Title: The Zero Hour (RJ Eskow)
Show: The Zero Hour (RJ Eskow)
Date: 2017-03-17
URL: https://youtu.be/5JUqRcpwkS0
Duration: 16:00

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[00:02] [Music] you know I don't say this about a lot of people are a lot of guests but our next guest is a patriot John kyriacou is a whistleblower he is a columnist with reader supported news he was a CIA analyst a CIA case officer a senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a counterterrorism and may still be for all I know IM is also still as far as i know a counterterrorism consultant for ABC news

[00:35] he is also an author he was the first CIA officer to be convicted of passing classified information to a reporter although that reporter did not publish the name of his source he was sentenced to 30 years in prison on january twenty fifth of 2013 and served time his he has been on the show before he has a new book out it is entitled doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive

[01:05] and thrive in prison first of all John thanks for coming back on the program all the pleasures all mine thanks very much for having me I think the last time I talked to you you were still while the Jamaican term for it used to be under heavy manners you were still as I recall you know restricted by who you could talk to and I had to get permission from all that is gone all that is behind you now I get and now you're able to write about your experience with the criminal

[01:36] justice system right yes indeed I've got another just slightly less than six weeks of federal probation and in which case they'll then be scot-free but yeah pretty much i'm free to do whatever I want well that's good to know and in terms of just so that in case people aren't familiar with your case you were one of those whistleblowers who had the book thrown at them by by the national

[02:08] security system under President Obama right right right president I'm prosecuted 8american under the Espionage Act this was a world war one error law designed to target German saboteurs and Obama's eight prosecutions compared to three prosecutions from all previous presidents combined so it was a pretty heavy hand yeah it was a pretty heavy hand and I don't know this word

[02:39] for that story was but but it seems to me that that the the story in question was one where I believe the reporter was also threatened with criminal prosecution which is unheard of yeah you know that was that was really life on your Eric Holder at the Justice Department the Justice Department though was threatening reporters all the time and indeed the reporters that were involved in my case we're actively threatened yeah and and and that is not

[03:11] the America I like to see particularly when the stories in question are stories about things the American people need to know and understand that are being done in their name so a flash forward a little bit so you went to prison you you wrote this upcoming book to be published in May doing time like a spy so you're interesting subtitle I think it will catch some attention how the CIA toppy

[03:43] to survive and thrive in prison so briefly well first of all I just want to say John that have read the book and while I don't like to take pleasure from the misfortune of others I actually enjoyed it I thank you I found it gripping and in some cases even amusing although I'm sure none of it was amusing at the time no none of it was amusing at the time and to tell you the truth I I really had no intentions at all of

[04:16] writing a book a couple of weeks before I went to prison I was at a dinner party with a couple of people that your readers may recognize it was a gentleman raid ask who renowned whistleblower attorney and Tom Drake who was an NSA whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who's sort of the granddaddy of all whistleblowers he he's the one who released the Pentagon Papers back in the early 1970s and and a woman who owns a political website called firedoglake com and she said hey when

[04:49] you finally get to prison and you start feeling comfortable why don't you write us a letter and we'll publish it on the west on the website so that your supporters can see that you're you're doing well and you can give them an update and there were about 600 people who had expressed interest in reading something like that they had signed up for a mailing list so I waited quite a bit of time I waited about about nine weeks before I actually sat down and wrote something i did not realize when I

[05:19] wrote it I called it a letter from Loreto but I didn't realize when I wrote it that I was actually exposing a federal crime and it's been committed against me by two of the prison guards and so I sent it in I also didn't know that this friend who owned the website was good friends with Arianna Huffington and so when my friend published it Arianna Huffington picked it up for the huffington post and it went completely crazy after that i ended up with something close to two million hits and

[05:50] then i was flooded literally flooded with with letters and and calls to the warden's office expressing concern and even even the likes of you know CNN and 60 minutes drove to the prison and tried to get comments and interviews it really took on a life of its own yeah that's interesting and you're talking about people i know i was one of the first writers for the huffington post I knew jane hampshire at firedoglake and wrote there so it's it's a small community I

[06:21] remember those days well but having said that I had never thought about the notion that that CIA training would be useful in prison so how did that how did that work to tell you the truth that never even occurred to me until the day that I got there and turned myself in in my sentencing my attorney that's the judge to send me to a minimum-security work camp and the prosecution agreed and the judge the judge made the recommendation so at a minimum security

[06:53] work camp there are no bars on the windows there's no barbed wire a lot of the guys work in town you're free to come and go as you please and you're sort of on your honor to to not abscond when I got to the prison I went and checked in I said I'm John Kiriakou I'm here to turn myself in and the policeman there the the corrections officer put me through a metal detector and then began escorting me around to the back of the

[07:24] prison and I said no no there's a there's a mistake I'm supposed to be at the minimum security camp across the street not in the actual prison and he kind of laughed but he said not according to my paperwork or not and I told myself take it easy there's nothing you can do if you flip out on this guy they're going to put you in solitary so I didn't say a word well it was five days before I could finally get access to a telephone I called my attorney and I said hey they put me in the actual

[07:54] prison not in the camp and he said Wow well we can file a motion but it'll be two years before we get a hearing and you'll be home by then so you're just gonna have to tough it out i'm sorry and i went to my cell i got this cell assignment and i remember sitting there and saying all right you're on your own you're going to have to rely on what you've been trained to do in order to keep yourself safe and to make sure that you stay at the top of the heap and that

[08:26] included things like making strategic alliances let's say I say in the book the number one job of every spies to recruit spies to steal secrets or anything else that you need or things like if column is not to your benefit than chaos as your friend or admit nothing deny everything make counter-accusations so there were like 20 of these lifeless that I learned at the CIA that I used to like I said to keep myself safe and it

[08:56] actually worked out quite well yeah you know I mean you tell a lot of those stories of these you know it's kind of like those business leadership books except for convict but you know but but you tell a lot of the stories and they're actually you know they're very engaging stories with you met a lot of interesting people in there some pretty disturbed the people i would say a frightening people but also some sort of

[09:30] damon runyon like characters and i guess my biggest question for you would be were there many times when you felt physically unsafe not really the only time that I that I wondered whether I was going to find myself in a predicament the threat to my safety came from the guards not from other prisoners you know the prisoners the other

[10:01] prisoners took to me yeah I tell the story in the book where as I was being promised in the only thing that the guard said to me other than you know stand up look in the camera you know here's your change of clothes whatever the only thing he said to me was if anybody comes into yourself uninvited that's an act of aggression and I thought tease a man I've been here for 40 minutes and i'm going to get my ass kicked right so i was sitting in a chair

[10:32] in my cell I had been in the prison about two hours and two members of the Aryan Brotherhood walked into my cell one had an enormous swastika across the entire front half of his neck so I jumped up and I put my fist up I said what do you want and the guy said take it easy are you the new guy I said yes he said are you a and i said no i said are you a rat and i said no i didn't have anybody else in my case I

[11:04] didn't anybody out he said are you at home oh well I had never heard the term chomo I said I don't know what that means he said child molester are you a child molester I said no I'm not a child molester and he said well you can sit with the Aryans in the cafeteria and I thought okay well I guess I'm with the Aryans now of all things and then after a while I struck up a friendship with it with a senior captain in the banana crime family i finished my new york

[11:35] times and give it to him and he was finishes New York Post and give it to me and we talk sports and what have you and you said to me one day hey let me ask you a question why do you sit with those Nazi retards in the cafeteria and I said I don't know my first day here they told me to sit with them and very dramatically he put up his finger he said from today you're with the Italian and so from that day I i SAT with the Italians in the cafeteria and became

[12:06] quite close to several of them and you know once word got around that I was with the Italians even though the Italians were the smallest group in prison they commanded really the most respect so once word got around that I was with the Italian I never had a second of trouble I always anticipated that if I wound up in prison that I would pick the wrong alliances in the you know and that I would be that would be the end of me and that if the Italians told me now you have to sit with the Italian that I'd be so afraid

[12:37] of offending the areas which sounds ridiculous when you say it that they shank me or something I mean I don't know but it sounds like you may be your CIA training helped you navigate these the politics of these these clannish relationships a lot better it really did and you know another thing that the CIA Tommy that that was sort of amusing at the time that I was learning it but became very very important is to

[13:08] manipulate people into doing your dirty work for you so that your hands remain clean and that's what i did i'm almost embarrassed to say this to you but I was very manipulative in prison I talked in a book about sitting next to a serial killer in the TV room a serial killer of young women and he had a problem with a guy who was doing 20 years for a contract killing but these are bad

[13:40] people i was in renton way this was no party there's no such thing as Club fed for example I hate when people say that because there is no such thing right so the contract killer didn't like me at all because I told him I didn't want him to move into my room I said I had a problem with his crime I had a problem with the fact that he had a reputation as a rat and I didn't want to live with him and so he didn't see me sitting in the TV room and I heard him say that I

[14:10] was a rat I had been called down to the to the lieutenant's office earlier in the day because i had a media interview requests and they wanted to know if I wanted to do the interview or not well he told people I was down there ratting other people out so he didn't see me sitting there and he said to another prisoner did you hear carry on without cause of the lieutenant's office that guy's a rat and the serial killer turned to me and said did you hear that that guy just called you a rat and I said to

[14:40] the serial killer that's funny because two hours ago I heard him call you a child molester and the serial killer got up without saying a word got up walked over to the hit man and beat him into a bloody unconscious Pope and they ended up both being transferred out of prison though I did well I guess he did is a pretty horrible story is pretty horrible way to try to survive to have to survive but now that you're out we only have

[15:14] about a minute left a job but now that you're out how do you look back at that experience you know Prison is a horrible horrible place I wouldn't wish it on anybody we have very serious problems both at the state and at the federal level problems that is Americans we should be ashamed of but at the same time as horrible as experienced as it was it made me a very patient person and it made me realize that despite the cost I

[15:46] did the right thing and I would do it again in the end it was all worth it well good I'm glad you've come to that point in your life you deserve that our guest is John Kerry aku the book is doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison John good to talk to you again and thanks for coming on the program thanks so much it was a pleasure
