The merry-go-round prank is John Kiriakou’s account of a deception he engineered at FCI Loretto against a prisoner he calls Wallace — a man he describes as the biggest cry baby he ever met in his life, who would cry even when his team won at basketball.[1]
Kiriakou introduces the episode as a problem that in the outside world probably would not have bothered him, but which in prison bothered him greatly.[1]
The setup
Kiriakou obtained the release paperwork — the document he refers to as the merry-go-round — completed with Wallace’s name and prisoner number, and paid a prisoner working in the laundry a couple of packets of mackerel to steal him a laundry bag.[2]
The timing was the operative part. He waited until five o’clock on a Friday afternoon and then placed the laundry bag and the form on Wallace’s bed.[2]
The weekend
Wallace came in at half past five, whistling. He picked up the two items, gasped, and announced that he was going home — that he had won his appeal.[2][3]
Kiriakou records the response he gave: that nobody ever wins their appeals. Wallace insisted he had known he was innocent and ran to the telephone bank — but even fancy New York lawyers, Kiriakou observes, have gone home by half past five on a Friday. The unit manager had left at three. The counselor had left before that.[3]
One of the Italians proposed a dinner for Wallace on the Sunday night. Wallace began crying, went up and down the halls telling everybody he had won his appeal and was going home on Saturday, and gave away all of his possessions to indigent prisoners.[4]
On the Sunday the Italians laid on a large farewell dinner — pasta, chicken breast and the whole nine yards.[4]
Monday
On Monday morning the group walked with Wallace to receiving and discharge, the prison’s intake and out-processing office. Kiriakou says he got the rest of the story from the officer there, one of the two or three staff friendly toward him in the entire prison.[5]
Wallace handed over the merry-go-round. The officer asked who he was, and what he was doing there. Wallace said he was going home. The officer looked at the form, told him to turn around, and arrested him for attempted escape.[5][6]
Wallace burst into tears. He spent six weeks in solitary confinement and was then transferred to another prison, in New Jersey.[6]
Judgement
Kiriakou reports his own remark to the Italians afterwards — that he had thought Wallace would never shut his mouth — and the reply of a made man from New York, who told him that was cold even by their standards.[6]
His answer was that sometimes it is best to use dirty tricks, especially when it is to save your own sanity.[7]
Kiriakou introduces the whole episode by way of a CIA operation in which a terrorist cell was induced to destroy itself through planted suggestions of betrayal — a technique he then says he carried into prison.[8][1]