John Nixon

استجواب الرئيس

Saddam Hüseyinin Sorgusu

Baskani Sorgulamak

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.

The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein

Debriefing the President

The Untold Story of Danish and Norwegian Prisoners of War on Parole in Reading Between 1807-1814

The Gentlemen Danes

With Appendix Comprising Ministerial Declarations of Policy and Official Documents

The Complete Story of the Transvaal from the "Great Trek" to the Convention of London

A riveting, revealing and news-making account of the CIA's interrogation of Saddam, written by the CIA agent who conducted the questioning. 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. Debriefing the President presents an astounding, candid portrait of one of our era’s most notorious strongmen. 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. 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 Tony Blair's government —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.

In the 1950s and 1960s two little girls, of a similar age, grow up in two separate children's homes, 250 miles apart. Much later in life, now approaching seventy years old, one of them receives a very unexpected inheritance, one result of which is that she looks more closely at her family background. Meanwhile the other woman is receiving unpleasant, anonymous letters, accusing her mother and her of being murderers. Investigation into both the letters and the inheritance shows how intertwined the two women's life stories are. Events long forgotten are revealed as Madeleine Porter uncovers a shocking history linking them and the terrible secret they unknowingly share.

A Madeleine Porter Mystery

Hammer Blow

Among the Boers; Or, Notes of a Trip to South Africa in Search of Health

What Saddam told John Nixon during the conversations he had with him after his capture in late 2003 and early 2004 was to make Washington policymakers very unhappy. He convincingly rebutted the justifications used by the Bush administration for going to war. Were people ready to listen to this information? Even if they listened, did they hear? At the start of the debriefings, Nixon felt he knew Saddam. But in the ensuing weeks, he learned that the West had vastly misunderstood both him and his role as a determined foe of radical currents in the Islamic world, including Sunni extremism. And this was to prove a very expensive mistake indeed.

John Nixon

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