# Pick the man, then find the crime > **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: "Pick the man, then find the crime," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/pick-the-man-principle/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *Robert H. Jackson's 1940 doctrine — recurringly invoked by John Kiriakou — that a prosecutor's worst abuse is to select a target and then comb the law books for an offense to charge him with* - **Origin:** Robert H. Jackson, *The Federal Prosecutor* (1940 speech) - **Context:** Address to U.S. Department of Justice attorneys - **Jackson's other roles:** U.S. Attorney General; Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; Chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials - **Modern parallel cited:** Lavrentiy Beria's reputed line — 'Show me the man, I'll show you the crime' **"Pick the man, then find the crime"** is the shorthand applied — by [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) and others — to a 1940 doctrinal warning delivered by Robert H. Jackson in his capacity as U.S. Attorney General. Jackson identified as the most serious abuse available to a federal prosecutor the practice of selecting a person for prosecution first and then searching the statute books for a crime to charge him with.[1][2] Jackson later served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and as the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. *"This is like one of the most important judges we've ever had, ever."*[3] ## The source text The doctrine comes from Jackson's address to a Department of Justice dinner event for attorneys, titled *The Federal Prosecutor*. Two passages stand out: > It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling to error. It is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling to error.[1][2] and the passage from which the shorthand derives: > With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it. It's a question of picking the man and then searching the law books or putting investigators to work to pin some offense on him.[2][4] ## The Stalin / Beria parallel The same prosecutorial pattern is captured in a line attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin's secret-police chief: *"Show me the man, I'll show you the crime."* Kiriakou treats Jackson and Beria as describing the identical phenomenon — Jackson as warning against it, Beria as endorsing it.[4] ## Kiriakou's use of the principle Kiriakou applies Jackson's principle as the test by which he distinguishes prosecutions he supports from prosecutions he opposes — even when the defendant is a personal antagonist. He has applied it specifically to: - His own prosecution under the Espionage Act - The prosecutions of Jeffrey Sterling, Edward Snowden, and other intelligence-community whistleblowers - The 34-count New York indictment of Donald Trump (which Kiriakou regards as a misuse of prosecutorial discretion) - The Georgia indictment of Trump for the call to the Georgia Secretary of State (which Kiriakou characterizes as *"a guy having a bad day"* rather than a crime) - The current Trump-administration investigations of [John Brennan](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-brennan) and others — Kiriakou supports prosecuting Brennan if specific crimes can be demonstrated, but opposes prosecutorial fishing expeditions against him[5][6][7][8] ## Venue manipulation as a corollary abuse A closely related federal-prosecutorial abuse identified by Kiriakou is the manipulation of charging venue. Federal cases must be brought in the district where the alleged crime was committed; in the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, the government argued venue in the Eastern District of Virginia on the basis that a CIA secretary had purchased James Risen's book — the alleged vehicle of the disclosure — in Virginia, despite Sterling living in St. Louis, Risen working in Bethesda, Maryland, and the *New York Times* being based in New York.[9][10] The same venue-shopping technique is being used in reverse in the Brennan investigation: after the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to bring charges and was subsequently fired, the case was transferred to the Southern District of Florida — *"all you have to do is say, 'Yeah, John Brennan coordinated that Hunter Biden laptop memo. I was in Miami when I read the memo on the MSNBC website.' So it's that easy."*[10][11] ## See also - Robert H. Jackson - [John Brennan](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-brennan) - Jeffrey Sterling - Espionage Act ## Sources 1. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 26:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1593s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 2. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 27:03. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1623s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 3. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 26:02. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1562s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 4. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 27:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1654s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 5. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 28:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1715s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 6. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 29:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1747s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 7. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 32:47. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1967s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 8. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 33:19. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1999s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 9. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 23:23. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1403s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 10. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 23:57. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1437s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ 11. CIA Spy: French Intelligence Was Basically Serial Killers (2026-01-16), at 24:29. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxndFp3NmTM&t=1469s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-16-julian-dorey-french-intelligence/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/pick-the-man-principle/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt