The swimming pool substitution
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The swimming pool substitution is John Kiriakou's worked illustration of what happens to language inside a sealed national security trial, offered in 2022 as a description of what Julian Assange would face if extradited.

The mechanism

Once the jury has been barred from hearing classified material, the trial still has to be conducted in words. Kiriakou describes the workaround: "so in advance the prosecutors and the judge will determine what's classified and they'll replace those words with unclassified words."

He prefaces his example with a warning about how it will sound. "for example this is going to sound stupid but it's the honest to god's truth."

The example

"let's say that they want to say well julian released information that inside the cia we call vault seven well the words vault seven those are classified so they're gonna say instead of vault seven we use the words swimming pool."

The result is a sentence that carries the accusation while emptying it of content: "then they're going to say your honor julian assange released documents called swimming pool that are very highly classified well they're going to go through the whole trial like that as if a jury could analyze that."

The cheat sheet

The jury is not left entirely without a key. "well the jury gets a little a little uh cheat sheet of what means what but they can't talk about it and they can't take it out with them."

Why Kiriakou thinks it decides the case

His objection is not that the substitution confuses the jury but that it instructs them. "but the thing is is when you tell the jury listen these individual words are so highly classified that you can't even hear them with your ears we have to block them from your ears they're going to say my god this guy's guilty right he's so guilty we can't even hear the words that he's accused of releasing."

The conclusion follows directly: "so the deck is stacked he doesn't have a prayer." It is the same phrase Kiriakou's own jury consultant used about the Eastern District of Virginia, with the difference that Kiriakou was offered a deal to take and Assange was not.

See also

- Vault 7
- Sealing the courtroom
- The jury consultant's advice
- The CIPA hearing in Kiriakou's case
