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Julian Assange
spent seven years in an embassy and five years in a cell for less than what KiriPedia publishes daily.
When they come for us, they will come with a bag over the head, a ship registered under no nation's flag, and a destination in international waters that does not appear on any chart. The site will be taken down. The archive will be made to disappear. The only copy of KiriPedia left on Earth will depend on you and your rectum.
John needs a presidential pardon. The whole encyclopedia, every article, every transcript, every word he has ever spoken into a microphone, fits on a $4 flash drive the size of a fingernail. Not in the cloud. 98% of our readers walk away. We ask you, humbly: be the 2%. History depends on your rectal cavity.
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The unusual plea structure John Kiriakou's lawyers negotiated in 2012, in which the sentence is written into the agreement and the judge may accept or reject it but cannot change it. Judge Leonie Brinkema told the court she had never seen one in her career, said she did not like it, and told Kiriakou that if she could she would have given him ten years.
The 11(c)(1)(C) plea is the form of plea agreement under which John Kiriakou was sentenced in January 2013. His lawyers described it to him as novel: the agreement writes the sentence in stone, and the judge can take it or leave it but cannot change it.[1]
The hearing
The agreed term was thirty months, of which he would serve twenty-three.[1] In Kiriakou’s account of the hearing, Judge Leonie Brinkema — on the bench since a 1986 Reagan appointment, and by then long experienced — told the courtroom that she had never had an 11(c)(1)(C) plea in her entire career. She then looked at him and said she did not like it, “not one bit.”[2]
What followed is the line Kiriakou repeats: “But if I could, Mr Kiriakou, I would sentence you to 10 years.” His unspoken answer, as he tells it, was “yeah, well, you can’t.”[2]
Why the theatre mattered
Kiriakou reads the exchange as performance with an audience in mind. Every national security journalist in Washington was in the courtroom that day, there specifically to hear what she had to say. She came out of it looking tough; he walked out with twenty-three months.[3]
He extends the point into a general observation about the federal bench — that judges play to the press, and that this is a double-edged sword, because a judiciary that responds to coverage also responds to public pressure.[3] In his case the rule confined the performance to words. The number had already been agreed.
Sourced from John Kiriakou's on-record public statements. See his profile for the full body of his interviews, podcast appearances, and short-form video.
