John’s rules for prison survival are the code John Kiriakou says he built for himself at FCI Loretto, on the reasoning that the prison had its rules and the prisoners had theirs, so he would have his own — “rules based on my training as a spy and every single experience I ever had as a spy working in the field.”[1]
Rule one: recruit
The first rule is to recruit other prisoners to obtain secrets or goods. Kiriakou defines a secret as any information not publicly available; inside, most are held by the administration and the officers, and become valuable only when a prisoner can act on them. Goods work the same way: what is a click away outside must be obtained through somebody with access.[2][3]
The method is the agency’s: identify a target, identify their vulnerabilities, assess your access, and move. The motivations he lists are the classic four — revenge, greed, ideology and excitement — and his preference is ideology, because a true believer can be brought to believe practically anything and is easiest to manipulate. The goal throughout is to convince the target that you are their best friend, and that what you want is what they want.[4][5]
The binder clips
His worked example is metal binder clips — contraband inside, but stocked in hundreds in the prison office supply room along with rubber bands, paper clips, decent pens and a copier. The route to them is the orderly who cleans the office, and the question is what would make him risk a good job and solitary confinement.[6][7]
Kiriakou walks through the pitches. Revenge: complain that an officer confiscated your binder clips during a shakedown and wrecked your legal work, and wait for the target to offer — nudging with “too bad that piece of shit doesn’t trust you enough to give you access” if he does not. Greed: a bag of mackerel, or a whole book of stamps. Solidarity: he resents being called inmate this and inmate that, and will hand them over because you are both prisoners. Excitement: he wants to do something heroic and is impulsive.[8][9][10][11]
The measure of a good pitch, in his telling, is that “the target will walk away thinking that it was all his idea in the first place.”[10] He also enters a caution: the impulsive thrill-seekers are the hardest to control and are the ones who get caught.[12]
Rule two: cover
The second rule is to seek and use available cover, or blend into the environment — in the field, getting away from the fan when the trouble starts and making yourself a difficult target. He argues humans have lost the instinct that makes crickets stop chirping when a predator arrives, and that training like the Farm’s is what restores it. His counter-example is Raymond Davis, the contractor who, after shooting two men in Lahore, got back into his car and waited instead of leaving the kill zone.[13][14][15]