Shortly before Kiriakou reported to prison, one of his lead attorneys, Mark McDougal, took him aside and told him that the CIA was very angry that he had received such a light sentence, that they were going to do something to set him up, and that he should assume at all times that he was being watched.[1]
About six weeks into his sentence at FCI Loretto, an Afghan-American pharmacist serving roughly seven years for trafficking in OxyContin — one of the wider circle of prisoners Kiriakou was friendly with — told him that a new prisoner wanted to meet him, and that the man was the spokesman for the Taliban. Kiriakou recognised the reference as a New Jersey case he had followed, in which an Afghan man claimed to be the Taliban’s representative in the United States, and declined the introduction.[2]
A few days later, walking the track as he did daily, Kiriakou saw a man approaching him with a beard down to his waist and a hand outstretched. Recognising him, Kiriakou raised both hands in the air as a person surrendering would, so that his hands could be seen, and told him to stop.[3]
As he said it, he saw past the man to a guard standing in the woods outside the fence with a camera and a long telephoto lens, photographing the encounter.[4] In Kiriakou’s reading, the object was for him to shake the man’s hand or embrace him so that the photographs could be sent to the FBI, which could then accuse him of colluding with the Taliban or of planning an attack. He refused in explicit and threatening terms, and the man backed off.[4][5]
The purported Taliban spokesman was in the prison for five days in total. Kiriakou’s conclusion is that the man was transferred in specifically to set him up on another charge, that it did not work, and that he was then transferred out again.[5]
He treats the episode as evidentiary rather than merely alarming. Sending the Afghan to set him up, he argues, proved his position that the Bureau of Prisons was a criminal organisation — and he extends the charge to the CIA, the FBI and the Justice Department alike, on the reasoning that the FBI does not get promoted by not arresting people and Justice Department prosecutors do not get promoted by not prosecuting them.[6][7]