# Robert the arsonist

> **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: "Robert the arsonist," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/robert-the-arsonist/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The Australian prisoner who became John Kiriakou's roommate at FCI Loretto — convicted of burning down a Buffalo motor vehicles office over a sales tax dispute, a pathological liar who Kiriakou concluded was a clinical sociopath, and whom he says was easy to manipulate because he was an excitement junkie.*

- **Nationality:** Australian
- **Conviction:** Burning down a Department of Motor Vehicles office in Buffalo, New York
- **Motive:** A sales tax dispute
- **Kiriakou's assessment:** A clinical sociopath, and an excitement junkie

**Robert the arsonist** is the prisoner [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) uses to illustrate the fourth of the recruitment motivations in [his rules for prison survival](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/johns-rules-for-prison-survival): excitement.

Robert was Australian, and had been convicted of burning down a Department of Motor Vehicles office in Buffalo, New York, over a sales tax dispute. He and Kiriakou became friendly at [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto) and later roommates. Kiriakou describes him as extremely gregarious, always joking, always wanting to be involved in everything.[1]

It also became clear to him quite quickly, he says, that Robert was a clinical sociopath who would have checked every single box on Robert Hare's revised psychopathy checklist — among them pathological lying, which Kiriakou says Robert exhibited fully.[2]

## Why that mattered

The assessment was operational rather than diagnostic. Kiriakou's framework holds that a man like Robert would rarely be motivated by greed or ideology, and — given the personality — rarely by revenge either. What Robert was, above all, was an excitement junkie, *"and that made it easy to manipulate him. I just had to make him feel, well, involved."*[3]

The caution Kiriakou attaches to the type applies to Robert too: impulsive thrill-seekers are the trickiest to control, and they are the ones who get caught.[1]

The judgement also connects to Kiriakou's long-running argument about who ends up in the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia): that the agency seeks people with sociopathic tendencies rather than sociopaths, because the latter are impossible to manage — a distinction he applies with the same vocabulary inside prison as outside it.[3]

## See also

- [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto)
- [John's rules for prison survival](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/johns-rules-for-prison-survival)
- [The Italians at Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/italians-at-loretto)
- [The polygraph](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/polygraph)

## Sources

1. S2E2 Rules Of The Game (2026-05-25), at 17:31. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a13a20b55b99c7f89a7e2b1/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-25-dead-drop-s2e2-rules-of-the-game/
2. S2E2 Rules Of The Game (2026-05-25), at 18:04. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a13a20b55b99c7f89a7e2b1/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-25-dead-drop-s2e2-rules-of-the-game/
3. S2E2 Rules Of The Game (2026-05-25), at 18:36. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6a13a20b55b99c7f89a7e2b1/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-25-dead-drop-s2e2-rules-of-the-game/

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