The Federal Correctional Institution at Loretto (FCI Loretto) is a U.S. federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania. It is classified by the Bureau of Prisons as low-medium security — “a low security prison, but it’s called a low medium, and then there’s a high medium. So this was low medium.” John Kiriakou served twenty-three months of his thirty-month Intelligence Identities Protection Act sentence at FCI Loretto between 2013 and 2015.[1][2]
The countermanded sentence designation
At Kiriakou’s sentencing, the presiding judge — over no objection from the Justice Department — designated him for a minimum-security work camp: “no bars on the windows, no locks on the doors, you’re free to come and go as you please, you’re just on your honor not to abscond.” Most inmates in that designation work at a small nearby college.[3][4]
On Kiriakou’s arrival three months later, however, the receiving officer told him his paperwork directed him not to the work camp across the street but to the main FCI prison. The discrepancy, Kiriakou subsequently learned, was the result of direct administrative pressure from John Brennan: “Brennan was so angry at the shortness of my sentence that he told them, ‘Make it as difficult as possible.’”[5][6]
A guard’s only on-arrival advice: “If anybody comes into your cell uninvited, that’s an act of aggression.”[1]
The Italian-mafia placement
Within twenty minutes of being placed in his cell, two inmates — “one with a swastika tattoo across his neck and onto his face, the other with FUCK YOU tattooed on his eyelids” — entered uninvited and asked Kiriakou whether he was “a fag,” “a rat,” or “a chomo” (child molester). On answering no to each, Kiriakou was assigned to sit with the Aryans at meals.[7][8]
The assignment was overturned the following day by an inmate in the cell across the hall — the boss of the Bonanno crime family, known to Kiriakou as Pete — who, on observing Kiriakou’s seating placement, told him: “From today, you’re with the Italians.” Kiriakou subsequently learned that another Philadelphia mafia inmate, Mark Lanzelotti, had — on reading in the New York Times that Kiriakou would be placed at FCI Loretto — gone to every Italian inmate in the institution to brief them: “There’s a CIA guy coming here. He’s not an FBI agent. The FBI are cops and rats. The CIA protected us from the Muslims.” The Italian placement made Kiriakou’s tenure at the prison non-violent.[8][9][10][11]
The two documented intelligence-service entrapment attempts
Kiriakou identifies two episodes at FCI Loretto in which prison guards — per Kiriakou, on direction from outside the prison — attempted to provoke an incident that would have lengthened his sentence:
- The Iraqi imam setup. Three days after Kiriakou’s arrival, a cellmate (an Australian arsonist) walked him around the facility and introduced him to an Iraqi Kurdish imam who spoke no English and had been jailed on a terrorism charge for translating a Stinger-missile bill of sale. Kiriakou was called to the lieutenant’s office the next day and told the imam had — after meeting Kiriakou — called a number in Pakistan to arrange Kiriakou’s killing. The imam was simultaneously told the same about Kiriakou. Kiriakou figured out the trick on noticing the imam spoke only Arabic and Kurdish, not the language of the alleged Pakistan contact, then reported the setup in his Letter from Loretto (published by Arianna Huffington at Huffington Post) — at which point Jake Tapper drove to the prison to interview him and the story reached CNN, Time, Playboy, and NPR.[12][13][14]
- The Taliban-spokesman handshake. A separate inmate (the spokesman for the Taliban, on transfer from New Jersey for four days only) approached Kiriakou in the yard with hand extended; Kiriakou observed a guard in the woods outside the perimeter operating a long-lens camera. Kiriakou refused contact, the spokesman left, and the inmate was transferred out shortly afterward.[15][16]
The warden incident
After the Letter from Loretto attracted national press coverage, Kiriakou was summoned to the warden’s office and threatened with solitary confinement. His reply:
Warden, with all due respect, I’ve gone nose-to-nose with al-Qaeda, with Hezbollah, with the Iranians, and you want me to be afraid of you? Give me some credit. I’ve lived in Yemen, in Pakistan. I’m not afraid of your Loretto, Pennsylvania solitary. Besides — go ahead and send me to solitary. CNN’s going to be waiting for you next to your car in the parking lot.[17][18]
Kiriakou was not sent to solitary at any point during his sentence.