# "When did you become a fascist?" > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: ""When did you become a fascist?"," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-yale-intern-fascist/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The exchange John Kiriakou recalls with a former intern of his, a Yale sophomore he had supervised in Bahrain in the mid-1990s who resurfaced ten years later as a Pentagon under-secretariat for intelligence hire, briefing the CIA on Iraq. Walking him to his car after the briefing, Kiriakou asked *"Michael, when did you become a fascist?"* and got the answer he uses to date the neoconservative capture of the Bush administration, *"We're in charge now. We're in charge and Saddam Hussein's going to die."** - **Setting:** [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) headquarters, before March 2003 - **Intern (per Kiriakou):** Kiriakou's former summer intern in Bahrain, 1994–1996, then a Yale sophomore - **Career:** Yale sophomore → Yale masters → Yale PhD → Pentagon under-secretariat for intelligence - **Occasion:** Briefing the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)'s deputy director for operations on the Pentagon's Iraq thinking - **Kiriakou's line:** *"Michael, when did you become a fascist?"* - **The answer:** *"We're in charge now. We're in charge and Saddam Hussein's going to die"* - **Later identifiable in:** Vanity Fair exposés on the Pentagon officials who ran the Iraq war **"When did you become a fascist?"** is the question [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) put to a former intern of his in the parking lot of CIA headquarters, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The answer he got back is the compressed line Kiriakou returns to when asked what changed inside the Pentagon between the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. ## The intern in Bahrain *"When I was in Bahrain from 94 to 96, I had an intern working for me and he was a student at Yale. He was a sophomore at Yale. Really really smart guy. And we kind of sort of stayed in touch in the years after. He stayed at Yale and got a masters. Then he got a PhD."*[1][2] Then a note: *"Hey, I just got a job at the Pentagon, working in this new under-secretariat for intelligence."* Kiriakou invited him to headquarters to brief the CIA's deputy director for operations, his own boss, on the Pentagon's Iraq thinking.[2] ## The briefing *"He comes over, gives this briefing, and I remember being like appalled. And my boss kept looking at me like, 'What are you doing bringing this guy here?'"*[3] ## The parking lot Kiriakou walked him out. *"'Michael, I have to ask you, when did you become a fascist?' And he turned to me and he says, 'We're in charge now. We're in charge and Saddam Hussein's going to die.' And I was like, 'Oh my god.'"*[3] ## What became of him Kiriakou declined on air to name the man, but placed him: *"He's working for all those guys at the Pentagon who later became famous and appeared in Vanity Fair in these exposés about how we ended up at war in Iraq. It turns out that they just bided their time knowing that they had a champion in [Dick Cheney](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dick-cheney), that Dick Cheney was the one running the show."*[4] ## See also - [The Tehran slip](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-tehran-slip) - [Dick Cheney](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dick-cheney) - [Neoconservatives](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/neoconservatives) - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) ## Sources 1. Dave Smith | John Kiriakou | Part Of The Problem 1335 (2025-12-04), at 32:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQD9soOOCf8&t=1950s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-04-dave-smith-part-of-the-problem-1335/ 2. Dave Smith | John Kiriakou | Part Of The Problem 1335 (2025-12-04), at 33:00. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQD9soOOCf8&t=1980s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-04-dave-smith-part-of-the-problem-1335/ 3. Dave Smith | John Kiriakou | Part Of The Problem 1335 (2025-12-04), at 33:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQD9soOOCf8&t=2010s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-04-dave-smith-part-of-the-problem-1335/ 4. Dave Smith | John Kiriakou | Part Of The Problem 1335 (2025-12-04), at 34:00. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQD9soOOCf8&t=2040s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-04-dave-smith-part-of-the-problem-1335/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-yale-intern-fascist/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt