escorted us to the Oval Office. I had never seen the Oval Office before |
| 2:02.7 | except on television. When we walked into the Oval Office, it was President George H.W. Bush, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Costard & Touchstone Productions, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Costard & Touchstone Productions and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.