Title: S2E3 Circle Of Friends
Show: John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Date: 2026-06-01
URL: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a1cae87f7ef77595849152c/media.mp3
Duration: 1:04:29

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[07:10] We had over 1400 people on any given day. There's a line for the showers. There's a line to use the toilet. There aren't enough seats in the TV room. People are living one on top of each other. You have to be able to at least tolerate the people that you're sharing a room with. And when I say sharing a room, I mean sharing a room that's roughly 8 feet by 15 feet. And there are six people crammed in there. When you first arrive in prison, you don't get any say whatsoever

[08:13] one of those petty modes of harassment that the guards use against you. And I'll give you one example. I've written extensively in consortium news and in Covert Action Magazine about the quality of food in prison. Prisoners are not normally fed human-grade food. We are fed animal grade food. And indeed on my very first full day in prison, it was a Friday and Friday is air quotes fish day. I mentioned to one of the Italians across the hall from me, oh, okay, I like fish.

[08:49] And he said, oh, you're not going to like this fish. And I'm going to give you some friendly advice. Don't eat it. We call it sewer trout. I went down to the cafeteria at lunch and they had these boxes stacked up completely illegally, of course, stacked up behind the serving guys in the chow line. And the boxes were clearly marked Alaskan cod product of China. So it's not Alaskan. It's Chinese, not for human consumption, feed use only. And they're

[09:20] slopping it onto the plates. So I just went hungry. I ate the slice of white bread that they give you and a spoonful of canned green beans. And that was it. That was my food for the day. There was one incident where the warden had to send around a memo to everybody. There's this internal prison email system. So you can get an announcement from the warden. And the warden said, I'm very sorry, but a couple of months ago, you were accidentally fed dog food on taco night.

[09:57] The mix up was not ours. The mix up was at the meat plant. They mislabeled the dog food as ground beef and they mislabeled the ground beef as dog food. The shame of that was not even that we were fed dog food. The shame was that we didn't even realize it was dog food because the regular food is not for human consumption. I actually did throw away my dinner one night. It was taco night,

[10:28] which was Tuesday nights. Honest to God, I had such a bad experience with the so-called Mexican food in prison that I have never eaten Mexican food again. So I threw it away and the warden happened to be standing there. And he always added out for me, but I outsmarted him. And he says, Hey, you're supposed to eat everything on your plate. I said, I have eaten ass that tasted better than this. And I just dared him to lock me up in solitary for not eating animal grade food.

[10:59] Because he knew I would go directly to CNN or to the Washington Post. And he backed off. His corruption worked in my favor. Bring it on. Not afraid of you or your solitary. Besides, I could stand to lose a couple of pounds and do nothing but sleep for 24 hours a day. There is nothing more important in prison than clemouryness. People shower every single day, which I do. It's literally before my eyes are completely open. I'm already in the shower.

[11:36] But everybody does that in prison because if you are not clean and if you smell bad, you're going to get a beating from the other guys in the cell. And so even these mentally ill homeless people who are in prison, they know enough to shower every day. Because if they don't, they're going to be strip naked and physically thrown into a shower. And they're not going to like that experience. So everybody is very, very clean. Another thing is that everybody, and I mean this quite literally, everybody is constantly cleaning. Somebody is

[12:11] always sweeping and mopping and dusting and rearranging. Nobody had a locker that was out of order. Besides, you're not allowed to have more than 10 books. You're not allowed to have more than five letters. You're not allowed to have this. You're not allowed to have that. So you're constantly cleaning out your locker. Limited clutter because of the limited space. You're not allowed to have anything sitting on top of the locker. So you don't accumulate things. You do have personal space. You have your bunk and your locker. Everything else is shared.

[12:45] My locker was always immaculate. Always. And so was my bunk. You have to make your bed as soon as the lights come on at 6 a.m. You're allowed to go back to sleep, but you're only allowed to sleep on top of the made bed. You cannot be under the covers. It's a hard and fast rule, and they'll throw you straight into solitary if you violate. So what guys do is they get up at six, they make the bed, they go straight back to sleep with their winter coat over them. So everything is very, very clean. There was one prisoner, a child molester who was doing

[13:56] No, the reason they did it is because the worst part of prison is the fact that it's Groundhog Day. Every single day is just like every other day, and it passes the time for some of these guys, for most of these guys, it's working out and watching TV. At least in our prison, the Hispanics controlled half the TVs and the blacks controlled the other half of the TVs. So we had eight TVs, four were Hispanic, four were black. On the black channels, I hate to

[14:26] stereotype, but this is just the way it is. They're watching MTV, VH1, BET and one of the sports channels. The Hispanics are watching Telemundo and I forget what the other Spanish language one is and ESPN and Español and then, for whatever reason, CBS. Because some prisoner at some point liked the soap operas that CBS had on every day. And so the whites don't get to choose. Well, I just wasn't a big TV guy at the time. I don't watch Love and Hip Hop Atlanta. I don't

[15:04] watch Peru versus Venezuela soccer match. And so I read. Well, from many of the other prisoners, it was working out every day. And you get some prisoners who are nothing but rock, hard, knotted muscle, because there's nothing else to do but work out. I was very fortunate in that. On my very first day in prison, I had only been in prison about four hours. We had mail call. And a lady from Ringgold, Georgia, sent me a postcard of a rose. And she wrote a very nice

[15:38] note on the back of it. And I thought, my goodness, I don't even know this person. This was such a thoughtful gesture. And I made a decision at that moment that I would respond to every piece of mail that I got. Not having any idea that in the next 23 months, I would write 7,000 letters to 675 different people. People who have become friends ever since, ever since 2013. We've been regular friends in constant touch. It was wonderful. So for me, I was busy answering mail.

[16:13] And it kept me very, very busy. And I was busy writing my book, doing Time Like a Spy, which started off as a joke. I didn't even intend for it to be a book. I just thought, I'd write down some of the more ridiculous, more absurd things that happened. When I first walked into the cell, nobody was in there. It was work call. And so they were all at their make work jobs. I was so depressed and in shock, I just took a nap. So when I woke up, they were there. And I popped up out of the bunk and I said, hi, guys, my name's John.

[16:46] Are you the new celly? I said, yes. What are you in for? They wanted to make sure I wasn't a pedophile. So I explained. None of these guys are people I would want to associate with. I mean, even then or now. One of them moved out quickly and Frank Russo moved in. We'll get to Frank shortly. Some of them were released from prison. Others wanted to be in cells with fellow gang members. It's really dangerous to mix buracos with norteños with MS-13 with the

[17:19] bloods and the crypts. And you're waiting for a war to break out. They prefer to be with their own people. And I understand that. There was one Chinese drug dealer that I was in with. I didn't understand him at all. He had been in the United States like 20 something years. And the only thing he could say was motherfucker, motherfucker. And everything else was in Chinese. Nobody knew what the hell he was talking about. I very quietly did my six months. These guys generally did not like me. And they didn't like me because I had never been in prison before. And so when the

[17:53] red light went on signifying you have 120 seconds to get back to your cell for count. I didn't have any idea what the red light meant. Nobody ever said anything to me. With five seconds left, they ran over to the email computers and physically pulled me by the shirt back into the cell before everybody got solitary because I wasn't in place for the afternoon standing count. Yeah, they didn't like that the guards didn't like me because that brought undue heat on the cell. And they were cooking and they were dealing in their stolen meat. And one of them had a cell

[18:30] phone that you could call out for a dollar a minute. And they just did not like me because I brought attention to them. The guards didn't like me for a couple of reasons. On my very first day, I went down to the cafeteria for dinner call. As I was walking past one of the guard, he whispered traitor. And I just turned around smiled and I said, okay, you go with that fucking asshole. That's why they didn't like me. They didn't like me that I ratted out the CIA. Because they all

[19:01] envisioned themselves one day as James Bond, which was hilarious because half of them barely got a GED. They're not going to be James Bond. And I thought, I'm tougher than you morons. Bring it. I'll take whatever you can give me. There were a couple who were decent guys, a couple like one in particular young guy pulled me aside and said, Hey, how do I get into the CIA? I said, Oh, well, you know, here's how I got into CIA, but you can't do that anymore. It's far less sexy. Now you just have to go to the website and click apply. Well, what's the training

[19:32] like? So I told him what the training was like. And then he kind of looked up into the air and said, No, I'm just fantasizing. My wife would never let me move out of Loretto. It's like Loretto has 1200 people in it. And it's in the mountains of West central Pennsylvania. It's miserable. And literally the only job you can do there is to be a prison guard. But most of them were assholes. Later on, one of my Italian friends was talking to a guy who was arguably the most

[20:03] unpopular guard in the whole place. He went by the nickname blue. He had a piece of masking tape covering his name plate because he didn't want anybody to track him down on the outside once they got released and knife him to death. But he never, ever caused me a problem. I don't think he ever actually spoke to me. So my Italian friend said to him one time, Hey, blue, where are you going to be stationed for the next quarter? They would change assignments every quarter. I'm going to go to central one. My friend John lives in central one. And he says,

[20:36] the CIA guy and my Italian friend said, Yeah, I never mess with that guy. And my Italian friend said, Really? Why? He said, That's all I need work eight hours at this job and then go outside and CNN standing next to my car. No, thanks. And I thought, Yeah, good. Okay. The other ones want to fuck with me and I'm going to fuck right back about six weeks after I got there, I decided to file a freedom of information act request on myself. Now, as part of my plea deal,

[21:07] I promised never to file a freedom of information act request on myself. And I thought, I bet you they're too stupid to even implement that. What's the worst thing that could happen? The worst thing that could happen is that they say no. So I filed the freedom of information act request and I send it to the Bureau of prisons. Sure enough, about six weeks later, they respond. And it was a big fat envelope, 250 pages. About 230 pages of it was silliness. It was my medical records. It was my visitor's list. It was silly stuff like that.

[21:43] The remaining 20 pages were very, very important. Interestingly, they had all been stamped in red at the top and the bottom. Foya exempt. Do not release to inmate. So either somebody was so stupid at the Bureau of prisons that they didn't notice that or didn't pay attention to it or whatever, didn't know what it meant or somebody at the Bureau of prisons was taking pity on me. It could have been a fan even at the Bureau of prisons. And that was kind of a recurring

[22:14] theme over the course of the next 23 months. Among what I found in these 20 pages was a memo in gigantic font from the warden to all employees in the prison from four days before I arrived. And it says, caution inmate has access to the media. It was followed up by a very in-depth memo on why nobody should mess with me. That I'm smart. I'm trained to be ruthless. I'm skilled.

[22:49] They just made this up. I'm skilled in escape. I got a chuckle out of that one. I may have even laughed out loud and that nobody should mess with me. Well, for half of these dopes, that was licensed to mess with me, which was perfectly fine with me. And I said to one of them, I said, you're going to be in this prison far, far longer than I am. You live here eight hours a day. I'm going to be gone. Live in my life, making money, and you're still going to be in this prison. There was only one who meant me harm. He was the only African American guy in the cell.

[23:25] He was from Virginia Beach, Virginia. He was a scrawny guy and he wasn't connected to a gang. Everybody in the prison goes by a nickname, except most of the white guys don't. But all the Hispanics do and absolutely all the blacks do. And so his nickname was, was Watch Out. Usually you choose your own nickname or it's a nickname from childhood. And interestingly enough, whenever they would do these pickup basketball tournaments, they would ask for your name, your prisoner ID number, your cell, and your nickname.

[23:56] Because you don't use your real name. You use just your nickname. Well, this guy's nickname was Watch Out. And he was such an asshole to me that I would never call him Watch Out. I would call him Look Up. And then finally says, why the fuck can't you get my nickname right? And I said, who the fuck gave you that stupid nickname? Watch Out, Look Up. What the fuck's the difference? And he backed off. He got his revenge against me, I guess, by stealing my glasses one night while I was sleeping. It took me about five seconds to find them. He had just put them underneath the locker. But it was like so babyish and so petty. And then finally,

[24:31] after my six months, I transferred out. It's a real process to move from one cell to the other. And there's no guarantee that you're going to be able to do it. It all comes down to the so-called counselor, right? The counselor is just a guard who's been assigned to be your designated pain in the ass. I did my six months. There was a cell across the hall and down a couple that had a couple of good guys in it. Actually, Robert was in it. Robert, the Australian arsonist. And Frank had moved there as well. They had an empty bed. Somebody had been released. I said,

[25:03] guys, how about if I move into your cell? They said, absolutely. So we cleared it with Beard. There was a pedophile in that cell who didn't get a vote. And then there was another empty bunk. We went to the counselor and I said, I'm going to put in for a move from this cell to that cell. And I've spoken to the guys in the new cell and they're all in agreement. You have to say that in writing. And he said, you haven't been here six months. Yeah, I have. Six months yesterday, as a matter of fact. I'm going to check it. I said, I expect that you would. And then he signed off on it. So I moved into the new cell. It was good. It took us a couple

[25:38] of weeks to sort of get it the way it ended up being. So it was Frank. Frank and I shared one bunk. Dave Phillips had moved from central two to central one at the same time. So he took another bunk. The bunk above him was empty. And then there was beard and the pedophile. The pedophile knew that the rules were pedophiles can only sleep in the room. You can't hang out there. You can't sit there. You can't ever, ever have visitors. No pedophiles are permitted

[26:11] to have visitors. He just sort of quietly did his time. Summertime and the living is easy. Am I right, John? That is one of the best parts of Summer Allen. Living really does feel easier. You're about to travel. Good thing you've got a couple of quints pieces going with you. They are as relaxed and comfortable as I want to feel. That's why whether I'm traveling or staying at home, I reach for the same quints go anywhere pieces again and again. Quints focuses on well made essential. They're the t-shirt I reach for first every time. In all seriousness,

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[34:28] other new guys transfer into the room. But for the first 10 months, this was a really terrific rumor. I want to say a word about Beard. Beard's name was Beard, Marlon Beard. I still have such deep respect for Beard. Beard was one of these guys who had spent decades in prison. He made a joke about it one time. We were talking about what we were going to do when we got out. And he said, I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do when I get out. I'm going to sell drugs, because that's all I know how to do. I just have to be more careful not to get caught. He said,

[35:00] I'm a career criminal. I can't change. Actually, he did change. He's become a successful personal trainer and entrepreneur. He was the only African American in the group. He worked out constantly. And when he wasn't working out, he was watching Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, 105th in Park or whatever that stupid show was called, and arguing with people. He once got into a fistfight over who had more money, Jay-Z or Kanye, an actual fistfight. And we're like, Beard, are you nuts? You're going to go to solitary for that? Besides the fact that

[35:34] everybody knows Jay-Z has way more money than Kanye does. One of the reasons why I so deeply respect Beard, when my letters from Loretto took on a life of their own and became mainstream, thanks to Ariana Huffington at the Huffington Post, I was the subject of shake down after shake down after shake down. The cops would come into the room, clear everybody out and just trash our stuff, throw pictures of my kids on the ground, walk all over them, just throw everybody's stuff everywhere out of their locker. And I would go in and say,

[36:05] guys, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. It's because of me. It's because I'm so high profile. And Beard said, buddy, you don't get it. They're doing this on purpose. They want to piss off the big black guy so that the big black guy either gives you a beating or finds somebody else to give you a beating. Keep doing what you're doing. You are the only reason that people on the outside know what life inside is like. And it was because of Beard that I doubled down and wrote even more than I had been writing. He protected me. Probably didn't

[36:41] even mean to. He just did. Roommates can be friends, but that's really the exception rather than the rule. Robert the Australian was the first person to befriend me when I first arrived. He did so on the first day. And I came to realize that's just Robert. That's Robert's personality. Robert is at his core. He's a sociopath. It's obvious that he's a stereotypical clinical sociopath, but he tries to mask his sociopathy with friendliness. So the minute I arrive,

[37:14] hi, how are you? I'm Robert. I'm from Australia. I'm here on an arson charge. What do you here for? What's your name? Let me introduce you to the right people. You should meet Dave. Dave was in the CIA. He's upstairs in Central 2. And you should meet this guy and you should meet that guy. You're going to love Frank. Frank was the mayor of Cleveland. He wasn't the mayor. He was the auditor general of Cuyahoga County, which is bigger than the mayor of Cleveland. And it was Robert that introduced me to everybody at the very beginning. Everybody. I considered Robert to be a friend, a prison friend, not a friend on the outside.

[37:46] He introduced me to a person that I called Dave Phillips. Said he was a CIA officer. I doubted that, of course. There were a couple of problems with Dave from the outset. He wasn't exactly sure of the lingo. The lingo is a very important thing to me. It's how I can spot a CIA phony from a mile away, stolen valor. And it's like everybody who claims to be a member of SEAL Team 6. Well, you can't say SEAL Team 1 and maybe budget. Everybody's got to be SEAL Team 6, the greatest of the great. Like so many of those fakes, I can spot a CIA fake from

[38:19] a mile away. The very first question that two CIA officers meeting for the first time ask each other is what directorate were you in? There are only four responses. DO, DI, DSNT, DA. The directorate of intelligence, the directorate of operations, the directorate of science and technology, or the directorate of administration. So I asked him, what directorate were you in? He said DO. He didn't say operations. He said DO, directorate of operations. That's the correct response. Then I said, what division were you in? Which is always the second question.

[38:53] There are about three dozen answers. Nearest operations, counterterrorism, Africa operations, this operations, that operations. And he said Africa operation, AF division. That's actually a correct response as well. Okay, but there was something that was just not quite right. He didn't know who the director of operations was. The DDO, the deputy director of the CIA for operations. He didn't know who that was. How can you not know who your boss is? There was another thing too. There was a training center that's quite secret that he mentioned to me, but he got the two names flipped.

[39:28] I'm going to make this up. Cape Monroeville. He would call it Monroeville Cape. And I corrected him once. I said, actually it's Cape Monroeville. He said, no, it's Monroeville Cape. I was like, okay, all right. That's not correct. But I made a mental note. He obviously had some sort of exposure to the CIA at some point, but he had never been a CIA officer. He made up this very elaborate operation that he claimed to have been a member of. And he said he won a medal. Well, there are about a dozen medals that the CIA bestows. So I asked him

[40:01] which medal, the intelligence medal. Yeah, which one? He didn't realize there were multiple intelligence medals. And then half of them are only given posthumously. I tripped him up there too. He was also incredibly jealous of my time to the point where he was actively hostile when other people wanted to stop by and visit, go for a walk around the track. He hated it. He was trying very, very hard to isolate me and I resisted. I wouldn't let him isolate me. A couple of different people came up to me and said, be careful of him. There's something

[40:34] off about him. Mark Lanzalotti, who became my best friend in prison and remains one of my best friends in life, was the first one to warn me about him saying, something just doesn't sit right with this guy. You should be careful of him. Dave Phillips did not make my circle of friends. Dave Phillips also was willing to take risks that were unacceptable to me. Listen, I'm a risk taker. I've always been a risk taker, a major risk taker, but there are some things that are just

[41:04] plain stupid. For instance, creating two shanks, one out of a razor blade that he dug out of a disposable razor and the other out of an uncoiled spring. So one slashing weapon and one stabbing weapon and then planting them in the possession of pedophile that we were having a dispute with. He asked me if I wanted to go with him plant the shanks and I said, are you out of your fucking mind? I don't want to be within 100 feet of shanks. I'm going home in a year. The shanks were planted.

[41:39] He anonymously ratted out the pedophile as being in possession of shanks. The guards raid the cell. They find the shanks. They're not particularly well hidden and they arrest the pedophile, but then they also arrest Dave because they knew we were in a dispute with this pedophile. They arrest Dave. They send the pedophile to some prison in New Jersey. They send Dave to a prison in Ohio and then they call me into the lieutenant's office trying to be tough guys and they said the only reason we didn't send you to solitary and then send you to another prison

[42:10] is because we didn't see you on the security cameras going to North 2 where the pedophile was living. And I said, I don't go to North 2. It's full of pedophiles up there. What do you think I am? Oh, you're going to be funny guy now. I said, I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about. You call me down here all the time. You talk and talk and talking. You act like I know what the fuck you're talking about and I don't have any idea. Of course, I knew exactly what they were talking about. Remember, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. And so Dave was gone. The pedophile was gone. John wasn't gone.

[49:10] Together they came up with a plan right out of Al Capone, Chicago, where if you want a job, any job with the county or the state, you're going to pay them a kickback. If you want a permit to do something, you're going to pay them a kickback. I can't speak for Jimmy DeMora, but what Frank did was use this money as a slush fund to then hire the sons and daughters of contributors or business associates. So yes, Frank remodeled his house. Yes,

[49:40] Frank installed a new kitchen. Yes, Frank poured a new driveway and bought himself a Mercedes. Sure, he was corrupt. I'm not making any excuses, but he wasn't as corrupt as his sentence would have you believe. Frank was known to have a heart condition, a very serious one, and he got 25 years in prison. That's a death sentence. So what he agreed to do was to rat out Jimmy DeMora. Jimmy DeMora went to the mat and pleaded not guilty and went to trial and was convicted on every single account with Frank up there on the stand testifying against him.

[50:16] Jimmy DeMora got a draconian sentence. He's still alive. He's an old man and he's in prison and he will die in a cold steel prison bunk. So Frank knew what he was getting into. He knew that being a rat would mark him in prison. He would have to sit at the rat pedophile table in the cafeteria. He wasn't permitted to watch TV in the TV room because rats and pedophiles weren't allowed to watch TV. And he knew that he would just have to keep his head down because people were going to be gun informed. But he was such a nice guy with such a hilarious sense of humor

[50:51] that he won everybody over. Everybody except the Italian. Pete Calabrese, Peter the Rabbit Calabrese, a senior senior member of the Banana family said to me one time why do you hang out with that fucking rat? Well he's my bunk mate first of all but secondly he's a really great guy. I know what he did. I'm not making any excuses for him. I know he ratted out Jimmy DeMora. Pete said he brings dishonor to the Italians. Yeah he does. You're right. But that doesn't make him any less of a sweetheart. So I always had a very warm and close relationship with Frank.

[51:23] Mark Lanzalotti is literally one of the finest human beings I've ever known in my life. I consider him to be like a brother. In some ways I'm closer to Mark than I am to my own brother. Talk about being screwed by the system. Mark had a stepfather, John One Star, Native American guy. And One Star was involved in the meth trade. And so he said to Mark one day listen I'm getting a group of guys together. We're going to cook some meth. We're going to make some serious money. You in? He's in his 20s. He's an impressionable young guy. This is his

[51:56] mom's husband. Guy's kind of a giant in his life. Mark never had a relationship with his father. He says sure. I'm in. So One Star gets three or four other guys together. They start cooking meth. They make a trip to Florida to buy whatever chemical you need. It's like a pool chemical. And then they go to Jamaica I think it was and they make a deal. They go back to suburban Philly on the New Jersey side. They rent a house in a terrible part of town. That's where they're going to do the cook. And then from the house they get an air stream

[52:28] trailer and they start cooking there. Mark does this for six months and he says you know what this is not for me. Mark doesn't take drugs. He never took drugs. He told me one time that he had never tried drugs in his life. Any drugs not even weed. He said this just isn't for me. I'm out and he quit. As it turned out he was the only person to voluntarily leave the conspiracy. He's out for over a year and somebody rats out the group. So the DEA and the ATF raid the house. They raid the air stream. They grab one star. They grab the other guys.

[53:02] Mark in the meantime has opened a successful detailing and body shop and he's making money. He's got half a dozen people working for him. He just waited for the hammer to fall. Another year passes. He's at work one day. ATF and DEA bust down the door and they grab him. One star is out on bail and one star says I have an attorney for you. He doesn't represent rats. You cannot rat anybody else. And Mark's like I'm not a rat. I'm not saying anything to anybody. Having no idea that everybody else is ratting him out. The government comes back and they say

[53:40] take a guilty plea. You do five years and three months. That's the deal that they offered everybody else. One star took it. All the other guys took it. Mark says no. I'm not a rat. Having no idea everybody else has even been offered this deal. Refuses the deal. They come back a couple of times. Five years three months. He said no I'm not doing it. Even the attorney said I don't represent rats. He goes to trial. He didn't have a prayer. He was guilty. Plus everybody ended up testifying against him. Made it look like he was the mastermind. He was the only one to

[54:11] voluntarily leave the conspiracy. He had never ever been in trouble before. This was a first time nonviolent drug offense. He's convicted and he is sentenced to triple life without parole. They send him to the maximum security penitentiary at Springfield, Missouri. Interestingly enough, his cellmate there is Vinnie the Chin Gigante, the boss of the Genevieve's crime family. But Mark has this reputation that he took it on the Chin. He refused to rat anybody out

[55:14] onto the prison ground and they remove the bone cancer from his wrist. He has a nasty scar. And then they give him radiation treatments inside the prison. He appeals his sentence as cruel and unusual and he wins. They reduce it to 30 years maximum security. Then he's transferred to the prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina. Then he's transferred to a god-awful place in Pennsylvania. And then he's finally transferred to Loretto. I meet Mark when he's 15 years into the 30-year

[55:49] sentence and I immediately took a liking to him. There is nothing pretentious about Mark. He's just a genuinely sweet guy. And not just a sweet guy. He is a completely honest guy. I'm 61. He's like 59 or 58 and he will occasionally call me. He did this as recently as a week ago and say, Buddy, you said something on Facebook that you're going to need to edit. Oh man, you are exactly right. And while we're on the phone, I edited it or, Hey Buddy, you tweeted something the other

[56:19] day. This could cause you a problem. And I read it and I say, Oh my God, what was I thinking? And then I'll delete the tweet. He's just that kind of a guy. Very level-headed, very, very smart. Mark, just like Dave from the moment they met and he told me, don't trust this guy. This guy's trouble. And I said, I actually don't trust it, but I appreciate it. Thanks for looking out for me. I have so much to say about Mark. We could do an entire episode just about Mark. Mark was one of the most gifted, I'm not going to call him a cook. I'm going to call him a chef.

[56:52] One of the most gifted chefs in prison, in any prison. What this guy could do with a garbage bucket of water and a live electrical wire was miraculous. I gained 35 pounds in prison. And it was all because of Mark Lanzalotti. The Italians had some crooked cop on the payroll. Most everybody's just buying whatever the kitchen workers steal, bony chicken or whatever. Italians are having this cop bringing pork loin and white wine for the marsala sauce and fresh pasta and fresh tomatoes and fresh mushrooms and garlic. It was a scene right

[57:28] out of Goodfellas. Literally it was a right out of Goodfellas. We would be cooking all day. Even the guards would come by. This just made me nuts. Mark, what are you cooking today? I can smell a garlic all the way down the hall. Oh, don't worry. Don't worry. He would tell the guard, I got a bowl coming for you. And he would put this heap and bowl of the most delicious Italian food you've ever had and send it to the guard. Another thing Mark always did, and this was a learning lesson for me. There were about a half a dozen made men in Loretto. One was the actual boss of the Gambino family. One was the boss of the Boston

[58:01] Patriarcha family and his brother, the underboss. One was the underboss of New Jersey's Decavacante family. These were very serious guys, serious made men. The others were from Philly. One was from Cleveland. Serious high-ranking, high-level mafia members, and they were always the first ones to eat. Mark would make this mountain of delicious food. Where he got all these Tupperwares, I have no idea. He would load up the Tupperwares and then just deliver the hot dinners to all the made men. And they loved it. They loved it. Mark and I would sit in his cell

[58:37] for hours to the point where I actually got in trouble. There was one asshole guard who was like, what are you doing here, Kiriyaku? You're not in North 2. You're in Central 1. What, I can't visit? No, actually, you can't visit. All right, Mark, I'll see you tomorrow. What the fuck's your problem, he would say to the guard? You know the rules, Mark. He can't be down here. And I told him afterwards, I said, Mark, that was not at all about you. That was about me. So I'd back off for a few days and then I'd start going back to Mark's again. And we would go through the whole rigamarole again a couple of weeks later. Mark used to get the USA today every day and I would get the New

[59:11] York time. So I'd take my times down there and he would, well, there's no harm in saying it. Now he's not in prison anymore. Mark was the foremost, literally the foremost bookie in the entire prison, the foremost bookie. And he would send these books of stamps home to sort of make a little nest egg for himself. It was very, very smart planning. So I'm reading times and there's an article about the Second Chance Act that had just passed Congress and Obama signed it into law. Buddy, did you read this article? This article is about you. He said, what do you mean?

[59:42] It's talking about people who have no violence in their crime and receive draconian sentences where if they were to be prosecuted today, they would get shorter sentences. You're the poster boy for this thing. It says that you can file a petition with the Justice Department. They'll review your case and if you qualify, they'll hire an A-list firm to represent you in a resentencing hearing. And he said, I don't even know where I would begin to do something like that. I'm not smart enough to handle something like that. I said, I'll write it. This thing's about you.

[1:00:14] You don't deserve to be in prison. So I wrote it. I got out of prison February 3rd, 2015, after 23 months. In August of 2015, Mark's mom called me. Mark's mom is one of the sweetest ladies out there. She called me and when I answered the phone, I said, Hi, Ro. She's crying. Oh my god, what happened to him? No, you don't understand. They're letting him go. What? She said, that appeal you wrote, it worked. They're letting him go 17 years into a 30 year sentence. She had

[1:00:45] a surprise party for him. What they do is if you're slated for release after a long sentence, they let you go home for eight hours. And in that eight hours, you have to run around and get a copy of your birth certificate and get a copy of your social security card and get a driver's license and then go back to the prison. She had a party for him. We all shout, surprise. Oh my god, and hugs all around. I can't stay. I got to go to the DMV and off they went and he got himself ready. And then he got out eight weeks later and we had a proper party for him. He and

[1:01:19] I had a couple of conversations. What am I going to do? I don't have any skills. I've never seen an ATM machine. I've never used the internet. What am I going to do for a living? Well, what are you interested in? Honestly, I'm interested in real estate. You should take your real estate licensing exam. He said, I can't with a felony conviction. I can't get a license, buddy. I just got a pardon from the governor of Virginia, a pardon that I didn't even apply for. He followed my case and just pardoned me when I got out. Go to the governor's website. It was Chris Christie and say, you just have your sentence commuted by President Obama that you did

[1:01:53] not deserve what you got. You got this draconian sentence and that you want to be a productive member of society and you want permission to take your real estate licensing exam. So he did and Christie approved it. This just goes to show you how crazy life can be sometimes. Now, Mark is literally the top ranked realtor on the Jersey Shore. Literally no one in the state of New Jersey sells more real estate on the Jersey Shore than Mark Lanzalotti does. I went to see him recently. He lives in a beautiful home. He drives a beautiful car. He has all

[1:02:27] the toys that any 50-something year old man would want to have, live in a good life. I was fortunate especially with Mark because with Mark came a lot of added benefits, the protection of the Italians. Once the word got around that I was with the Italians, it was hands off, not just for other prisoners but for the guards. The Italians have a very long arm that extends far, far beyond the prison walls and the guards just did not want to take that risk. It wasn't just that John has access to CNN or the Washington Post, it was that John's with the Italians.

[1:03:02] Yeah, having friends beats the hell out of not having friends and having the right friends, it made a huge difference when I was at the CIA. It made a huge difference at Loretto. In fact, there's so much to talk about on the subject of friends that we're continuing the topic into the next episode. Thanks as always for listening and for being a friend. Don't forget to like, rate, review and comment on the podcast. Hey, that's what friends do for each other, right? Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou.
