Salman bin Hamad was, during John Kiriakou’s Bahrain posting of 1994 to 1996, the heir presumptive — grandson of the reigning Amir and son of Crown Prince Hamad, who would in turn become Amir.[1][2]
The two had been at school in Washington at the same time and were, Kiriakou says, great buddies in Bahrain. Because Salman was being given official positions to prepare him for the succession — president of the Bahrain Center for Studies and Research, patron of the Bahrain Environmental Protection Association — and because Kiriakou was the embassy’s economic officer, both portfolios sat in his brief. He would drive out into the desert to the centre’s building, and they would walk, talk and laugh; then they began going out together at weekends.[2][3]
What the ambassador got
The friendship had an official dividend. On Saturday mornings the ambassador would ask what Salman had said over the weekend, and Kiriakou would pass on what he called inside baseball from the heir presumptive.[4]
It also required a piece of internal tradecraft. Kiriakou was in Bahrain under State Department cover and nobody there was supposed to know of his CIA connection — he could not even speak to the agency’s officers in country — which meant that when headquarters sent out a mandatory cultural-sensitivity course on a VHS tape in the diplomatic pouch, he had to smuggle the tape home to watch it and smuggle it back.[5]
The nightclub
Kiriakou’s affection is plain and unillusioned. Salman believed that in Western clothes nobody would know who he was, which Kiriakou found hilarious.[4] They went to a low-grade nightclub outside the gates of the naval base where Polish dancers performed to a Filipino cover band; patrons could not touch the performers, and instead bought synthetic flower garlands for a dinar apiece to be placed round the neck of whichever woman they fancied. Kiriakou compares the whole ritual to being in sixth grade.[6][7]
Asked by Salman whether one of the dancers would sleep with him, Kiriakou’s answer was: “Salman, you own the country. Of course she’ll have sex with you.” Salman said he did not have the guts, and nothing came of it. “I was charmed by some of his contradictions. They made him human.”[8][9]
Salman came to Kiriakou’s leaving party at the ambassador’s residence with his first wife. They still text each other jokes all these years later, and Kiriakou says he hopes to visit Bahrain and see him again.[9]