# Never meet my grandchildren

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Never meet my grandchildren," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/never-meet-my-grandchildren/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The threat John Kiriakou says one of the prosecutors in his case made to him — that he was going to die in prison and would never meet his grandchildren — set against the forty-five years he faced under the original charges.*

- **Made by:** One of the prosecutors in his case
- **What was said:** That he would die in prison and never meet his grandchildren
- **Exposure at the time:** 45 years
- **His own note:** That many whistleblowers take their own lives under the pressure

Describing the period between his arrest in January 2012 and his plea, [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) has given an account of the pressure applied to him that begins not with the charges but with what other people in his position do under them.

## The framing

*"A lot of whistleblowers commit suicide,"* he said, *"because the pressure is so great."* He then set out his own exposure: he was facing forty-five years in prison on the original charges. He repeats the figure — *"Forty-five years in prison"* — as a sentence of its own.[1]

## The threat

What followed is the specific remark he has singled out from the whole prosecution. *"One of the prosecutors told me that I was going to die in prison and that I would never meet my grandchildren."*[1]

He does not name the prosecutor, give a date, or say whether the remark was made in a negotiation, a filing or a corridor. It is offered without elaboration, as the thing that was said to him.

## What came next

The passage turns immediately from the threat to the counterweight. His wife at the time — *"now my ex-wife"* — told him he had to embrace it: he had done nothing wrong, and so he had to keep talking about it, because his side of the story needed to become the side of record.[1] He judges that she was right, and says he began giving interviews to every outlet in the world that asked, never saying no.

## Placing it

The forty-five-year figure is one Kiriakou has used consistently, and the arithmetic of how it came down first to ten years and then to a plea he could live with is recorded elsewhere. What this passage adds is the human end of the same process: a threat aimed not at his liberty but at his family, delivered by someone on the other side of the table, and remembered more than a decade later as the thing worth quoting.

## See also

## See also

- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [Federal plea coercion](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/federal-plea-coercion)
- [Espionage Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/espionage-act)
- [Eastern District of Virginia](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/eastern-district-of-virginia)

## Sources

1. TCM TV (2025-12-23), at 07:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCUpSKD4T4o&t=435s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-23-tcm-tv-tcm-tv/

---

From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/never-meet-my-grandchildren/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt