Arianna Huffington
==================

Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, is the person who, largely by accident, gave John Kiriakou's prison writing its audience.

The accidental pipeline

Kiriakou's first Letter from Loretto was never meant for the world: he sent it to his attorney, who passed it to the proprietor of the website Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher. What Kiriakou didn't know was that Hamsher was good friends with Arianna Huffington, who put it on the Huffington Post under a banner headline. It went, in his words, completely crazy: more than a million hits in the week it published, followed by CNN and 60 Minutes coming to the prison and a press wave that took on a life of its own. "I thought, my God, I have a soapbox here. I can reach people."

The prison's response was an investigation, of Kiriakou, and how the blog got out.

The platform

Huffington's site became the launch pad for the letters that followed. His open letter to Edward Snowden, written expecting a few hundred readers, started at the Huffington Post and was republished everywhere. His exposé of guard corruption led to a Department of Justice inspector general investigation. And when the prison moved to silence him, stripping him to pen and paper, floating diesel therapy, he wrote about that immediately, "and she immediately published it... it went viral." Oliver Stone and John Cusack tweeted "hands off John Kiriakou," and Code Pink mobilized its members to call the Bureau of Prisons.

Huffington also came to Loretto in person, bringing two young journalists with her. Kiriakou had blogged for the Huffington Post before prison, and he credits her outlet, alongside The Intercept, with running stories the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post wouldn't touch.

See also

- Letter from Loretto
- FCI Loretto
- Bureau of Prisons
- Edward Snowden
