# Prosecution as promotion

> **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: "Prosecution as promotion," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/prosecution-as-promotion/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's structural explanation of national-security prosecutions: that the FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys who bring them advance their careers by collecting convictions, which is why cases survive investigations that found no crime and why charges like false statement, perjury and wire fraud get filed when nothing else will stick.*

- **The mechanism:** Career advancement requires convictions
- **Charges he names:** False statement, perjury, conspiracy, wire fraud
- **His term for them:** Throwaway felony charges
- **Said to him on his plea day:** That somebody was going to get promoted for it

**Prosecution as promotion** is [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account of why national-security investigations produce charges even when they have not found the crime they were opened to find. The engine, in his description, is the career structure of the people conducting them.[1]

## The mechanism

Looking at the attorneys and agents working for [Robert Mueller](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/robert-mueller) in 2018 — career Justice Department attorneys, assistant U.S. attorneys, FBI agents — Kiriakou describes a single professional requirement: *"this is how they get promoted, they have to show scalps."* Advancement up the chain of command is measured in people charged.[1]

The consequence he draws is that the charge filed need not match the conduct originally suspected. Investigators indict as many people as they can, he says, even on what he calls throwaway felony charges — making a false statement, perjury, conspiracy *"whatever that means,"* wire fraud — because each one is a scalp.[2]

## The observation it rests on

Kiriakou dates his own understanding of this to the day he took his plea, and credits it to [his wife](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/heather-kiriakou). What she told him made her angriest that day was not the sentence he had accepted but the machinery behind it: *"one of the things that makes me so angry today is that somebody's going to get promoted for this."*[1]

He applies the same reading to his own case, in which [twelve FBI agents](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou-task-force) surveilled him for three years without finding a crime, and to the investigations of [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump) — treating them as instances of one mechanism rather than as opposed political causes.[3][2]

## See also

- [The John Kiriakou Task Force](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou-task-force)
- [Robert Mueller](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/robert-mueller)
- [Heather Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/heather-kiriakou)
- [Espionage Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/espionage-act)
- [John Brennan](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-brennan)

## Sources

1. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 10:22. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=622s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/
2. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 10:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=653s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/
3. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 09:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=590s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/prosecution-as-promotion/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt