# Say five years > **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: "Say five years," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/say-five-years/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The first piece of prison advice John Kiriakou says he was given — from a Bonanno family captain, walking laps of the snowed-in basketball court at FCI Loretto — to tell anyone who asked that he was serving five years rather than the thirty months he actually had.* - **Who gave it:** A captain in the Bonanno family — "a very senior guy" - **When:** About two or three weeks into Kiriakou's sentence - **Where:** Walking the outdoor basketball court in heavy snow, about 10 degrees - **Kiriakou's actual sentence:** 30 months — "feels like 30 years" - **The advice:** "If somebody asks you how much time you have, you say five years" - **The reason:** Men serving 20, 25 or 30 years would resent open complaint about 30 months - **Kiriakou's exercise routine:** Five miles a day around the track; 500 laps of the basketball court when snow closed it **Say five years** is the advice John Kiriakou identifies as the first genuinely useful thing anyone told him in federal prison. He recounted it on the DeProgram programme in July 2025, in a stretch of the show given over to viewers' questions about his sentence at [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto).[1] ## The walk The setting was Kiriakou's daily exercise. Asked how prisoners became so heavily muscled, he answered that there was *"literally nothing to do but work out"*, and described his own regimen: *"I made sure to walk five miles a day around the track, and when it snows they close the track and you're only allowed to walk around the basketball court. So you walk around 500 times."*[2] On the day in question the weather was doing exactly that. *"It's pouring down snow. It's like 10 degrees and we're walking around the outside basketball court,"* he says. His companion was *"a captain from the Bonanno family — so this is a very senior guy."* Kiriakou had been inside about two or three weeks.[1] ## The question and the answer The captain asked how much time he had. Kiriakou's reply carried the complaint inside it: *"I said 30 months, feels like 30 years."* The captain stopped him there — *"Let me give you some advice"* — and gave it plainly: *"If somebody asks you how much time you have, you say five years."*[1][3] Kiriakou asked why. The reasoning was about proportion, and about who else was listening: *"There are guys in here with 20, 25, 30 years. If they hear that you have 30 months and you're pissed off about it, they're going to kick your ass. So tell them five years."*[3] ## Why he ranks it first Kiriakou calls it *"the first really great advice anybody had given me in prison"*, and the framing matters to how he tells the rest of his prison stories: the danger being managed is not the institution but the resentment of other men, and the remedy is a small, deliberate misrepresentation of his own position.[1] It belongs to the same body of arrival-week instruction as [the paperwork check](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/aryan-brotherhood), by which a new prisoner's charge sheet is inspected to establish that he is neither an informant nor a sex offender — a process Kiriakou went through with the Aryan shot caller in the same period.[4] ## See also - [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto) - [The Italians at Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/italians-at-loretto) - [Aryan Brotherhood](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/aryan-brotherhood) - [Shot callers](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/shot-callers) - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) ## Sources 1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-07-25), at 55:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RypVxybJzHo&t=3306s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-25-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-07-25), at 54:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RypVxybJzHo&t=3274s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-25-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 3. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-07-25), at 55:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RypVxybJzHo&t=3338s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-25-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 4. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-07-25), at 56:09. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RypVxybJzHo&t=3369s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-25-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. 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