Asked what it was like to serve under a succession of presidents, Kiriakou answers not in terms of policy but of appetite: how much intelligence each man actually wanted. “Presidents had vastly different levels of interest in intelligence and international affairs.” [1]
The engaged president
Kiriakou entered government at the very end of the Reagan administration, and his benchmark is the president who followed. George H. W. Bush had been vice president for eight years, CIA director, ambassador to the UN and ambassador to China, which in Kiriakou’s account gave him “this deep knowledge and understanding of international affairs and a passion for it.” The practical consequence was volume: Bush “was constantly asking for special analytic products,” and the agency was “in like constant communication with the White House constantly.” [2]
The absent president
The contrast Kiriakou draws is stark. “Bill Clinton was briefed twice in 8 years as president. He didn’t have even a vague interest in international affairs.” [3] He supports the claim with the recollection of Clinton’s first CIA director: Jim Woolsey “said that not only did he never meet with the president while he was president, he said he wasn’t sure the president would recognize him in a meeting.” [3]
Kiriakou’s explanation is Clinton’s background. He had been a governor of Arkansas across five terms — a state which at the time elected governors to two-year terms — and so came to the presidency with “zero experience in international affairs” and an entirely domestic preoccupation. [4] Kiriakou reaches for the 1993 slogan: “it was the economy, stupid,” and grants that the focus paid off through the 1990s. [5]
Gore as the substitute
What makes the Clinton case less damning in Kiriakou’s telling is that the appetite existed elsewhere in the building. “Al Gore was interested. Al Gore was briefed 6 days a week.” [3] Gore had been elected to the House at around thirty and to the Senate shortly after, and across his career was “laser-focused on foreign affairs, defense, and intelligence” — which Kiriakou calls “actually a very good match,” letting Clinton work the economy while Gore worked the world. [6]
The arrangement had a mechanism. Gore was briefed at seven in the morning, and “every time there was something important, he would brief the president”; where a presidential decision or approval was needed, Gore ensured it happened. [7] Kiriakou credits that channel with real results — progress with North Korea, and coming “within a whisker of actual peace in the Middle East” under Clinton, with Gore driving and Clinton endorsing. [7]
Bush and Obama
Of George W. Bush, Kiriakou is blunt: “God bless him, he probably couldn’t even locate these countries on a map,” with the consequence that Dick Cheney ran international affairs, intelligence, defence and the wars. [8]
Barack Obama he treats as a distinct case, arriving with “only qualifications” of two years in the Senate. “He didn’t know what the heck he was doing. And so, he was very easily manipulated by the CIA.” [9]
Asked whether the mission itself changed with the occupant, Kiriakou’s answer is unqualified: “It always changes depending on who the president is.” [9]