Kiriakou’s first overseas mission for the CIA followed within weeks of the invasion of Kuwait. Most of the Kuwaiti royal family had escaped to Saudi Arabia and set up a government in exile at Taif, in the mountains north of Jeddah. Kiriakou — improbably, as he tells it — was the Agency’s expert on the Kuwaiti royal family, and he was sent to them in October 1990.[1]
His brief was to liaise with the Kuwaiti resistance and to buck up the royal family, getting them ready for war.[2]
Twenty-five years old
The part of it Kiriakou returns to is his own age. He was twenty-five, and he was meeting the king and the crown prince, then going back and reporting on those meetings — reports that went directly to the president, because the president was friendly with the king.[2]
What he had to report was not military. The king was crying. The crown prince was depressed. The king talked about his rose garden, and about the Iraqis having dug it up. Kiriakou’s account of his own position is unvarnished: the man was not making any sense, and he did not know what to do.[3]
The mantra
What he settled on was to befriend the man and calm him, and to say the same thing over and over. He told the king that he knew he was young, but that it is not unusual for countries to go to war — it is highly unusual for countries to go to war with the United States — and that a commitment had been made to liberate Kuwait.[3]
He had to keep repeating it as a mantra to all of the royal family members, because they were simply despondent: no, no, we are going to get you your country back, just hang on.[4]
He travelled under a light cover for the purposes of the journey, but the Kuwaitis knew what he was. He went out there as a CIA officer.[4]