Mark Lanzotti

Mark Lanzotti was John Kiriakou’s closest friend in prison and remains one afterward, seated on the Italian table within the racially segregated prison cafeteria Kiriakou describes elsewhere. Lanzotti became his best friend after reading in the New York Times on a Sunday that Kiriakou was reporting to the prison the following Thursday; he took it upon himself to go to every one of the Italian inmates — men affiliated with the Gambino and Lucchese families — to vouch for Kiriakou, explaining, “There’s a CIA guy coming here on Thursday,” not FBI, and that “the CIA protected us from the Muslims.”^[1] An Italian who, Kiriakou says, went to every made man at FCI Loretto to explain the difference between a CIA officer and an FBI agent, Lanzotti had drawn triple life without parole for a first-time, nonviolent meth conspiracy — one his stepfather ran, and which Lanzotti was the only participant to voluntarily leave. When the others were caught, they informed on each other and on him; they got five and a quarter years, Lanzotti got triple life.^[2][3][4][5] Suffering bone cancer, he had surgery in a converted motor home in the prison parking lot because he was deemed too dangerous to move.^[6] Kiriakou wrote his clemency appeal; Lanzotti’s sentence was commuted, and after Kiriakou’s release Lanzotti’s mother called, weeping, to say he had won.^[7][8] He later got a real-estate license after writing to Governor Chris Christie, and became the top-selling realtor on the Jersey Shore.^[9][10]

See also

• Doing Time Like A Spy
• Federal Plea Coercion