John Kiriakou

It was decidedly trending.

The Iranian, the Shah of Iran had been overthrown.

The Ayatollahs had come into power and they took the American embassy and then held 55 American diplomats hostage for 444 days.

And I was obsessed with this hostage crisis and wanted to learn as much about the Middle East as I could.

I can't tell you why I was more interested in

in the Arab side of things than the Iranian.

But Arab culture just has always fascinated me.

And even when I was in college, I went backpacking one summer with my girlfriend.

We spent three months and she wanted to go to London and Paris and Rome.

And we did all that.

But then we also went to, you know, Istanbul and Jerusalem and Cairo at my insistence.

And

I was hooked.

How'd that end up with that girlfriend?

You know, we're still Facebook friends, but I will admit to you that she's the one who got away.

That's a good question.

It was kind of a combination of the two.

On the one hand, yeah, I was so fascinated by the whole place.

For example, even as a teenager, I wanted to know

how these little royal families in these little tiny countries got to be royal families.