Pod Insights John Kiriakou's Dead Drop S2E4 With Friends Like These About this episode THE BLURB: While, on the one hand prison is NOT the place you go to make friends, once you're there, you need to have (and be able to rely on) a tight circle of friends just to survive. In the last episode, John introduced you to some of that tight circle. In this episode, John dives a little deeper into those relationships plus a few others that were essential parts of his prison experience. But, you can't befriend killers, conmen and pathological liars without having your own humanity ding-ed. John begins to grow oblivious of how dead-eyed he's becoming.
SHOW NOTES
If you enjoy this podcast, please check out everything else we're doing at Costard & Touchstone Productions https://costardandtouchstone.com/. Your next great podcast addiction might be just a click away!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Hey, Tiffany Stratton here from WWE SmackDown. Tiffany time can be crazy, y'all, and when I get a break, that means it's Chumba time. Chumba Casino has hundreds of online social games and new titles landing every week. There's always something fresh to try, and the daily boosts make Chumba even more fun. They're little epiphanies that make my day sparkle. Ready for a fun way to switch off and take some time for yourself? Let's Chumba!
0:32 Alan Katz? This podcast, it's a Coster and Touchstone production.
0:36 John Kiriakou? I hope I've been able to convey to this point how important having a real circle of friends is in prison. And I haven't finished telling you about my circle of friends. Not necessarily circle of confidants, but circle of friends. Because in prison, you befriend, or you allow yourself to be befriended by the people who work best at that moment. You don't have to marry them, you don't have to be lifelong friends like I am with Mark, but in that given moment, you can count on them as friends.
1:10 John Kiriakou? I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Drop: What Makes a Spy Tick. This is episode four in our series, Doing Time Like a Spy. Before we get back to doing time, and I sure as hell hope that's not what listening to this podcast feels like, I want to thank you for, well, for doing time with us. Unlike a prisoner's time, your time is important. That you choose to spend it with us, we do not take that for granted, not one bit. And we don't take it for granted either that you'll like, rate, review, comment on, or share the podcast, but we would so appreciate it if you did.
1:46 John Kiriakou? Visiting hours can now begin. In our last episode, I introduced you to my circle of friends, an important thing to have in a place where you really can't trust anyone. But as I pointed out, some of the friendships you begin in prison resonate in ways that no other relationships can. Maybe something to do with a shared experience. Whatever it is, I wanted to spend a little more time introducing you to the friends of one kind or another that I made in prison.
2:15 John Kiriakou? I've mentioned Robert, the Australian arsonist, a number of times. I had a lot of fun with Robert. Robert was frequently very, very honest at the oddest times. He would lie about stupid stuff, like, for example, he was very close friends with a prisoner from Erie, Pennsylvania. This guy had chomo written all over him. If I had seen him out on the street somewhere, I would have pointed at him and said, "That's a chomo." And Robert said, "No, he's a tax attorney and he's in on some tax charge of some sort." This guy couldn't even use proper grammar. "And he's a tax attorney." It's like, Robert, what's wrong with you? First of all, you shouldn't be associating with pedophiles.
2:57 John Kiriakou? Secondly, you should never, ever, ever lie for the pedophile. Lie to protect the pedophile. So I did what any normal person would do. I went to the law library. I typed the guy's name into the computer and boom. Not only was he a pedophile, he was responsible for more images of children having sex with adults than anyone who had ever been arrested in the history of the FBI. Thus, his 30 to life sentence. So Robert was friends with this guy. Why? Who knows? That's just how Robert was. Robert was, of course, eligible to sit at what we called the good table, which was essentially the Aryan table. But he didn't sit at the good table.
3:40 John Kiriakou? He chose to sit with the rats and the pedophiles. And I never understood that. But then he would have these bursts of honesty. For example, I said to him, "Robert, what are you in for?" "I'm in for arson. Federal arson. It's a little bit unusual. I only met one other arson guy. And his only was a federal case because he burned the building down and then ran across state lines to escape." So I said, "Robert, what were the circumstances of your crime?" It turned out Robert had been married five times. Robert was Armenian, but he was born in Israel and he was raised in Australia. His parents were Armenian and British. He had British citizenship, but spent most of his life in Australia, spoke with an Australian
4:25 John Kiriakou? accent and never got his Australian citizenship, which becomes important in a moment. He is married five different times, five different women. One of them was an American whom he married only for her money, bankrupted her. But he opened a used car dealership in Buffalo, New York with her money. And by his own accounts was very successful. How successful, you have to wonder because, and this led to his problem, Robert never paid taxes, ever, not a dime. He would charge everybody sales tax, right? Which in New York is high, it's like seven, eight, nine percent, something like that. And he would just never send the money to the state.
5:08 Alan Katz? Pocket it.
5:08 John Kiriakou? Yeah, he would just pocket it because he was a criminal. And one Christmas Eve, he went to the DMV to renew his, his dealer plates. And they said, absolutely not. You owe something like $600,000 in back taxes. We're not giving you any dealer plates until you pay your taxes. He flew into a rage at the DMV and shouted, "I'm gonna come back here and burn this place to the ground." Now, if you've ever been inside a DMV, you know that there are cameras everywhere. In addition to the fact that he shouted this in front of a hundred witnesses, all trying to get their business done before the place closed for Christmas. So what did Robert do?
5:53 John Kiriakou? He called two members of the Russian mafia that he knew and said, "I'll give you $10,000 if you burn this DMV to the ground," which they did. The problem was, Robert was on camera shouting, "I'm gonna come back here and burn this place to the ground." So they went to grab him and he took off for Australia. Well, of course, he buys a ticket in his own name, he travels with no luggage, and the Australians are waiting for him. They arrest him, they put him in Australian jail, which from my understanding is worse than American jails. He's in there for six months fighting transfer back to the United States, not thinking, "Wait a minute, I'm an Australian visa holder. I'm not an Australian citizen.
6:37 John Kiriakou? If I'm convicted of a crime, I'll never be able to go back to Australia again." We had two kids in Australia and grandchildren in Australia, and his entire family's in Australia.
6:51 John Kiriakou? But he's extradited to the United States.
6:55 John Kiriakou? So he takes a plea. Robert never bothered to ask his attorney or to do his own research on what would happen if he's found guilty of a felony. Well, if you're found guilty of a felony in the United States, you're banned for life from the Five Eyes countries: the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Somebody mentioned something to him in prison. "Oh, you're not an Australian citizen? You can't go back to Australia." "What do you mean, I can't go back to Australia?" "No, you're banned for life." So the whole time that I was there and he was there, he spent writing letters to the Australian ambassador, the Australian prime minister, the Australian justice minister, Australian senators, Australian parliamentary members, and nobody would help him. Nobody.
7:40 John Kiriakou? The thing is, is he's also not an American. And so he's got to be expelled to somewhere when he finally gets out. So they expelled him to the UK. But that's not the issue. The issue is that Robert was the most pure sociopath I had ever met. He was a pathological liar. He would lie about literally everything. Robert initially married an Australian woman. They had a son and a daughter, and they got divorced. He had subsequent marriages to a Swiss woman, a Canadian woman, and an American woman, which got him Canadian and American citizenship. He had the British citizenship that he was born into, but he never got his Australian citizenship. Robert claimed every career that you can imagine.
8:24 John Kiriakou? Anytime a career came up in a conversation, Robert would say, "I did that." He claimed to be a successful nightclub owner, a DJ, a border guard, a bush pilot, the owner of the largest video store chain in Australia, the largest video store chain in Canada, the largest video store chain in America. The story always changed every time he told it. A successful used car dealer, a successful radio talk show host, a voiceover artist. He even claimed to have dated Australian international tennis champion, Yvonne Goulgang. He also said Yvonne Goulgang had been Miss Universe. I said to him, "Robert, Yvonne Goulgang was not Miss Universe."
9:08 John Kiriakou? This went on for months where we argued about Yvonne Goulgang until he finally admitted that, "Okay, she wasn't Miss Universe. Oh, and by the way, it wasn't Yvonne Goulgang that he had been dating. It was a woman who reminded him of Yvonne Goulgang." There was always a kernel of truth in the stories that he told. And then sometimes he was just brutally honest. For example, he and one of his wives adopted these Romanian twins from an orphanage in Romania. It turned out that they were like bad seeds. They're like four years old, five years old, they're pulling knives on each other, they're trying to set the house on fire, whatever. So what does Robert do? He puts them in a car.
9:47 John Kiriakou? He drives to Washington DC and he abandons them at the front gate of the Romanian embassy. And I said, "You did not." He said, "Yeah, I did. They were gonna kill me in my sleep one of these days." I go, "Robert, it's not normal to abandon two five-year-olds at the front gate of a foreign embassy and then just drive away." Like, how were you not arrested for that? He didn't care. One thing about Robert though, too, is that he was afraid of his own shadow. He was the first one to rat out the Hispanics, rat out the blacks, rat out anybody that he perceived had done him wrong. And then he was afraid of his shadow because he was convinced they were gonna come after him. Sometimes they did. We decided to have some fun with Robert at one point. Dave really hated Robert.
10:32 John Kiriakou? Dave wanted Robert to check himself into solitary, just to be out of our hair. And I said, come on, man, you're too hard on the guy. He's harmless. Literally every day, somebody was checking himself into solitary. For example, let's say you get into a dispute with some MS-13 guy. Well, he's gonna either beat you, or MS-13 is gonna kill you. They're gonna take out a hit on you. And the only thing you can do is check yourself into solitary. I'll give you another example. Uh, Michael Douglas's son, Cameron Douglas, he lived two cells down from me. Cameron Douglas was a notorious drug addict. He had a problem paying for his drugs. He had no problem paying the tattoo artists in the unit to cover his body from head to toe in tattoos. He just had problems paying for his drugs.
11:15 John Kiriakou? And he would buy drugs from the Bloods, the Crips, the MS-13, this one, that one, this cartel, that cartel, and they're gonna kill him. In addition, the fact that his lawyer got arrested for trying to smuggle drugs into him. And then, to save himself, he ratted out the Hispanics who had been providing him with drugs. Cameron checked himself into solitary and then upgraded from a low-security prison to a medium-security prison in Cumberland, Maryland. Cumberland's a dangerous prison. And as soon as he arrived, as soon as he got off the bus, he said, I wanna check myself into solitary, cuz the cartels were waiting for him to kill him. You spend your entire sentence in solitary.
11:56 John Kiriakou? So solitary is a six-foot-by-10-foot concrete block room. It has a steel bunk with no mattress, no pillow, no blankets, no nothing. There's a steel toilet and a steel sink, and that's it. That is literally it. But remember, I said, the prison is woefully overcrowded. So they put two guys in those six-by-10-foot cells. One sleeps on the bunk, the other sleeps on the floor with nothing. No mat, no mattress, no pillow, no blankets, no coat, no nothing. And it's cold down there in the winter and smotheringly hot in the summer. You're allowed one shower a week. You're allowed one phone call a month. And you're allowed to, air quotes, "exercise".
12:42 John Kiriakou? One hour a day. So you're locked down for twenty-three hours. The exercise is, there is a small, what looks like a doggy door in each cell. It's like for a big dog. You can crawl through that into a cage that's outside, that's just six feet by six feet, and walk in circles for an hour, and then crawl back through the doggy door, and they lock it up. That's solitary. Though it's not unusual for people to lose huge amounts of weight. It's also not unusual for people to lose their minds in there. The United Nations has ruled that solitary confinement for more than fourteen days is a form of torture. In the United States, we have people in solitary confinement for forty years or more.
13:26 John Kiriakou? Imagine forty years without ever having contact with another human being. Unless, of course, there's one in your little teeny-tiny cell. Dave took a scissors one day that he had stolen from somebody, and he cut Robert's shoelaces right up the middle. Robert said, "Oh, that, that's not cool. I wonder who did that." Dave said, "I think it was the Hispanics, because you ratted them out for stealing all the meat." Robert's starting to get nervous. And who's he gonna go to for protection? The pedophiles? He's alienated everybody. Dave then wrote "rat" on his pillow one night. And I said to Dave, "Come on, man. Why are you bothering him? He's gonna go home in six weeks. Just let him go." Dave was having too much fun.
14:08 John Kiriakou? So for the last six weeks, Robert checked himself into solitary, and I never saw him again. He found me on Facebook, funny enough. And he's in the UK, selling cars, married to wife number six. When you act like that, when you lead a life like that, that's just one lie, built on another lie, built on another lie, and you're just a lifelong criminal, and you're devoid of any conscience, so you can't even stop yourself. It all comes tumbling down at some point. And then you've gotta live with the fallout. And that's what he's doing. Robert was into get-rich-quick schemes and, you know. The thing is, is he was a notorious rat. It's so much safer.
14:51 John Kiriakou? And your life is so much easier in prison if you just mind your own business. But he just couldn't help himself.
14:59 Alan Katz? It's Alan, Dead Drops producer, and it's time for our October meeting of the Quince Fan Club. John, is there a piece or a couple of items in your closet or chest of drawers that your hand always finds first?
15:13 John Kiriakou? Actually, Alan, there are a couple of Quince pieces in my growing collection. There is a sweater that I absolutely adore. It's actually the first Quince piece that I bought. It's cashmere, and it is the softest, yet lightest, cashmere sweater I've ever owned. And I just bought a pair of linen trousers. I'll tell you, when I go to the doctor, I always wear jeans. And then I get on the scale, and the doctor's like, "Oh, you should lose three pounds." Well, my jeans are three pounds. And so I bought these linen trousers. I wore them to the doctor, and he says, "Hey, buddy, you lost a pound or two." The truth is, these linen trousers are light, they're beautiful, they're comfortable, and now they are my go-to pants.
15:58 Alan Katz? For me, it's my two 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters. I love how they feel. I love how they make me feel.
16:06 John Kiriakou? And because they go with everything. They make getting dressed easy.
16:10 Alan Katz? And being somewhat lazy that way. I think you and I both love the easy part, don't we?
16:16 John Kiriakou? Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials, like that 100% Mongolian cashmere we were talking about, or organic cotton and merino wool.
16:28 Alan Katz? Everything's timeless and versatile. As we've said here, Quince makes classics but without all the stodginess that often comes with them. And we haven't even mentioned how reasonable everything at Quince is priced.
16:40 John Kiriakou? Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $60, giving you the softness and the quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag.
16:52 Alan Katz? Not to go all Game of Thrones, but winter is coming, and when the temperatures start to drop, Quince is the perfect destination to find everyday clothing staples like premium down jackets and classic wool outerwear.
17:04 John Kiriakou? All versatile layers designed to keep us warm and comfortable all season long, and always priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands.
17:14 Alan Katz? Quince does that by working directly with ethical factories that cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for high-quality, not brand markup.
17:22 John Kiriakou? The ethical part is very important.
17:24 Alan Katz? In these here times, it absolutely is.
17:27 John Kiriakou? Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Dead Drop. It's the best way to support the show.
17:54 Speaker 03 What's up, fools? Main event J Uso here from the WWE. When it's just me between matches, it's day one-ish. And that means it's chumba time. With hundreds of casino-style games and new titles arriving weekly, there's always something fresh to try at Chumba Casino. The daily boosts make it even more fun. And have me about to get them all during my downtime. Ready for a fun way to chill out and enjoy a few minutes for yourself? Let's chumba!
18:18 Speaker 04 No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. CTs and Cs. 21+ Sponsored by Chumba Casino.
18:27 John Kiriakou? If you're enjoying Dead Drop, and of course, we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the Costard and Touchstone family. Just the Photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what Dead Drop does for spies. Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Swanson tells you stories his amazing news photos just can't. What it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this: Just the Photographer will put you right there,
19:07 John Kiriakou? on the ground, right next to David. Inside his head, in fact. It's a hell of a podcast, and you can find it wherever wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costard and touchstone.com. There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone like The Donor, a DNA horror story, The Hall Closet, Sage Wellness Within, and the How Not to Make a Movie podcast. Who knows? Your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now, back to Dead Drop. There was one other guy that I was friendly with who was a truly good human being, and that was Clint Goswick.
19:49 John Kiriakou? He was one of the orderlies in the chapel when I first started working there. Clint lived in the housing unit above mine, Central 2. Usually, there's no connection between Central 1 and Central 2. I mean, you'll see these guys out on the yard or in the cafeteria or whatever, but we're generally not friends. We don't go up there, they didn't come down to our Central 1. But Clint lived up in Central 2, and I became friendly with him. Clint was very, very religious, constantly quoting the Bible, and he meant it sincerely. And finally, I said to him, "What in the world are you doing here? You're the unlikeliest federal prisoner, and what are you doing here?" He had a very sad story. Clint was from Texas, from a town called Wichita Falls, Texas.
20:34 John Kiriakou? I remember that because Harry Nilson, the great Harry Nilson, had an album called Asphales, Wichita, So Falls, Wichita Falls. Clint had a successful heating and air conditioning business in Wichita Falls, Texas. Strong Christian, never a day in trouble in his life, but he had a very difficult divorce, and it just wrecked him. It wrecked his self-esteem, it broke him financially. Finally, after this divorce, he started dating. He was 42 years old, he met this 22-year-old beauty. Listen, I've been 42, I wouldn't have been able to believe that a 42-year-old John would have a 21-year-old, 22-year-old attracted to him.
21:19 John Kiriakou? This 22-year-old woman was just getting out of an abusive relationship. She had a previous boyfriend. Who was a meth cook and he had killed himself playing Russian roulette while fueled on meth. So Clint started dating her. It didn't work out. The relationship ran its course and she began dating another meth cook who had just recently been released from prison. So three years later, Clint's forgotten about this woman. Three years later, she and her boyfriend are arrested for manufacturing meth. Clint's phone number was still in her cellphone and Clint's father had once called her number looking for Clint.
22:03 John Kiriakou? So the FBI, they're searching the records. They say, oh, phone A called phone B and phone B is in touch with phone C and phone C is also in touch with phone A. That's a conspiracy. So the FBI pulls Clint in for, uh, for questioning. Clint tells the FBI that, yeah, he and the woman had dated. It didn't work out. It ran its course and they asked him, did you ever socialize with any of her friends? And he said, yeah, I had a cookout at my house one time and she invited a whole bunch of people and, you know, we had a good time. The FBI then asked her and she said, yeah, we did. We had a cookout at his house and I did meth with my friends in his garage.
22:46 John Kiriakou? The FBI said, that's a drug conspiracy. And lo and behold, the new boyfriend whom Clint had never met got charged with a gun charge. Well, in federal law, if one person in a conspiracy has a gun, all the people in the conspiracy are charged with a gun charge. Clint had never met or heard of any of the other conspirators in the case. He had never used drugs. He had never manufactured drugs. He had never possessed drugs. He had never distributed drugs. He was charged with conspiracy and he said, I didn't commit conspiracy. He pled not guilty. The prosecutors and the judge were outraged that he would go to trial, which is his constitutional
23:29 John Kiriakou? right and their words, waste the taxpayers' time and money. They added that gun charge on Clint, even though he didn't have a gun. He was found guilty. His attorney told him repeatedly to take a plea. He kept saying that he believed in the justice system. He hadn't done any of these crimes. So four of the other defendants agreed as part of their own deals to testify against Clint, saying that he had "owned the party house." That's what the big thing was, the big testimony. He had owned the party house. The jury deliberated for three days. Guilty. He and I would play racquetball every day that the weather was nice. And every day, he would say the same thing. "God's gonna take care of me. God's testing me.
24:15 John Kiriakou? He's testing my faith." And he would get these tattoos. He tripled the number of tattoos that he had on him while we were in prison. And every tattoo was a Bible verse. His whole body was just like printing the whole Bible on his body. And I used to tell him, "I've never known anybody so religious, so true to his faith, yet in such a dire position." And he said, "Because your faith is not as strong as mine. Jesus is gonna get me out of this." And guess what happened? He was released. He was released? He took advantage of the Second Chance Act and he said, "Look, I didn't have the gun. I didn't have any drugs. All I did was I had a cookout and my girlfriend invited her friends." Literally, that was all that happened. And the Justice Department said, "You're right.
25:01 John Kiriakou? This is ridiculous." And they let him go. I had been out of prison about two years. I got a call on my cellphone. I looked at the phone and it just had a number and it said Wichita Falls, Texas. And I said, "No possible way." I answered the phone. He says, "Brother." And I said, "I can't believe I'm hearing your voice." He said, "I'm calling you from home." What a good man he is. And you know what? He now has a beautiful relationship with his daughter and with his young granddaughter. He went back into the heating and cooling business and has found success again and goes to church every Sunday and has no ill will toward anybody. There were, as you might imagine, many very dangerous, very sick people in this prison.
25:46 John Kiriakou? Even though it was a low-security prison. Now, the reason why there are dangerous, sick people in low-security prisons is that they would start out in a maximum security. You can only be transferred to a low-security if you have under 20 years left on your sentence and you have good behavior. So you start off in a maximum, then you go down to a medium, then you go down to a low. And if you're really good and you don't have a violent crime, you can go to a minimum-security work camp.
26:14 Speaker 00 Hey y'all, it's Tiffany Stratton from WWE SmackDown.
26:17 Speaker 05 And I'm Drew McIntyre. So Tiff, what's the Tiffany's Epiphany for the day?
26:21 Speaker 00 Chumba Casino is the perfect quick break between training, travel, and beating you at everything.
26:27 Speaker 05 Beat me? I'm here for the new Chumba Casino releases every week.
26:30 Speaker 00 Charm me on their social games any day.
26:32 Speaker 05 Nah, I keep my Chumba fun, easy, and no stress.
26:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, when it's not Tiffy time, I'm on Chumba time.
26:38 Speaker 05 Flash Chumba!
26:47 John Kiriakou? Clyde Ware was one of the very, very few people at Loretto of whom I was afraid. He was a serial killer. He had killed, well, the authorities estimated that he had killed at least 12 women, all prostitutes. He was a long-distance truck driver in the days before DNA testing, driving from one coast to the other. He would pick up prostitutes at truck stops. He would have sex with them. He didn't want to pay them, so he would strangle them and then drive a couple of hundred miles with their dead bodies next to him, and then finally throw them out on the side of the highway. The FBI knew that there was a serial killer loose in what was called the Golden Age of Serial Killers, which was roughly 1970 to 1990.
27:32 John Kiriakou? They just didn't know where to look. And then finally, he picked up a 16-year-old prostitute at a truck stop. He had sex with her, and then he strangled her, but she lived. Now, because she was 16, that would technically make him a chomo, a child molester, something about which he was very, very sensitive. When I first arrived in Central One, he came up to me. He had just a handful of rotten, blackened nubs for teeth. He was big, at least 6'4", maybe 350 pounds. An enormous man. The worst breath you've ever experienced from these rotten, black little nubs. For reasons that were never clear to me, he constantly sought my approval.
28:15 John Kiriakou? He came up to me, almost belligerently one day, and said, "Are you the CIA guy?" And I'm thinking, "Oh, fuck, am I gonna have to fight this giant?" So I kind of steel'd myself. He said, "I did some work for the CIA back in Nam." "Okay, what the fuck you want from me?" "You want congratulations?" I just said, "Okay." Then I worked for the CIA after Nam. I was running guns to the Angolan rebels in a shrimp boat. I go, "Get the fuck out of here." A shrimp boat couldn't go thirty miles, and you're doing it the long way across the Atlantic? To Angola? Come on, man. Think of a better story than that. And I walked away. One of the Italians said to me, "Be careful of him. That's one dangerous son of a bitch." And I thought, "John, you're being stupid.
28:59 John Kiriakou? Why are you challenging somebody like this?" But instead of making him angry, it made him more determined to seek my approval. I never understood it, I still don't understand it. But he would say things like, "Hey, John, I know you're a Steelers fan. The Steelers are on TV on Sunday. I saved you a seat in the TV room." Which meant, he punched somebody, whose seat it was, so that I could sit in the vacant seat and watch the game. "Hey, John, I know you listen to Classic Rock. There's a new Classic Rock station at sixteen hundred AM." I'm like, "Okay, thanks, Truck. I appreciate it." So, I worked hard to not piss him off. He was also violent, in the unit. Several of his cellmates were pedophiles.
29:42 John Kiriakou? And Truck was frequently in solitary for just beating the shit out of these guys. And usually, it was silly stuff. Like, one of them turned the light on while he was taking a nap. And he popped up out of bed and beat this guy into a heap. One guy was snoring. A pedophile was snoring. And he beat the hell out of the guy while the guy was in his bed. Very volatile, very dangerous, likely mentally ill. But I was careful not to piss him off. So with that as background, there was another guy in the prison, Larry Raviv. Larry looked like the cat in the hat, in that he had this oddly elongated head. It had to be some kind of a birth defect. I never saw anybody with a rectangular head before.
30:24 John Kiriakou? Larry had moved down from a medium-security prison. He wanted to move into my room. We had one empty bunk when Dave was sent to solitary. I said, "Well, wait a minute. You can't just move into the room. I want to know your crime because we don't allow pedophiles in our room." He said, "I'm not a pedophile." I said, "What's your crime?" "Murder for hire." "I don't think I like that any more than a pedophile." "What were the circumstances?" "I owed the mob a hundred grand in gambling debts and I couldn't pay it. So I took a life insurance policy out on my business partner and I hired a hitman to kill him. And then he got caught and I got caught." I said, "Yeah, I need to think about that and I need to talk to the other guys." "I'm not an idiot. I know everybody in prison's lying."
31:08 John Kiriakou? So I went to the law library and I looked him up. Some of that was true. What was really true was, of course, he's going to be the very first person that the cops look at. As soon as they arrested him, he ratted out the shooter. He was able to negotiate 20 years for murder for hire, which is normally life without parole, in exchange for his testimony against the shooter. The shooter was a guy that he knew from New Orleans, Louisiana. The cops in New Orleans grabbed the shooter, extradited him back to Pittsburgh, and while he's awaiting trial, he has a heart attack and dies. But the cops had to respect the deal that they had negotiated with Raviv. So he got lucky. He got 20 years for a crime that should have been life without parole.
31:52 John Kiriakou? There's no way this guy's moving into our cell. "No way. I don't want to live with somebody like him." That made him fly into a rage, but he knew not to confront me face-to-face. One day, Jake Tapper, he's with CNN now, but at the time he was with ABC News. Jake and I worked at ABC News together. Jake came up to the prison to interview me. And when he arrived, I got called to the lieutenant's office to sign the waiver so I could give the interview. Now, as I've mentioned before, normally if you're called to the lieutenant's office, it's because you're going to solitary. "Curiaku! Lieutenant's office! Immediately!" I go down there. I knew what it was for because I knew that Jake was coming that day. So I go down there, I sign the waiver, I give Jake His interview and I go back up to uh to the unit.
32:38 John Kiriakou? Well, in the TV room off to the side, there are three computers and that's for the internal email system. I'm sitting there with Truck watching the Steelers. Raviv doesn't realize that I'm sitting literally two feet behind him. He's standing there at the computer and he turns to this little guy next to him and he says, "Did you hear Kiriakou got called down to the lieutenant's office today? That guy's a fucking rat. He went down there to rat us out." "Well, if you call somebody a rat and they're not, blood's gonna be spilled." I did not react in any way. Truck said, "Did you hear that? That fucking guy just called you a rat." But I saw my opportunity. I leaned over to Truck.
33:23 John Kiriakou? "An hour ago, I heard him call you a pedophile." Truck looked at me. He didn't say a single word. He got up, walked over to Raviv and beat him to unconsciousness. Now, as I've mentioned, whenever there's a fight, everybody scatters like cockroaches when you turn the lights on. I sat there and I watched the Steelers game. Next thing you know, the red light comes on, the alarm, eh eh eh, right? Cause there's a fight, well, a fight, again, in air quotes. Raviv's on the ground unconscious. Truck is covered in blood and I'm watching the game. Everybody else bolted. Soon as I heard the alarm, I got up and walked back to my cell.
34:05 John Kiriakou? Then I hear, "Kiriakou, lieutenant's office immediately." So I stroll down there. I said, "What's up?" "What's up? You tell us what's up." "The Steelers are up seventeen seven." "Oh, you're gonna be smart guy now." "I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about." "Tell us about the fight." "I said, "There was a fight? What fight?" "Oh, very funny, very funny. We saw you from four different cameras, sitting there, watching TV, while one guy was beating the hell out of another guy." "Well, it sounds to me like you need to talk to those guys, cause I don't know what the hell you're talking about." "Oh, this is the game you wanna play." "I'm not playing any game. I'm just saying, you know what? Maybe it was you that was fighting." "Huh? Did you ever think of that?
34:48 John Kiriakou? Maybe you created the fight to try to blame me for something. Maybe you're the one." "Remember, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations." And finally, the lieutenant says, "Get the fuck out of my office." Exactly. And I got up and walked out. Truck was sent to solitary. He was formally charged with assault. They added five years onto his 40-year sentence. And ravive. They had to land a helicopter in the yard to lifelike him to Pittsburgh. Skull fracture, the whole nine yards. Six weeks later, he's released from the hospital and returned to the prison. Word quickly got around what I had done.
35:32 John Kiriakou? And so he came up to me with his head bowed down really low. And he says, I just wanted to say I'm sorry for calling you a rat. I should never have done that. I don't know what came over me. And I said, look at me, Larry. Look at me. And he looks at me. I said, as God is my witness, if I ever hear my name cross your lips ever again, you're dead and they won't have any idea what happened to you.
36:04 John Kiriakou? Staring into the abyss can have its issues. It's only with retrospect that I can see just how dark I went at Loretto. Spoiler alert, I was still quite a ways from hitting peak darkness. And from there, it was going to be much harder to keep these prison adaptations under any sort of control. In the next episode, the pen is mightier than the sword, mightier than a bunch of corrupt prison officials, anyway. As always, thank you for listening and thank you even more for sharing your enjoyment of the podcast via the likes, ratings, reviews, and comments. It would be the abyss for us without you, seriously. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz.
36:47 John Kiriakou? Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast. And John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.
37:08 Alan Katz? This podcast, it's a Coster and Touchstone production.
37:15 Speaker 06 Bubba Wallace here from 2311 Racing. You know what's slower than a pace car? Waiting at the car wash. That's when I fire up Chumba Casino. It turns those slow minutes into fast fun. With new games every week, you'll never get bored. Next time you're stuck in the slow lane, speed up with Chumba. Play now at chumbocasino.com. Let's Chumba.
37:37 Speaker 04 Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group void where prohibited by law. 21 plus. Terms and conditions apply.
Previous S2E3 Circle Of Friends Next S2E5 The Abyss Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated