Title: S2E4 With Friends Like These
Show: John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Date: 2026-06-08
URL: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a2467ce4330c50bd3a659b9/media.mp3
Duration: 0:35:39

---

[06:35] I'm not an Australian citizen. If I'm convicted of a crime, I'll never be able to go back to Australia again. We had two kids in Australia and grandchildren in Australia and his entire family's in Australia. But he's extradited to the United States. So he takes a plea. Robert never bothered to ask his attorney or to do his own research on what would happen if he's found guilty of a felony. Well, if you're found guilty of a felony in the United States,

[07:07] you're banned for life from the Five Eyes countries, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Somebody mentioned something to him in prison. Oh, you're not an Australian citizen. You can't go back to Australia. What do you mean I can't go back to Australia? No, you're banned for life. So the whole time that I was there and he was there, he spent writing letters to the Australian ambassador, the Australian prime minister, the Australian justice minister, Australian senators, Australian parliamentary members,

[07:38] and nobody would help him. Nobody. The thing is, he's also not an American. And so he's got to be expelled to somewhere when he finally gets out. So they expelled him to the UK. But that's not the issue. The issue is that Robert was the most pure sociopath I had ever met. He was a pathological liar. He would lie about literally everything. Robert initially married an Australian woman. They had a son and a daughter and they got divorced. He had subsequent marriages to a Swiss woman,

[08:10] a Canadian woman, and an American woman, which got him Canadian and American citizenship. He had the British citizenship that he was born into, but he never got his Australian citizenship. Robert claimed every career that you can imagine. Anytime a career came up in a conversation, Robert would say, I did that. He claimed to be a successful nightclub owner, a DJ, a border guard, a bush pilot, the owner of the largest video store chain in Australia, the largest video store chain in Canada,

[08:41] the largest video store chain in America. The story always changed every time he told it. A successful used car dealer, a successful radio talk show host, a voiceover artist. He even claimed to have dated Australian international tennis champion, Yvonne Goulagong. He also said Yvonne Goulagong had been Miss Universe. I said to him, Robert, Yvonne Goulagong was not Miss Universe. This went on for months where we argued about Yvonne Goulagong until he finally admitted that, okay, she wasn't Miss Universe.

[09:14] Oh, and by the way, it wasn't Yvonne Goulagong that he had been dating. It was a woman who reminded him of Yvonne Goulagong. There was always a kernel of truth in the stories that he told. And then sometimes he was just brutally honest. For example, he and one of his wives adopted these Romanian twins from an orphanage in Romania. Turned out that they were like bad seeds. They're like four years old, five years old. They're pulling knives on each other. They're trying to set the house on fire or whatever.

[09:45] So what does Robert do? He puts them in a car. He drives to Washington, DC, and he abandons them at the front gate of the Romanian embassy. And I said, you did not. He said, yeah, I did. They were going to kill me in my sleep one of these days. I go, Robert, it's not normal to abandon two five-year-olds at the front gate of a foreign embassy and then just drive away. Like, how were you not arrested for that? He didn't care. One thing about Robert though too is that he was afraid of his own shadow.

[17:09] If you're enjoying dead drop and of course we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the cost art and touchstone family. Just the photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what dead drop does for spies.

[17:43] Pull it surprise winning photojournalist David Swanson tells you stories his amazing news photos just can't. What it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this. Just the photographer will put you right there on the ground, right next to David. Inside his head in fact, it's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at cost art and touchstone.com.

[18:17] There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at cost art and touchstone, like the donor, a DNA horror story, the hall closet, sage wellness within, and the how not to make a movie podcast. Who knows your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to dead drop. There was one other guy that I was friendly with who was a truly good human being and that was Clint Goswick. He was one of the orderlies in the chapel when I first started working there.

[18:50] Clint lived in the housing unit above mine, Central 2. Usually there's no connection between Central 1 and Central 2. I mean you'll see these guys out on the yard or in the cafeteria or whatever but you're generally not friends. We don't go up there. They didn't come down to our Central 1. But Clint lived up in Central 2 and I became friendly with him. Clint was very, very religious, constantly quoting the Bible. And he meant it sincerely. And finally I said to him, what in the world are you doing here?

[19:22] You're the unlikeliest federal prisoner. And what are you doing here? He had a very sad story. Clint was from Texas from a town called Wichita Falls, Texas. I remember that because Harry Nielsen, the great Harry Nielsen had an album called As Falls Wichita So Falls Wichita Falls. Clint had a successful heating and air conditioning business in Wichita Falls, Texas. Strong Christian. Never a day in trouble in his life. But he had a very difficult divorce.

[19:53] And it just wrecked him. It wrecked his self-esteem. It broke him financially. Finally, after this divorce he started dating. He was 42 years old. He met this 22 year old beauty. Listen, I've been 42. I wouldn't have been able to believe that a 42 year old John would have a 21 year old, 22 year old attracted to him. This 22 year old woman was just getting out of an abusive relationship. She had a previous boyfriend who was a meth cook.

[20:24] And he had killed himself playing Russian roulette while fueled on meth. So Clint started dating her. It didn't work out. The relationship ran its course. And she began dating another meth cook who had just recently been released from prison. So three years later, Clint's forgotten about this woman. Three years later, she and her boyfriend are arrested for manufacturing meth. Clint's phone number was still in her cell phone.

[20:55] And Clint's father had once called her number looking for Clint. So the FBI, they're searching the records. They say, oh, phone A called phone B and phone B is in touch with phone C. And phone C is also in touch with phone A. That's a conspiracy. So the FBI pulls Clint in for questioning. Clint tells the FBI that, yeah, he and the woman had dated. It didn't work out. It ran its course. And they asked him, did you ever socialize with any of her friends?

[21:28] And he said, yeah, I had a cookout at my house one time. And she invited a whole bunch of people. And, you know, we had a good time. The FBI then asked her and she said, yeah, we did. We had a cookout at his house. And I did meth with my friends in his garage. The FBI said that's a drug conspiracy. And lo and behold, the new boyfriend whom Clint had never met got charged with a gun charge. Well, in federal law, if one person in a conspiracy has a gun,

[21:59] all the people in the conspiracy are charged with a gun charge. Clint had never met or heard of any of the other conspirators in the case. He had never used drugs. He had never manufactured drugs. He had never possessed drugs. He had never distributed drugs. He was charged with conspiracy. And he said, I didn't commit conspiracy. He pled not guilty. The prosecutors and the judge were outraged that he would go to trial, which is his constitutional right. And their words waste the taxpayers' time and money.

[22:32] They added that gun charge on Clint, even though he didn't have a gun. He was found guilty. His attorney told him repeatedly to take a plea. He kept saying that he believed in the justice system. He hadn't done any of these crimes. So four of the other defendants agreed as part of their own deals to testify against Clint, saying that he had, quote, owned the party house. That's what the big thing was, the big testimony. He had owned the party house. The jury deliberated for three days. Guilty.

[23:02] He and I would play racquetball every day that the weather was nice. And every day he would say the same thing. God's going to take care of me. God's testing me. He's testing my faith. And he would get these tattoos. He tripled the number of tattoos that he had on him while we were in prison. And every tattoo was a Bible verse. His whole body was just like printing the whole Bible on his body. And I used to tell him, I've never known anybody so religious, so true to his faith,

[23:32] yet in such a dire position. And he said, because your faith is not as strong as mine, Jesus is going to get me out of this. And guess what happened? He was released. He took advantage of the second chance act. And he said, look, I didn't have the gun. I didn't have any drugs. All I did was I had a cookout. And my girlfriend invited her friends. Literally that was all that happened. And the Justice Department said, you're right. This is ridiculous. And they let him go. I had been out of prison about two years.

[24:03] I got a call on my cell phone. I looked at the phone and it just had a number. And it said, Wichita Falls, Texas. And I said, no possible way. I answered the phone. He says, brother. And I said, I can't believe I'm hearing your voice. He said, I'm calling you from home. What a good man he is. And you know what? He now has a beautiful relationship with his daughter and with his young granddaughter. He went back into the heating and cooling business and has found success again. And goes to church every Sunday and has no ill will toward anybody.

[24:37] There were, as you might imagine, many very dangerous, very sick people in this prison, even though it was a low security prison. Now, the reason why there are dangerous sick people in low security prisons is that they would start out in a maximum security. You can only be transferred to a low security if you have under 20 years left on your sentence and you have good behavior. So you start off in a maximum, then you go down to a medium, then you go down to a low. And if you're really good and you don't have a violent crime,

[25:08] you can go to a minimum security work camp.

[25:38] Calci.com's last regulatory. K-A-L-S-H-I. Calci. Trade the beautiful game.

[26:10] He would have sex with them. He didn't want to pay them, so he would strangle them and then drive a couple of hundred miles with their dead bodies next to him and then finally throw them out on the side of the highway. The FBI knew that there was a serial killer loose in what was called the Golden Age of Serial Killers, which was roughly 1970 to 1990. They just didn't know where to look. And then finally, he picked up a 16-year-old prostitute at a truck stop. He had sex with her and then he strangled her, but she lived.

[26:40] Now, because she was 16, that would technically make him a chomo, a child molester, something about which he was very, very sensitive. When I first arrived in Central One, he came up to me and he had just a handful of rotten blackened nubs for teeth. He was big, at least 6'4", maybe 350 pounds, an enormous man. The worst breath you've ever experienced from these rotten black little nubs. For reasons that were never clear to me,

[27:11] he constantly sought my approval. He came up to me almost belligerently one day and said, are you the CIA guy? And I'm thinking, oh fuck, am I gonna have to fight this giant? So I kind of steeled myself. He said, I did some work for the CIA back in NAMM. Okay, what the fuck do you want from me? You want congratulations? I just said okay. Then I worked for the CIA after NAMM. I was running guns to the Angolan rebels in a shrimp boat. I go get the fuck out of here. A shrimp boat couldn't go 30 miles and you're doing it the long way across the Atlantic

[27:43] to Angola. Come on, man. Think of a better story than that. And I walked away. One of the Italians said to me, be careful of him. That's one dangerous son of a bitch. And I thought, John, you're being stupid. Why are you challenging somebody like this? But instead of making him angry, it made him more determined to seek my approval. I never understood it. I still don't understand it. But he would say things like, hey, John, I know you're a Steelers fan. The Steelers are on TV on Sunday.

[28:14] I saved you a seat in the TV room. Which meant he punched somebody whose seat it was so that I could sit in the vacant seat and watch the game. Hey, John, I know you listen to Classic Rock. There's a new Classic Rock station at 1600 AM. I'm like, okay, thanks, truck. I appreciate it. So I worked hard to not piss him off. He was also violent. In the unit, several of his cellmates were pedophiles. And truck was frequently in solitary for just beating the shit out of these guys.

[28:44] And usually it was silly stuff. Like one of them turned the light on while he was taking a nap. And he popped up out of bed and beat this guy into a heap. One guy was snoring. A pedophile was snoring. And he beat the hell out of the guy while the guy was in his bed. Very volatile, very dangerous, likely mentally ill. But I was careful not to piss him off. So with that as background, there was another guy in the prison, Larry Revive. Larry looked like the cat in the hat in that he had this oddly elongated head.

[29:17] It had to be some kind of a birth defect. I never saw anybody with a rectangular head before. Larry had moved down from a medium security prison. He wanted to move into my room. We had one empty bunk when Dave was sent to solitary. I said, well, wait a minute. You can't just move into the room. I want to know your crime because we don't allow pedophiles in our room. He said, I'm not a pedophile. I said, what's your crime? Murder for hire. I don't think I like that any more than a pedophile. What were the circumstances?

[29:47] I owed the mob a hundred grand in gambling debts and I couldn't pay it. So I took a life insurance policy out on my business partner. And I hired a hit man to kill him. And then he got caught and I got caught. I said, yeah, I need to think about that. And I need to talk to the other guys. I'm not an idiot. I know everybody in prison is lying. So I went to the law library and I looked him up. Some of that was true. What was really true was, of course, he's going to be the very first person that the cops look at. As soon as they arrested him, he ratted out the shooter.

[30:19] He was able to negotiate 20 years for murder for hire, which is normally life without parole, in exchange for his testimony against the shooter. The shooter was a guy that he knew from New Orleans, Louisiana. The cops in New Orleans grabbed the shooter, extradited him back to Pittsburgh. And while he's awaiting trial, he has a heart attack and dies. But the cops had to respect the deal that they had negotiated with Raveave. So he got lucky. He got 20 years for a crime that should have been life without parole.

[30:50] There's no way this guy's moving into our cell. No way. I don't want to live with somebody like him. That made him fly into a rage. But he knew not to confront me face to face. One day, Jake Tapper, he's with CNN now, but at the time he was with ABC News Jake, and I worked at ABC News together. Jake came up to the prison to interview me. And when he arrived, I got called to the lieutenant's office to sign the waiver so I could give the interview. Now, as I've mentioned before, normally if you're called to the lieutenant's office, it's because you're going to solitary.

[31:22] Kiriakou, lieutenant's office immediately. I go down there. I knew what it was for because I knew that Jake was coming that day. So I go down there. I sign the waiver. I give Jake his interview. And I go back up to the unit. Well, in the TV room off to the side, there are three computers. And that's for the internal email system. I'm sitting there with truck watching the Steelers. Raviv doesn't realize that I'm sitting literally two feet behind him.

[31:52] He's standing at their computer and he turns to this little guy next to him. And he says, did you hear Kiriakou got called down to the lieutenant's office today? That guy's a fucking rat. He went down there to rat us out. Well, if you call somebody a rat and they're not, blood's going to be spilled. I did not react in any way. Truck said, did you hear that? That fucking guy just called you a rat. But I saw my opportunity. I leaned over to truck. An hour ago, I heard him call you a pedophile.

[32:24] Truck looked at me. He didn't say a single word. He got up, walked over to Raviv and beat him to unconsciousness. Now, as I've mentioned, whenever there's a fight, everybody scatters like cockroaches when you turn the lights on. I sat there and I watched the Steelers game. Next thing you know, the red light comes on, the alarm. Right? Because there's a fight. Well, a fight, again, in air quotes.

[32:54] Raviv's on the ground unconscious. Truck is covered in blood. And I'm watching the game. Everybody else bolted. As soon as I heard the alarm, I got up and walked back to my cell. Then I hear, Kiriyaku, Lieutenant's Office, immediately. So I strolled down there. I said, what's up? What's up? You tell us what's up. The Steelers are up 17-7. Oh, you're going to be smart guy now. I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about. Tell us about the fight. I said, there was a fight? What fight? Oh, very funny.

[33:25] Very funny. We saw you from four different cameras, sitting there, watching TV, while one guy was beating the hell out of another guy. Well, it sounds to me like you need to talk to those guys, because I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Oh, this is the game you want to play. But I'm not playing any game. I'm just saying, you know what? Maybe it was you that was fighting. Huh? Do you ever think of that? Maybe you created the fight to try to blame me for something. Maybe you're the one. Remember, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations.

[33:57] And finally, the lieutenant says, get the fuck out of my office. Exactly. And I got up and walked out. Truck was sent to solitary. He was formally charged with assault. They added five years onto his 40-year sentence. And, Raviv, they had to land a helicopter in the yard to lifelite him to Pittsburgh. Skull fracture, the whole nine yards. Six weeks later, he's released from the hospital and returned to the prison. Word quickly got around what I had done.

[34:31] And so he came up to me with his head bowed down really low. And he says, I just wanted to say I'm sorry for calling you a rat. I should never have done that. I don't know what came over me. And I said, look at me, Larry. Look at me. And he looks at me. I said, as God is my witness, if I ever hear my name cross your lips ever again, you're dead. And they won't have any idea what happened to you.

[35:02] Staring into the abyss can have its issues. It's only with retrospect that I can see just how dark I went at Loretto. Spoiler alert, I was still quite a ways from hitting peak darkness. And from there, it was going to be much harder to keep these prison adaptations under any sort of control. In the next episode, the pen is mightier than the sword, mightier than a bunch of corrupt prison officials, anyway. As always, thank you for listening and thank you even more for sharing your enjoyment of the podcast

[35:33] via the likes, ratings, reviews and comments. It would be the abyss for us without you, seriously. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou.
