‘As If I Was Going To North Korea’: British CNN Reporter Says She Was ‘Afraid’ To Travel To U.S.

CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour said this week that she prepared for a trip to the U.S. as if she were going to North Korea.

The British-Iranian journalist, 67, said she was “afraid” to travel to the land of the free to give an address at Harvard University last month.

“I have to tell you, when I went to Harvard to give this speech, and it was just a few days ago last week, I must say, I was afraid,” Amanpour said Wednesday on her podcast “The Ex Files,” which she hosts with her ex-husband, James Rubin, a former State Department official.

🚨CNN hack journo Christiane Amanpour compares coming to the US to North Korea:

“I took a burner phone. Imagine that!” pic.twitter.com/ash7S47rjG

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) June 6, 2025

“I’m a foreigner, I don’t have a green card, I’m not an American citizen, I’m fairly prominent, and I literally prepared to go to America as if I was going to North Korea,” she said.

Amanpour has previously reported from war zones, including during the Gulf and Bosnian wars.

“I took a burner phone, Jamie, imagine that,” Amanpour told her ex-husband during the podcast.

She said she did not take her regular cell phone or her iPad, and she had “nothing on the burner phone except a few numbers” including those for her assistant, her ex-husband, her son, and a CNN lawyer.

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“I was really afraid. I’d even talked to the CNN security person, because I’ve heard that many, including British citizens, are being stopped at the border and questioned for hours and hours and hours,” Amanpour said.

However, she admitted she encountered no such issues on her trip.

“So, huge sigh of relief I breathed, but wow, can you imagine if I’m afraid, what do others think?” she said.

Amanpour previously sparked controversy when she compared the Trump administration to Nazis in 2020.

This is ⁦⁦@camanpour on⁩ ⁦@CNN⁩ comparing Trump’s tenure to Nazi Germany. How the hell is this sort of prejudice tolerated on mainstream media?

Third rate rubbish. pic.twitter.com/EG9eB9vQWo

— Ben Habib (@benhabib6) November 12, 2020

“This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened,” she said at the beginning of her CNN show days after the 2020 presidential election. Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass” was a 1938 Nazi attack on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues.

“It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth,” Amanpour continued. “After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth.”

Jewish advocacy groups criticized Amanpour’s comments, one asking her to “stop using the horrors of the Holocaust to justify an agenda.”