When John Kiriakou was sentenced to thirty months for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture programme, his attorneys asked the judge to send him to a minimum-security work camp. The judge asked the prosecution whether there was any objection; there was none, and she granted it.[1]
The placement did not survive contact with the Bureau of Prisons. Kiriakou describes the reporting process — “you literally just drive to the prison and knock on the door and say, ‘I’m here to turn myself in’” — and how, on arriving at the camp, he was sent across the street to the main prison to be processed and brought back. At the prison he was taken round the back instead. When he objected that he was meant to be at the camp, the officer laughed and told him: “not according to my paperwork. You’re not.”[2][3]
Four or five days later he reached his attorneys and reported that he had been put in the actual prison “with the pedophiles and the drug kingpins and the mafia dons.” Their answer was that they could file a motion, but it would be two years before a court date — so he would have to tough it out and be home in two years regardless. He served the sentence at FCI Loretto.[3][4]
Kiriakou raises the episode whenever preferential treatment inside the Bureau of Prisons is at issue — most pointedly against the transfer of Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security camp.[5][6]
Why the judge’s recommendation is worthless
Asked about a judge”s request that a newly sentenced defendant be held near his family, Kiriakou dismissed the whole category. “The judge recommending to the Justice Department that they keep him close to family is like me recommending to the Justice Department that they keep him close to family. It counts for literally nothing — because it is the sole responsibility of the Bureau of Prisons to decide who goes where.”[7]
He cites his own designation as the proof: “the judge can say all he or she wants — as my judge did, that I should go to a minimum security work camp. It makes no difference to anybody.” He extended the same expectation to Julian Assange.[7][8]