The Tehran slip is John Kiriakou’s account of a remark made in a secure video teleconference of the national security principals a day or two before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Kiriakou’s position in the room
After the capture of Abu Zubaydah, Kiriakou was made executive assistant to the CIA’s deputy director for operations, and Iraq became his portfolio. In that role he was the note-taker at Director George Tenet’s meetings with the principals. He has described Tenet sitting at the head of the table with himself directly behind him. [1]
He attaches to this a rule about the CIA’s institutional position: the agency, in his description, is a support agency, so the director’s job in such a meeting is to answer a question if one is asked and otherwise to sit silently, because the CIA does not make policy. [2]
In an earlier telling he gives his post differently, describing himself at the time as executive assistant to the Iraq mission manager, a position that made him privy to every piece of intelligence coming in on Iraq. His role in the room is the same in both accounts — sitting quietly behind Tenet and taking notes. [3] [4]
The briefing
On the video screens, by Kiriakou’s account, were Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, the head of the National Security Agency and a general whose name he says he cannot recall. The general was asked for a briefing and described the disposition of divisions and armour along the border, the movements planned from the south and the west, and the ships offshore. He then said that if all went as planned they could be in Tehran by August. [5] [6]
In a 2018 telling he describes the room by its screens rather than its occupants — the White House and the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and CENTCOM all represented — and says the meeting was chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney, who opened it by asking for a briefing from the officer he identifies by post rather than by name as the commander of CENTCOM at the time. The line, in that version, closes the briefing: if things continued to go this well, they could be in Tehran by August. [4] [7]
Kiriakou has described writing it down — “Tehran, Tehran” — when Tenet reached forward, turned off his microphone, turned round and asked him whether the man had said Tehran or Baghdad. Kiriakou answered that he had said Tehran. Tenet then asked him whether these people had lost their minds, turned the microphone back on, and sat there. [8] The 2018 account gives the same exchange in direct speech — “did he say Baghdad or did he say Tehran?”, the answer that he had said Tehran, and then “have they all lost their minds” — and adds Kiriakou’s own thought as the microphone went back on: “oh my god, people have no idea what we’ve gotten into.” [7] [9]
When the meeting happened
The two accounts place the meeting on opposite sides of the invasion, and the difference is not reconciled here. The 2021 telling puts it a day or two before the invasion. The 2018 telling puts it after the war had begun, with Kiriakou stating that American forces had crossed the border into Iraq the day before. [4] [5]
Afterwards
Kiriakou has said he went back to the deputy director’s office and asked whether he had known they were going to attack Iran. The deputy director answered that they had been talking about it for a few months, and that he could not imagine it actually happening. [10] Kiriakou’s own view is that the only reason it did not happen was that American forces became bogged down in southern Iraq. [10]