The RDAP program — the Bureau of Prisons’ Residential Drug and Alcohol Program — is a sentence-reduction scheme John Kiriakou repeatedly recommends to fellow whistleblowers facing federal time.[1] An inmate with any history of drug or alcohol problems, he says, can “sit there every week for a year” watching “a DVD of the A&E network show Intervention,” and “they take 12 to 18 months off your sentence.”[1] Combined with good behavior and a halfway house, Kiriakou told Daniel Hale, a five-year sentence could shrink to “two and a half years” — “next thing you know you’re out.”[2] He drew on the same math to reassure Hale that the fear of a decade behind bars was worse than the likely reality.[3][4]
In a separate interview, Kiriakou describes RDAP in the same terms — sitting through a course that is “basically just sitting and watching episodes of Intervention” — noting the judge in Hale’s case had strongly recommended he serve at the low-security federal prison at Butner, North Carolina, in part because of a substance-abuse problem.[5] He also recounts advising Hale directly, when the U.S. Marshals Service conducted its pre-sentencing investigation, to disclose a drug or alcohol problem: “Lead with it — that’ll make you eligible to be enrolled in the Bureau of Prisons RDAP program.”[6]