Arabists
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Arabist was the term used inside the U.S. foreign-policy establishment for officials who knew Arabic and the history of the region. Put to John Kiriakou that the label worked as a dismissal, that respected State Department officers were written off as blindly prejudiced against Israel, or as antisemitic, simply for knowing the language and the history, his answer was: "Yes. Absolutely true. Absolutely true."

The example he reaches for is Ambassador Chas Freeman, under whom he served in Saudi Arabia and whom he describes as "one of the most brilliant minds I've ever encountered."

The institutional context he sets around it is that sympathy for the Palestinians was, in his experience, the ordinary view among people who worked the region: "there was a deep admiration just among the rank and file for the Palestinian people. Not for the Israelis, but for the Palestinians", the same at the State Department, and that it stopped counting once a decision reached the White House.

See also

- The 1991 Saudi plan for Gaza
- The 189 undeclared officers
