Bill Richardson
===============

Bill Richardson held, over the course of his career, the offices of U.S. Congressman, Secretary of Energy, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and Governor of New Mexico. John Kiriakou became friends with him at McClarty Associates and liked him enough that he voted for Richardson for president in 2008 even after Richardson had already dropped out of the race. He is documented in Kiriakou's 2025 Dalton Fischer interview as one of "half a dozen people in Washington" to whom Barack Obama promised the position of Secretary of State in exchange for political support during the 2008 Democratic primary.

The 2008 endorsement

In January 2008, before the primaries had started, Richardson invited Obama to watch the Super Bowl at his roughly 1,200-acre New Mexico property. Per Richardson's account to Kiriakou, at halftime the two walked the grounds and Obama put his arm around Richardson's shoulder: "Bill, if you can deliver the Hispanic vote, Secretary of State." Richardson endorsed Obama and campaigned for him in the Hispanic community; the day after Obama's November 2008 win, Richardson made Kiriakou his deputy chief of staff. In Kiriakou's 2026 account to the Cyprus Diaspora Forum, the offer came with a counter-request of his own: he accepted the deputy chief of staff post on the condition that he be made "ambassador to Greece or ambassador to Cyprus in the second term." Richardson agreed.

Passed over, Commerce, then CIA director, then withdrawal

Obama instead named Senator Hillary Clinton Secretary of State. Richardson was offered Secretary of Commerce, which he first accepted on Kiriakou's advice that the role could be reshaped through the foreign-commercial-service portfolio. Richardson also asked Kiriakou to informally sound out the transition team about CIA director instead, "would you tell him that I wouldn't mind being CIA director?", but Kiriakou's contact in the transition told him Richardson wasn't seriously under consideration for that post either. Richardson ultimately withdrew his Commerce nomination: "what the hell do I know about commerce?"

Kiriakou later realized John Kerry had been promised the same job, and concluded Obama "promised half a dozen people" Secretary of State and "duped all of you guys." By his 2026 telling, Eric Holder was a third man given the same assurance, "Eric Holder was supposed to be the secretary of state. He ended up being the attorney general", with the promise extended, on Kiriakou's count, to six people in all, each asked to endorse or to deliver a particular bloc of support. What made the arrangement work, in his reading, was the self-regard of the men receiving it: each concluded that "of course he would make me secretary of state ... because I'm so smart."

See also

- John Kerry
- Mack McLarty
- John Kiriakou
