Cook was a prisoner at FCI Loretto whom John Kiriakou worked alongside in the prison chapel, and whose case he uses as the decisive answer to critics of civil confinement.[1]
Kiriakou describes him as near seventy years old, from Kentucky, with a thick Kentucky drawl.[1]
The convictions
Cook had been caught with child pornography and received the mandatory five-year sentence imposed on a first-time offender. He then did it again, and received 20 years. He was at the tail end of that second sentence when Kiriakou met him in the chapel.[1]
About four months before Kiriakou left Loretto, Cook completed his sentence and was released.[1]
The return
In the week Kiriakou was himself leaving Loretto, he was walking to work in the chapel when he saw Cook. He asked what he was doing there. Cook said he had a problem.[2]
Kiriakou asked how many years they had given him this time. Cook said sixty, and that he was going to die in there.[2]
Kiriakou’s reply, as he reports it, was that society was better off without him in it. He then went to work.[2]
Why he tells it
The story appears in Kiriakou’s account immediately after he describes the criticism he received for proposing civil confinement — the argument that once a man has served his sentence he has paid his debt and should be free.[3]
Cook is offered as the counter-case: a man released after 20 years who reoffended within four months. Kiriakou’s broader claim in the same letter is that there is no such thing as treatment or rehabilitation in prison, that there is no counselling and no medication for sex offenders, and that probation will do nothing to curb their urges.[4]
The chapel where the two men worked is described by Kiriakou as a highly sought-after and peaceful posting, and also — like the library — as something of a safe haven for sex offenders, who were not hassled there and could sit and read for long periods. Its one informal rule was that nobody talked about his case.[5]