The cocaine in the West Wing
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The cocaine in the West Wing was the July 2023 discovery of a small bag of cocaine inside the White House, which John Kiriakou treated as a non-story artificially prolonged, and as an occasion to explain a piece of building procedure most Americans never see.

The cubbies

Asked why it was a story at all, Kiriakou began with the physical arrangement. Cell phones cannot be carried into a secure area of the White House: "it's a security violation. So you have to leave your cell phone in a little cubby. They have these cubbies attached to the wall with slats in them outside of every what's called a vaulted area, an area where classified conversations may take place."

His reconstruction followed from that. "So somebody pulled this phone out. There was a little packet of coke apparently stuck to the phone somehow. Put it in the cubby, got his phone later. The coke became detached in the little baggy state in the in the slat."

Why it should have been solved in an afternoon

Kiriakou's point was that the White House already holds every piece of information required. "It's not like you can just walk in off the street and go into the West Wing of the Oval Office. They know exactly who's in there." Even a visitor without a clearance must provide a social security number and submit to a background and law enforcement check.

And fingerprints are already on file, because "to get a job that requires a clearance requires fingerprints." From which: "there's no possible way anybody can tell me that there aren't fingerprints on that baggy. Of course, there are fingerprints on the baggy. So run the fingerprints, which takes, you know, a couple of hours. Identify the person and then do what you're going to do."

His prediction

Kiriakou noted that Donald Trump was posting on Truth Social that the cocaine belonged variously to Hunter Biden, the Special Counsel and Joe Biden, and that the Secret Service had announced it was investigating. His view of what investigating should mean was blunt: "run the fingerprint and then cross match it with everybody who was on the schedule that day. It takes a minute."

His forecast: "My guess is we're never going to know or we'll never know who belongs to that Coke, and it's just going to go away. But why is this a story anyway? Take the Coke, destroy it, and let's move on to more important issues." He treated cocaine in Washington as unremarkable on its own terms, see the Capitol Hill cocaine ring.

See also

- The Capitol Hill Cocaine Ring
- The colour-coded badges
