Leadership profiling
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Leadership profiling is the CIA practice of writing classified psychological assessments of foreign leaders for the officials who are about to meet them. John Kiriakou introduces it in July 2026 while launching a recurring segment of The Briefing Room built on the same method.

"When I was in the CIA, it used to be my job. It was my very first job in the CIA to to profile foreign leaders for the president, the vice president, the national security advisor, and the secretaries of state and defense. Anytime they were seeing a world leader, we had to write a classified psychological profile of that world leader."

His own portfolio was the most consequential one available at the time: "My job at the agency when I first got hired was uh to be essentially Saddam Hussein's classified biographer for the intelligence community. His His classified psychological biographer." The work was not solitary, "I worked with a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, and anthropologists to make sure that that we had cutting-edge analysis."

He has kept the habit: "I still kind of enjoyed doing it just for myself." The first public profile in the series was of Reza Pahlavi.

The segment, reintroduced

Kiriakou reintroduced the practice in August 2026 when relaunching the profile as a recurring segment, describing it in the same terms: profiling foreign leaders "for the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, and the secretaries of state and defense", with a classified psychological profile required "anytime they were seeing a world leader." He again described his own first assignment as being "essentially Saddam Hussein's classified biographer for the intelligence community", working with a team of psychiatrists, psychologists and anthropologists.

See also

- Saddam Hussein
- John Kiriakou's Briefing Room
- Reza Pahlavi
- Central Intelligence Agency
