Seven thousand letters
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Seven thousand letters is the figure John Kiriakou gives for the correspondence he conducted during his 23 months at FCI Loretto: about 7,000 letters to 675 different people.

The postcard

Kiriakou dates the decision precisely. He had been in prison about four hours when mail call came, and a woman from Ringgold, Georgia sent him a postcard of a rose with a very nice note on the back.

His reaction was that he did not even know the person and that it was a thoughtful gesture, and he made a decision at that moment that he would respond to every piece of mail he received, with no idea, he says, that this would come to 7,000 letters to 675 people over the next 23 months.

What it produced

Kiriakou says the correspondents became friends and have remained so ever since 2013, in constant touch. His summary of the experience is simply that it was wonderful.

It also solved the central problem of the sentence. Where most prisoners passed the time by working out and watching television, the prison, he says, is Groundhog Day, every day just like every other, Kiriakou was busy answering mail, and it kept him very busy.

He places it alongside reading and writing as his defence against depression in prison, and says he read well over a hundred books in the same 23 months.

The book

The same habit produced Doing Time Like a Spy. Kiriakou says the book started off as a joke and that he did not even intend it to be a book, he simply thought he would write down some of the more ridiculous and more absurd things that happened. He wrote it in longhand on legal pads, one word at a time, and it won two literary awards.

Separately from the personal correspondence, Kiriakou's public newsletter from inside became the Letters from Loretto, which he sent out through his attorney Jesselyn Radack as legal mail.

See also

- Letter from Loretto
- Doing Time Like a Spy
- Prison Depression
- Legal Mail
- FCI Loretto
