Debriefing the President presents an astounding candid portrait of one of our era s most
notorious strongmen. John Nixon the first man to conduct a prolonged interrogation of Hussein
after his capture offers expert insight into the history and mind of America s most enigmatic
enemy. In December 2003 after one of the largest most aggressive manhunts in history US
military forces captured Iraqi president Saddam Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit. Beset by
body-double rumors and false alarms during a nine-month search the Bush administration needed
positive identification of the prisoner before it could make the announcement that would rocket
around the world. At the time John Nixon was a senior CIA leadership analyst who had spent
years studying the Iraqi dictator. Called upon to make the official ID Nixon looked for
telltale scars and tribal tattoos and asked Hussein a list of questions only he could answer.
The man was indeed Saddam Hussein but as Nixon learned in the ensuing weeks both he and
America had greatly misunderstood just who Saddam Hussein really was. After years of parsing
Hussein s leadership from afar Nixon faithfully recounts his debriefing sessions and
subsequently strips away the mythology surrounding an equally brutal and complex man. His
account is not an apology but a sobering examination of how preconceived ideas led Washington
policymakers and the Bush White House astray. Unflinching and unprecedented Debriefing the
President exposes a fundamental misreading of one of the modern world s most central figures
and presents a new narrative that boldly counters the received account.
