Whistleblowers and suicide
==========================

Whistleblowers and suicide describes a claim John Kiriakou has made repeatedly about the first weeks of a national security prosecution.

The claim

Kiriakou has said he is not exaggerating when he says that every whistleblower facing prison considers suicide, and that it is a natural thing. He puts his sample at fifty whistleblowers he has spoken to, and says that to a man and woman every one of them considered it in the very beginning. His explanation is the isolation: "it's that terrible, it's that difficult, you really feel that isolated." 

His own case

Asked about the period after the government's opening offer of forty-five years, Kiriakou has said it was a full-time job among family and friends not to allow him to commit suicide. His sister came down and stayed up all night so that he would not go down to the garage and put an exhaust pipe in his mouth. Asked whether it was really that serious, he answered that it was, "I was going to do it." 

He attributes to one of the assistant United States attorneys the line: "Take a plea, Mr Kiriakou, and you might live to meet your grandchildren." His reply, put on with what he calls his bravest face, was that he was not doing forty-five minutes. 

What changed it

Kiriakou has credited two things with altering his perspective. The first was being told that the government had consistently underestimated his strength and that he could take them. The second was being told to own his whistleblowing, that he had done nothing to be ashamed of and something to be proud of.  

He has connected the vulnerability of the early period to the timing of arrests, arguing that the FBI schedules them to maximise the days a defendant spends in jail before arraignment. 

See also

- Thursday arrests
- "Embrace it and keep telling it"
- Solitary confinement
- The suicide watch protocol
