Principals Committee Meeting (February 2003)
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A Principals Committee meeting is the senior-most interagency forum of the U.S. national-security apparatus, normally chaired by the president. It convenes cabinet-level officials to make or ratify major national-security decisions.

John Kiriakou served as notetaker for a Principals Committee meeting on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the night of February 19,20, 2003, in which the sitting vice president revealed to participants that Iran was already a planned next target.

Word of the invasion, a year in advance

Kiriakou has said the planning behind that meeting began a full year earlier, in May 2002, on his very first day as executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. After he signed six secrecy agreements, his new boss told him the U.S. would invade Iraq the following year, overthrow Saddam Hussein, and build the world's largest Air Force base there, allowing the U.S. to move its air assets out of Saudi Arabia and, in the stated rationale, deprive Osama bin Laden of the propaganda claim that America was "polluting the land of the two holy mosques." When Kiriakou objected that bin Laden had not yet been caught, he was told the decision had already been made and the "battle lines" were already drawn: the pro-invasion faction comprised the Office of the Vice President, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council, while the CIA, State Department, and Joint Chiefs of Staff were opposed. Iraq War planning began that day in 2002, a full year ahead of the March 2003 invasion.

Setting

The meeting was held in the CIA director's conference room. George Tenet was the sole participant seated at the table; Kiriakou sat directly behind him to take notes. The other principals appeared on screens: Vice President Dick Cheney, who chaired the meeting in place of President Bush; National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice; Secretary of State Colin Powell; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; several NSC senior directors; and General Tommy Franks, Commander-in-Chief of Central Command. Kiriakou has said the Principals Committee is normally chaired by the president and made up of the secretaries of state and defense, the national security adviser, and the CIA director, with a handful of additional NSC staff, but that, for reasons never explained to him, the president simply did not attend that night. At one point earlier in the meeting, Tenet quietly told Kiriakou not to bother writing something down.

The order-of-battle briefing

Cheney opened by asking General Franks to give the order of battle, the disposition of forces for the following morning's invasion of Iraq. Kiriakou described finding these briefings tedious and incomprehensible to him: unit designations, locations, axes of advance. He took notes dutifully.

"We can be in Tehran by August"

Cheney asked Franks to confirm the invasion was set for a 6:00 a.m. border crossing and whether he was confident. Franks replied: "Mr. Vice President, if all goes as planned, we'll be in Tehran by August", or, in some retellings, "we can be in Tehran by August."

George Tenet discreetly reached forward and turned off his microphone. He turned to Kiriakou and said: "Did he say Tehran or did he say Baghdad?" Kiriakou answered: "He said Tehran." Tenet said: "Have they lost their minds?" He then turned the microphone back on and sat quietly through the remainder of the briefing.

"They're going to throw flowers at us"

As the meeting concluded and participants were logging off, a senior NSC director, in one account, the NSC's senior director for the Middle East, said excitedly: "When we cross that border tomorrow morning, they're going to throw flowers at us." Kiriakou's reaction: "Do they know nothing about history? They must know nothing about the history of the Middle East." He has separately said he told the director afterward that Iraqis would see Americans as foreign invaders and occupiers who would "throw bombs, not flowers", a prediction he says proved correct, embroiling the U.S. in a war lasting more than a decade.

Aftermath

Returning to his office, Kiriakou told his boss: "Did you know we were going to attack Iran?" His boss replied: "Are they still talking about that? We're not going to attack Iran." And then Kiriakou: "These guys know nothing about history." His boss: "Of course they don't know anything about history. That's why they think we're going to go to Iran. We're not going to go to Iran."

The United States attacked Iraq the following day.

"Are they still talking about that?"

In a March 2026 retelling, with the United States at war with Iran, Kiriakou returned to what the meeting had said about Iran specifically, and to the exchange that followed it back at Langley.

He lists the room as he remembers it: Cheney in the chair because the president was busy, Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser, Colin Powell as secretary of state, the head of Central Command, senior National Security Council staff, and George Tenet, whose notetaker he was.

Back at the office, the deputy director asked how it had gone. Kiriakou's first question was not about Iraq at all: "Did you know we were going to invade Iran?" The reply was dismissive, "Are they still talking about that? We're not going to invade Iran." Kiriakou's point in raising it in 2026 is the interval: "here we are 24 years later, and we're invading Iran."

He also reported the flowers remark to the deputy director, and asked "Do these people know nothing about history?" The answer he got was flat: "No, they know nothing about history."

The pattern he draws from it applies directly to the 2026 Iran war: "the conventional wisdom has always been that we're going to be greeted as liberators, and we're not. We're greeted as attackers and occupiers, and Iranians for the most part will fight to the death to save their country."

The meeting as Kiriakou describes it

In a March 2026 retelling Kiriakou set out the room in detail. The meeting was in February 2003, the night before the invasion of Iraq. A principals committee meeting is normally chaired by the president; this one, "for whatever reason", was chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Kiriakou was in the CIA director's conference room, the only other person present with George Tenet, who sat alone at the table while Kiriakou sat directly behind him to take notes. The other principals appeared on screens: Cheney, Condoleezza Rice beside him, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, a couple of NSC senior directors, and the commander-in-chief of Central Command, General Tommy Franks.

Kiriakou notes that he had always hated order-of-battle briefings, he did not understand them and did not care where the units were, which is what made the last line of this one register.

Cheney opened by asking Franks for the order of battle. Franks worked through the dispositions and finished: "If all goes as planned, we can be in Tehran by August." Tenet reached in front of himself and discreetly turned off the microphone, then turned round: "Did he say Thran or did he say Baghdad?" Kiriakou answered that he had said Tehran. Tenet's response was "Have they lost their minds?", after which he turned the microphone back on and sat through the rest of the briefing without speaking.

As the meeting broke up and participants logged off, an NSC senior director said excitedly that when they crossed the border the next morning "they're going to throw flowers at us." Kiriakou remembers thinking they must know nothing about the history of the Middle East.

Back at his office he asked his boss whether he had known the United States was going to attack Iran. The answer was "Are they still talking about that? We're not going to attack Iran", and, on the history point, "Of course they don't know anything about history. That's why they think we're going to go to Iran." The invasion of Iraq began the next day.

Retold in the Iran war

Kiriakou returned to the meeting on 2 March 2026, three days into the American war on Iran, as the closing answer of the interview. He was, he says, the note-taker in a principals' committee meeting the night before the attack on Iraq, and as the room broke up one of the National Security Council's senior advisers said "when we cross that border tomorrow, they're going to throw flowers at us."

He went back to his office and asked the deputy director of the CIA, "do these people know nothing about history?" The reply: "no. They know nothing about history." His conclusion in 2026: "and here we are repeating that same mistake that we made 24 years ago."

See also

- George Tenet
- Dick Cheney
- Saddam Hussein
- John Kiriakou
