Justice Department self-immolation attempt
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The Justice Department self-immolation attempt was an incident at a demonstration outside the U.S. Department of Justice in support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, at which John Kiriakou was among the speakers. In his account a man walked up to the podium where the speakers were standing, removed all of his clothes, squirted lighter fluid over himself, and produced a lighter from the pocket of the trousers he had just put on the ground. Kiriakou and another demonstrator stopped him before he could use it.

Asked why he intervened, Kiriakou's answer was about audience rather than about the man: the rally was one at which "we were all standing there agreeing with each other," so the act would have been witnessed only by people already persuaded. He resisted the suggestion that the man had any political motive at all, offering instead that "maybe the poor guy was just having a mental breakdown", and rejecting the proposition that he might simply have been cold, on the ground that the weather did not support it: it was, he recalled, a comfortable and "warm day in October."

What happened after the police arrived is the part of the episode Kiriakou singles out approvingly. A woman at the rally who was an attorney ran to the officers as they made the arrest and told them "I'm an attorney. He's clearly mentally ill. Don't hurt him." Instead of taking the man to jail they took him to a hospital, an outcome Kiriakou called "kind of nice," and one he attributes to her intervention rather than to the man having done anything chargeable.

See also

- Julian Assange
- John Kiriakou
- Assange plea deal
