Michael Soussan

Michael Soussan (born 1973) is a Danish-born reporter, writer and whistleblower. He lives in Los Angeles, California. As a journalist and commentator he has contributed to The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, and many others, including from Afghanistan and Iraq.

He became famous for his 2008 book Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy, about the widespread corruption and financial abuse, at the highest levels, that he found while working for the Oil-for-Food Program under the United Nations in Iraq. The book was the basis of the 2018 feature film Backstabbing for Beginners, starring Ben Kingsley and Theo James and directed by Per Fly Plejdrup.

Biography Soussan was born in 1973 in Denmark to a Sephardi Jewish father and a Danish mother. Soussan's father was born in Casablanca and immigrated to Israel. There, he met Soussan's mother, a Danish Protestant who had gone to work on a kibbutz. In Backstabbing for Beginners, Soussan writes "the result [of his parents' relationship] was a child who could best be described as a Sephardic Viking."

Soussan grew up, mostly, in Paris and immigrated to the United States at 18. He attended Brown University, where he co-founded and edited the Brown Journal of World Affairs. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the university in 1996.