The FBI agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein alone for months after the former Iraqi leader’s capture is now leading the investigation into the Florida airport shooting rampage that killed five and is being blamed on an Iraq War veteran.
George Piro, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, was Saddam’s sole interrogator beginning in January 2004. In previous interviews, Mr. Piro has said Saddam did not know his true identity — the Iraqi leader called him “Mr. George” — and that he posed as a high-level envoy who answered directly to then-President George W. Bush.
Now, Mr. Piro, a native of Beirut, Lebanon, fluent in Arabic and Assyrian, is in charge of the FBI investigation into the shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport that left five people dead and six wounded. Federal prosecutors have charged Esteban Santiago (26) with airport violence and firearms offences that could bring the death penalty if he is convicted.
In announcing the charges filed on Saturday, Mr. Piro said his thoughts are with the victims and their families.
Mr. Piro, an FBI agent since 1999, moved with his family from Lebanon to California’s San Joaquin Valley as a teenager. Once he joined the FBI in Phoenix, Mr. Piro was one of only a handful of Arabic-speaking agents — a group that suddenly was in great demand after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and the subsequent U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2003, Piro was promoted to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division at headquarters in Washington, leading to his work as Saddam’s interrogator. — AP
