# The CO who wanted the CIA

> **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: "The CO who wanted the CIA," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-co-who-wanted-the-cia/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*A young correctional officer at FCI Loretto once pulled John Kiriakou aside and asked in a whisper how to get into the CIA; when Kiriakou told him he was bright and did not belong there, the man explained that both his parents and his grandfather had been correctional officers and that his wife would never leave Loretto, a town of twelve hundred people.*

- **Who:** A correctional officer 20 to 25 years Kiriakou's junior
- **Question:** "How do I get into the CIA?"
- **Reason he declined:** Family of COs; a wife who would not leave
- **Loretto's population:** About 1,200
- **Told to:** Peter B. Collins, 19 May 2017

Kiriakou's published view of the correctional officers at FCI Loretto is unsparing, and he has said in terms that the average CO is a man who could not make it through the local police academy and could not make it in the military either.[1] The exception he keeps returning to is a single conversation.

## The question

One CO pulled him aside one day. Kiriakou is precise about his own attitude to the man: he would not go so far as to say he liked him, but he did not dislike him, and he respected him. He was a nice kid, probably twenty or twenty-five years younger than Kiriakou.[2]

What the man whispered was: *"hey, Kiriakou, how do I get into the CIA?"*[2]

Kiriakou's answer was encouraging and blunt. The man seemed nice and was obviously bright; what in the world was he doing there? He did not belong there. He should apply to the CIA, even, Kiriakou suggested, in the uniformed security division. He should at least give it a try.[2]

## The answer

The CO thought about it for a minute and then said no, he could not do that. His mother and father had both been correctional officers. His grandfather had been a correctional officer. And his wife would never want to leave Loretto, a town, Kiriakou notes, of twelve hundred people in the mountains of central Pennsylvania.[3]

## Why he tells it

Kiriakou called it the sad thing, because this man actually had something going for himself.[3] He then generalised from it: that attitude was very typical, and it was very parochial and very local.[3]

The story functions in his account as the human version of the structural complaint he makes elsewhere about who staffs federal prisons, that the work draws from a narrow local pool because the pool has nowhere else to go. The exchange he reports is the one occasion on which someone inside that pool said as much to him directly, and then declined the exit.

## See also

- [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto)
- [Bureau of Prisons](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bureau-of-prisons)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [Doing Time Like a Spy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/doing-time-like-a-spy)

## Sources

1. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 17:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1078s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/
2. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 16:52. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1012s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/
3. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 17:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1045s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/

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