# Cheney's airstrip question

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Cheney's airstrip question," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cheney-airstrip-question/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*A one-line request from Vice President Dick Cheney, what is the longest airstrip in northern Iraq made of?, that nobody in the CIA's operations directorate could answer, and that John Kiriakou eventually resolved by asking the agency librarian. The answer came back within a day, with the exact mix. The purpose was to work out whether the runway would take a transport aircraft carrying two tanks.*

- **Asked by:** [Dick Cheney](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dick-cheney)
- **The question:** What the longest airstrip in northern Iraq was made of
- **Who answered it:** The CIA librarian, within 24 hours
- **Purpose:** Whether the runway could take a plane carrying two tanks

**Cheney's airstrip question** is [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s example of the kind of one-off demand that reached him as [executive assistant to the deputy director for operations](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/executive-assistant-to-the-deputy-director-for-operations) during the Iraq war.

*"I got a request from Vice President [Cheney](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dick-cheney) one time, and he wanted to know what the longest airstrip in northern Iraq was made of."* Kiriakou's own reaction was bafflement, *"and I was like, what?"*, and it was shared by the operations directorate: *"nobody in operations knew. They were like, what?"* He kept restating the provenance to get anyone to take it seriously: *"it's from Cheney. Cheney specifically wants to know."*[1]

The resolution came from an unglamorous quarter. *"I ended up having to enlist the CIA librarian, and she said, I can find this out."* Within twenty-four hours she had told him *"exactly what it was made of and what the mix consisted of"*, so much concrete, so much of everything else, and Kiriakou wrote the memo.[1][2]

The reason for the question turned out to be a load calculation: *"they wanted to fly in tanks, and they wanted to know if the runway was solid enough to handle the weight of a plane carrying two tanks landed on it."*[2]

## See also

- [Dick Cheney](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dick-cheney)
- [Executive assistant to the Deputy Director for Operations](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/executive-assistant-to-the-deputy-director-for-operations)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)

## Sources

1. What's Really Happening In Israel: Mossad (2025-08-30), at 07:20. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hohHB8bGCxM&t=440s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-30-jamarl-thomas-what-s-really-happening-in-israel-mossad/
2. What's Really Happening In Israel: Mossad (2025-08-30), at 07:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hohHB8bGCxM&t=473s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-30-jamarl-thomas-what-s-really-happening-in-israel-mossad/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cheney-airstrip-question/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt