Saud Nasir Al-Sabah was Kuwait’s Ambassador to the United States in the run-up to the 1990 Iraqi invasion. Per John Kiriakou: “Ambassador Saud Nasir was just a lovely, lovely man, very generous with his time. We had a very good close relationship with him.”[1]
Kiriakou, then an overt CIA analyst, was a regular visitor at the Kuwaiti embassy: “I would go and say, ‘Hello, Mr. Ambassador. I’m John Kiriakou from the CIA.’ He knew me as that kid from the CIA.”[2]
In June and July 1990 the CIA’s warnings to Kuwait were communicated “two ways. We would do it through the Kuwaiti embassy, which would have been Ambassador Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, and then in Kuwait the ambassador would have gone to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Defense.”[3]
On the morning of the August 2, 1990 invasion President George H. W. Bush was on the phone with the ambassador when Kiriakou and his boss arrived in the Oval Office.[4]