# Moving a satellite to Kuwait > **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: "Moving a satellite to Kuwait," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/moving-a-satellite-to-kuwait/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's illustration of how thin American overhead coverage once was: after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 the United States had no satellite looking at Kuwait, and it took six months to move one that had been parked over Moscow.* - **When:** After 2 August 1990 - **Problem:** No satellite coverage of Kuwait — none had been needed - **Solution:** Reposition one from over Moscow - **Time taken:** About six months; elsewhere he gives the range as six to twelve - **Consequence:** Per Kiriakou, why the liberation of Kuwait waited until February 1991 **Moving a satellite to Kuwait** is the anecdote [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) uses to convey how limited overhead reconnaissance was at the start of his career. After Iraq [invaded Kuwait](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kuwait-invasion-intelligence) on 2 August 1990, the United States needed satellite coverage of the country and did not have it — because it had never needed it. Kiriakou says it took six months to move a satellite that had been sitting over Moscow so that it could show Kuwait.[1] He offers it in response to an account of the search for [Bill Buckley](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bill-buckley), the CIA's Beirut station chief kidnapped in 1984: a young analyst from the National Photographic Interpretation Center would take the day's single satellite image of Beirut and go over the rooftops with a magnifying glass, trying to match them against structures described in hostage debriefings.[2] Kiriakou's reply is that he can only imagine the work involved — and both men reach the same summary at the same moment: *"there was no Google Earth."*[1] ## Why there was nothing overhead The gap was not an oversight but a consequence of the alliance. Kiriakou, then a junior analyst, remembers the problem from inside: *"Satellites were very difficult to move and we didn't have any satellites over Kuwait. Why would we?"* — and answers his own question: *"We didn't have any satellites looking at Kuwait because we were friends with Kuwait. So we had to move one of our satellites from the Soviet Union."*[3] ## The six months of the war The wait is the part of the story he treats as consequential, and he states the causal link directly: *"That's why we didn't liberate Kuwait until February of 1991. The Iraqis had invaded August of 1990, cuz we had to move a satellite from over Moscow all the way over to be over Iraq and Kuwait. And it took months to move the thing."* In that telling he widens the figure, giving the general case as six to twelve months to move a satellite from one place to another rather than the six he gives elsewhere.[4][5] He gives the same sequence in a co-constructed exchange with an interviewer: the satellite *"had to move in slow motion from over Moscow to over Kuwait. And once it was in place, then we were like, 'Okay, now we can do it.'"*[6] The contrast he draws with the present is the same one he draws in the Buckley story: it took that long *"back then. Now you just go to Google Earth and just look, you know, one day old photographs, but it was a different world back then."*[6] Kiriakou also uses the constraint as the setup for a different lesson. Introducing an example of a false flag *"that we studied at the agency"*, he begins from the same premise — that before Google Earth it could take six to twelve months to reposition overhead coverage, and that some countries had no satellites at all — before turning to the Israeli interest in the port of Benghazi.[4][5] The same absence shaped his own tradecraft in the field, where [planning a surveillance detection route](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/planning-a-surveillance-detection-route) meant photocopying road-atlas pages and taping them together, and where the [hunt for Abu Zubaydah](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mr-fish) in Pakistan was conducted with 1961 maps.[7][8] ## See also - [Bill Buckley](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bill-buckley) - [Iraqi invasion of Kuwait](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kuwait-invasion-intelligence) - [Planning a surveillance detection route](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/planning-a-surveillance-detection-route) - [Navigating Pakistan without maps](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/pakistan-without-maps) ## Sources 1. S1E4 Good Spies, Bad Endings (2025-11-17), at 43:16. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/691a774c1029ec1feda127b0/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-17-dead-drop-s1e4-good-spies-bad-endings/ 2. S1E4 Good Spies, Bad Endings (2025-11-17), at 42:41. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/691a774c1029ec1feda127b0/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-17-dead-drop-s1e4-good-spies-bad-endings/ 3. Invasion of Kuwait: The American Intelligence Account (2026-02-26), at 32:00. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJq6inqowW4&t=1920s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-26-bidoun-waraq-invasion-kuwait-intelligence/ 4. Trump's Worst Nightmare Just Came True — CIA Spy on Iran War (2026-04-06), at 2:39:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA2slD8xEpc&t=9555s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-06-danny-jones-iran-war-trumps-nightmare/ 5. Trump's Worst Nightmare Just Came True — CIA Spy on Iran War (2026-04-06), at 2:39:47. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA2slD8xEpc&t=9587s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-06-danny-jones-iran-war-trumps-nightmare/ 6. Invasion of Kuwait: The American Intelligence Account (2026-02-26), at 32:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJq6inqowW4&t=1950s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-26-bidoun-waraq-invasion-kuwait-intelligence/ 7. S1E8 The James Bond Academy (2025-12-29), at 13:30. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6948511af7567117397d1a93/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-29-dead-drop-s1e8-the-james-bond-academy/ 8. S1E16 Captured (2026-02-23), at 07:31. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/698a608241bb4de4911a8235/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-23-dead-drop-s1e16-captured/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/moving-a-satellite-to-kuwait/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt