David Ransom
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David Ransom served as U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain during the period of John Kiriakou's posting there. Kiriakou characterizes him as "an absolutely lovely guy, one of the finest human beings I've ever worked for, a terrific ambassador and just a really great guy." It was Ransom who assigned Kiriakou as control officer for David Rockefeller's 1994,1996 visit to Bahrain, and who later revealed to him at the country-team debrief that Rockefeller's banking award was cover for a secret liaison trip to Saddam Hussein.

The Bob Dole foreign-contribution incident

In one documented incident, Ransom asked Kiriakou, serving as the embassy's notetaker in a meeting with the Bahraini Minister of Foreign Affairs, to remind him during the meeting to raise the matter of a former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain who, the embassy understood, was working as a fundraiser for the Bob Dole presidential campaign and might solicit money from the Bahraini government. Foreign nationals are barred by U.S. law from contributing to American political campaigns.

When Ransom raised the issue, the Foreign Minister responded:

> Oh, he's already been here. We gave him $50,000. We didn't realize it was illegal. But he went to see the Amir, and the Amir gave him $50,000.

In the car returning from the foreign ministry, Ransom instructed Kiriakou not to include the latter disclosure, that the Amir had personally contributed $50,000, in the diplomatic cable reporting the meeting. "That's a hornet's nest that I don't think either one of us want to be involved in."

Kiriakou complied with the instruction at the time, but agonized over the omission for several months on the grounds that failure to report a known crime would surface at his next CIA polygraph examination. The episode took place a month to three months before he rotated back to CIA headquarters.

How it was resolved

Kiriakou has given the ending of the story separately. He telephoned the CIA general counsel's office cold, intending to report it to a stranger over the phone; the lawyer who answered recognised the surname, asked whether he was from Farrell, Pennsylvania, and established that Kiriakou's father had been best man at his own in-laws' wedding. They met for coffee in the cafeteria instead.

The lawyer's assessment was immediate, "Oh yeah, that's a felony", and he instructed Kiriakou to put it in an email so it could be referred to the Justice Department, on the reasoning that Kiriakou, the lawyer and Ransom were all liable to prosecution if the department learned of it from any other direction. About a year later Kiriakou asked what had become of the referral, and was told: "They didn't give a shit. Nothing ever happened." His own conclusion was that the point had been the reporting rather than the outcome, "Okay, well, we did the right thing."

The Royal Diwan get-well parcel

Kiriakou describes a second money incident from the same embassy. When the deputy chief of mission had to curtail his posting because his wife needed medical evacuation to the United States for breast cancer, a parcel wrapped in brown paper arrived from the Royal Diwan. The DCM asked Kiriakou to stay, "Don't leave. I'm thinking I might need a witness", and opened it to find $50,000 in cash with a get-well card for his wife.

Kiriakou walked the twenty feet to Ransom's office. The ambassador's reaction was "Oh, for God's sake," followed by procedure: the money was counted in front of witnesses, confirmed at $50,000, and Kiriakou wrote a cable to the Treasury Department recording that it was being pouched back. Kiriakou frames the episode without rancour toward the senders, "That's what lovely people they were. They are. They remain lovely people. We can't accept $50,000."

The walkout in Bahrain

The Japanese ambassador to Bahrain, newly arrived from the consulate general in Chicago in 1994 or 1995, invited five American officers to dinner at his residence, the ambassador, the deputy chief of mission, and the political, economic and commercial officers. Kiriakou notes that a Japanese dinner is no holds barred, caviar and the most expensive steaks, and that the party went in expecting a good evening.

After an hour of pleasantries they sat down and Ransom asked to what they owed the pleasure. The answer was: "your president, he's stupid." What the ambassador meant, Kiriakou explains, was only what Dan Quayle had told him during his Chicago posting about Bill Clinton's marriage; his English was so poor that he could not convey it as anything but an insult to the head of state.

Ransom, whom Kiriakou calls the loveliest man he ever worked for, stood up, said "well, thank you for your hospitality", turned to his own officers and said "Gentlemen", and the entire American table got up and walked out.

The Awqaf meeting

Asked whether he had ever had to read and analyse the Quran professionally to understand what he was working on, Kiriakou said he had not, though he had studied it and read it in its entirety at college. He names exactly one occasion on which the text came up in the job, and it was in Ransom's service: "the only time I ever really needed to have even any background in the Quran was when Ambassador David Ransom, for whom I worked in Bahrain, went to meet the Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs. And I was the translator. And the note taker. That was the only time the Quran ever came up."

He adds that the post-9/11 assumption of a tight link between the religion and the politics is wrong, agreeing that culture and tribe do most of the interpretive work: as in Christianity and Judaism, "there are so many different bents to it", and among two billion Muslims and two and a half billion Christians there are "99 ways from Sunday... to interpret the tenets of it."

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Bahrain
