Who is George Piro? UFC hires former Saddam Hussein investigator
Late last week, following the end of its partnership with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the UFC announced that it will partner with Drug Free Sport International for all fighter drug testing sample collections beginning in January 24.
With that news came the announcement that former FBI agent George Piro would serve as the new independent administrator of the UFC’s anti-doping program.
UFC senior vice president of athlete health and performance Jeff Novitzky, along with executive vice president and chief business officer Hunter Campbell, spoke of the new arrangement.
“I want to introduce, not in person here today but to the UFC world, the independent administrator of the UFC’s new and improved anti-doping program, George Piro,” Novitzky said. “When you talk about George Piro, you’re talking about an individual with the highest level of integrity and credibility you can possibly imagine. While I had a noticeable federal law enforcement career, my resume pales in comparison to that of George Piro. And as I talk about George Piro, he’s quite literally an American hero.
“He just recently retired as the special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Miami, Florida. He previously was the assistant director of the international operations division at FBI headquarters. He was the supervisor of the FBI’s joint terrorism task force. He’s also a world champion no-gi jiu-jitsu masters level. He knows the sport. He knows what the athletes go through from his world-class level training.”
Piro is a Lebanese-American former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. He served as special agent in charge (SAC) at the FBI’s Miami Field Office. He was the Team Leader and Lead Interrogator of the Saddam Hussein Interrogation Team in 2004.
The television show 60 Minutes revealed in January 2008 that he had secretly gained the confidence of Saddam Hussein while interrogating Hussein while he was imprisoned after the second war in Iraq.
“George will make every – and I stress every – final decision in the program. That authority will be his and his alone,” Novitzksy said. “We will surround him with experts, the likes of Dr. (Dan) Eichner, so that George has every resource at his disposal to make the right call every single time. George is not going to be waking up fighters in the middle of the night that have two hours left of sleep before a championship match like what happened to (Alexander) Volkanovski in Abu Dhabi. George is not going to be attempting to collect urine samples like USADA did from Paulo Costa at 6 a.m. in Salt Lake City as he’s wrapped under blankets trying to lose the last couple of pounds and probably hasn’t ingested any fluid for 12, 18 hours. George isn’t going to make testing decisions like we’ve seen of athletes who have lost a fight, retired in the octagon, had been tested pre-bout, and then wanted to be blood tested post-bout, after they’ve announced their retirement. So, you would think, knowing the sport, common sense, very basic decisions that it seems like time after time we’ve seen. George has too much knowledge and respect of the sport to be making decisions like that, and he’ll be an immediate improvement right off the bat in terms of someone who’s intimately familiar with what these athletes are doing and going through.”
