This week on the Substack Writers Salon, I sat down with Amjad Tadros, four-time Emmy-winning investigative journalist, CBS News’ Middle East producer for over 30 years, and author of the new memoir The Fixer.

I won’t give it all away. But I will tell you this:

In 1993, Amjad survived a US cruise missile strike on his Baghdad hotel. He was covered in glass, alone, certain he was going to die.

A few days later, the door to his hospital ward swung open, lights, cameras, and Saddam Hussein himself. Amjad asked him for a kiss. He got one. And that single photo ended up protecting his career for years. (Saddam even sent him a gift every January 17th after that.)

We also got into:

* What a “fixer” actually does — and why he never wanted to be called a “producer”

* The $24 million in cash he spent in Iraq for CBS, and the 10-meter wall of receipts that became his memoir’s secret weapon

* Why being called “fake news” broke his heart enough to finally finish the book

* His one line I can’t stop thinking about: “If we don’t write our own history, somebody else will write it for us.”

It’s a conversation about war, truth-telling, and what it costs to be the person standing between two worlds.

You can follow the full conversation in the video above.

📖 Get The Fixer on Amazon.✍️ And follow Amjad Tadros. He just joined Substack. Give him a warm welcome.

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