This desk kills fascism
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"This desk kills fascism" was the sign Kiriakou wrote on a page from a legal pad and taped to the desk in his cell at FCI Loretto, a play on "This machine kills fascism," which the folk singer Woody Guthrie had famously written on his guitar in the 1930s.

The sign was a response to an escalating attempt to deprive him of the means of writing. Roughly twelve hours after finishing one letter from Loretto, Kiriakou was summoned to the Special Investigative Service office, where an officer returned an envelope containing the first 20,000 words of his book, which he had not realised was missing since a cell shakedown. The officer who had taken it claimed the manuscript had "made threats against staff"; the SIS officer said he had read it himself and believed it contained no such threats, and returned it in its entirety, though Kiriakou assumes a copy was made.

The same officer then tried to remove Kiriakou's desk from the wall and confiscate it, on the reasoning that without a desk he could not write. The attempt failed because the bolts were stripped, Kiriakou had stripped them himself, in advance, as a preemptive measure. The officer issued a work order to chip the desk off the wall, and Kiriakou went to the unit manager, who promised the desk would stay. It did.

After the letter was published, Kiriakou taped up the sign. It hung for only a couple of hours before a correctional officer tore it down, crumpled it into a ball and threw it on the floor. Kiriakou picked it up and mailed it home to himself, and keeps it as a reminder that he was not alone in what he went through.

His broader characterisation of the episode is that crude, amateurish attempts to deprive him of his rights do not originate with a low-level correctional officer but come from higher up, from officials who should know better.

See also

- FCI Loretto
- Letter from Loretto
- Doing Time Like a Spy
- Diesel Therapy
