# Domingo's television > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "Domingo's television," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/domingos-television/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou has used the television rooms at FCI Loretto as his sharpest illustration of prison segregation: sets owned by racial blocs since a riot in the 1990s, a seat in front of one costing fourteen dollars, and one set left tuned to Law & Order every morning because a man named Domingo had paid four hundred dollars for it and had been gone for years.* - **Sets in Kiriakou's unit:** Six - **Controlled by:** Three Hispanic, two African American - **Price of a chair:** Fourteen dollars - **Price of a television:** Four hundred dollars - **Told to:** Peter B. Collins, 19 May 2017 Asked what surprised him most about the enforced segregation of prison life, Kiriakou answered with the television room. It was, he said, a revelation to him — 1950s segregated America.[1] ## Who owns the sets Each housing unit at FCI Loretto has a television room, and each room a handful of sets. Kiriakou lived in a large unit with six televisions: three were controlled by the Hispanic inmates and two by the African American inmates. That, he said, was the arrangement in every unit.[1] The explanation he was given was historical and vague. People mentioned, in passing, that there had been a riot in the 1990s, and that in this riot the whites lost — and with the loss went their ownership of the televisions.[1][2] ## Law & Order at six in the morning Kiriakou's example of where the arrangement led was, in his phrase, ridiculous to the point of comedy. Every single morning at six o'clock, one of the Hispanic televisions had *Law & Order* on it, and nobody ever watched it.[2] He eventually asked the Hispanic shot-caller — the man in charge of all the Hispanic inmates — why the set was always on that programme, and suggested putting CNN on so that at least they could see what was going on in the world. The answer was: *"no, that's Domingo's TV."*[2][3] Kiriakou asked who Domingo was, and was told he had left a couple of years earlier. He pointed out the obvious — that if the man was no longer there it was not his television, and that as shot-caller it was his to control. The reply was that Domingo had paid four hundred dollars for that set. It was therefore his television, and he had watched *Law & Order* every day.[3] Kiriakou's own comment on this was simply *"okay."*[3] ## The price list The exchange revealed a second thing: an internal market. Inmates pay their shot-caller — the head of their racial group — set amounts for the use of the room's fixtures. A chair in the television room, Kiriakou said, costs fourteen dollars. A television, apparently, costs four hundred.[4] The money buys a claim that outlasts the buyer. That is what Kiriakou found comic and what he found revealing: the ownership survived the owner's release, and no one in the room had the standing, or the interest, to overturn it. ## See also - [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto) - [Shot callers](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/shot-callers) - [Aryan Brotherhood](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/aryan-brotherhood) - [Doing Time Like a Spy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/doing-time-like-a-spy) ## Sources 1. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 18:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1113s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/ 2. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 19:03. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1143s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/ 3. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 19:36. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1176s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/ 4. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 20:09. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1209s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. 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