Dr. Gerald “Jerry” Post was an American psychiatrist and Central Intelligence Agency officer who founded the agency’s Political Psychology Division. For decades he worked under cover as a professor at George Washington University, where he taught a class on the psychology of leadership and identified students likely to fit CIA culture. He recruited John Kiriakou in this manner in the late 1980s.[1][2]
Post described himself as a “political psychiatrist.” He held doctorates in both political science and psychology and a medical degree.[1]
Teaching and recruitment
Post’s GW course examined how governments manipulate other world leaders into doing what they want. A signature lecture used the Yalta Conference: the conference was held at Yalta — rather than in Cuba or Tehran as originally proposed — because Stalin’s intelligence services had reported that Roosevelt was sick and dying. Forcing Roosevelt to travel from Washington to Morocco, then to sub-Saharan Africa, then to Tehran, and finally north to Yalta exhausted him; Stalin insisted on beginning talks immediately, and Roosevelt — too tired to negotiate — conceded Poland to the Soviet sphere simply to be allowed to sleep. “He said that is how you manipulate somebody’s psychology.”[3][4]
A final-week assignment in the course required students to shadow their employers and produce a psychological evaluation. Post used the assignment as a screening instrument; students whose evaluations demonstrated the requisite insight were invited to his office, where he disclosed his CIA cover and offered them the opportunity to join the agency. “I’m not really a professor here. I’m a CIA officer undercover as a professor here, and I’m here to find people who would fit into the CIA’s culture.”[2][5]
When a recruit accepted, Post placed a telephone call from a Rolodex on his desk — among the cards visible was one reading “Oliver North, home” — and dispatched the candidate to an address in Rosslyn, Virginia to begin the formal application process.[6]
CIA career
Post’s initial role at the CIA was as a staff psychiatrist treating case officers who suffered psychological breakdown. He observed that “there aren’t that many that go crazy, really” and pitched the agency on a more expansive function: long-distance psychiatric evaluation of foreign leaders.[7]
This evolved into the Political Psychology Division, which Post founded and led. The division produced short psychiatric profiles of foreign leaders — typically 500 words — embedded in the finished intelligence products that went to the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor.[8] Profiled leaders included Saddam Hussein and Deng Xiaoping.[8]
The division also produced exploitation plans for visiting foreign leaders. One documented case concerned an Allied leader who “loved to play chess and loved, loved, loved to eat sausage.” Post’s analysts proposed that during the leader’s state visit he be served sausage to the point of satiation; the resulting drowsiness was expected to make him chatty as he attempted to stay awake, at which point Bill Clinton — already invited to play chess with him — would ask a list of sensitive prepared questions.[9][10]
The practice of issuing psychiatric determinations on foreign leaders without an in-person examination is regarded as unethical under standard psychiatric practice. Post and the division proceeded on the basis that “this isn’t a perfect world.”[11]
The Political Psychology Division continues to operate. “It’s a lasting legacy at the CIA, it’s still there.”[12]
Continued mentorship
Post remained available to Kiriakou throughout his CIA career and offered specific tradecraft advice — including the technique of focusing on a fixed point on the wall during the agency’s polygraph examination and answering yes-or-no without reflection — that Kiriakou credits with helping him pass his entry polygraph.[13] “Jerry was good to me, really good to me, even later in life he was even better to me.”[14]
Death
Post died of COVID-19, approximately one year before John Kiriakou’s November 2023 appearance on the Dalton Fischer Podcast.[15]