Plato Cacheras was a long-serving Washington, D.C. criminal defense attorney and the lead counsel for John Kiriakou in his 2012–2013 prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. He is described by Kiriakou as “this legendary guy” — at the time of the Kiriakou case approximately eighty years old, six-foot-two, 280 pounds, mean-faced, and with fifty-two years at the D.C. criminal bar.[1][2]
The plea-deal pivot
For most of the prosecution, Cacheras advised Kiriakou to reject every Justice Department plea offer — including a final offer of three and a half years — on the ground that the government’s case was “fucked” and could be defeated at trial. The Department’s pattern of coming down in offered sentence (from forty-five years to ten, to eight, to five, to three and a half) struck Cacheras as definitive evidence of weakness:
I’ve been a criminal defense attorney in this city for 52 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen them come down in time. Usually they offer you 10, you say no, the next offer is 15, then the next offer is 20.[1]
On the morning of the conviction-day deal decision, however — after Kiriakou had emailed his eleven-attorney team at 6 a.m. announcing his intention to refuse the deal — Cacheras drove to Kiriakou’s house with three of his partners. His first words on entering: “You stupid son of a bitch — take the deal.” When Kiriakou objected that Cacheras had spent the whole case telling him not to take the deal, Cacheras replied: “I only told you that to keep your spirits up.”[2][3]