Pod Insights John Kiriakou's Dead Drop S2E10 Food, Glorious Food! About this episode IN THIS EPISODE, meet Joey Casolo. These days, Joey owns a great pizzaria in South Carolina. But, back in the day, Joey was one of the greatest prison chefs ever at Loretto. If you remember from the movie Goodfellas, the Italians weren't interested in the prison chow. Instead they cooked their own food - gourmet Italian meals - all prepared using a rudimentary (and incredibly dangerous) cooking system: a bucket of water and a live electrical wire that makes the water boil immediately.
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1:44 John Kiriakou? I've talked a lot over the years about food in prison. I hate to even call it food, to tell you the truth. It was slop. On my very first full day in prison, it was a Friday, one of the Italians with whom I became very friendly, Pete Calabrese, mentioned offhandedly that, "It's Friday. That means it's fish day." And I responded by saying, "Oh, great. I love fish." And he said, "Oh, don't eat this fish." We call it sewer trout and it's not fit for human consumption. Well, he and I walked down to the chow hall together and what I saw was something that I'll never forget. The guys in the chow line were slopping the slop onto your tray, but behind them were
2:28 John Kiriakou? boxes, boxes of fish. And on the side of these boxes, every one of them, it was clearly marked Alaskan cod, product of China, feed use only, not for human consumption. And that's what they were putting on our plates. I looked at Pete, he said, I told you. And so I never, ever, ever ate the fish. I've also talked about another incident that happened about halfway through my sentence, where every Wednesday night was so-called taco night. And excuse the filthy thing I'm gonna say. I once threw away the entire taco and the warden saw me throw the whole thing away. And he said, in the old days, you could get written up for that.
3:11 John Kiriakou? And I responded, I've eaten ass that tasted better than this taco. What do you do if you can't eat the food? If you won't eat the food? If you shouldn't eat the food? If the food is gonna make you sick? I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Drop, What Makes a Spy Tick? This is episode 10 in our series, Doing Time Like a Spy. And as always, we thank you for listening. We thank you even more for liking, rating, reviewing, and commenting on the podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening to it. Prison food is institutional food that other institutional food laughs at. No, that's actually not true. It sneers at it, and with good reason.
3:53 John Kiriakou? The prison authorities don't want to spend a single dollar more than they have to. Fold in a bunch of competing interests, plenty of corruption and greed, and the result is a hellish jambalaya of gastronomic awfulness. There was one incident where, for taco night, they accidentally fed us dog food. The reason we know that is that the warden, months after the fact, sent everybody a memo saying, hey, sorry, but a couple of months ago on taco night, we accidentally fed you dog food. It's not our fault. The packaging was, was mixed up at the, at the meat plant. They labeled dog food as ground beef and they labeled the ground beef as dog food.
4:37 John Kiriakou? The shame is not even that we were fed dog food. The shame is that we were fed dog food and we couldn't even tell the difference. So what did we do? We relied on people like our guest tonight, Joey Castle. Joey Castle was one of the finest, I'm gonna call him chefs at FCI Loretto. A lot of guys cook, the Mexicans all cook, right? You have a trash can of water. You throw in a live electrical wire called a stinger. It immediately brings the water to a boil. You put some food in a plastic bag. Next thing you know, you've got a gourmet meal. The Mexicans ate to survive.
5:20 John Kiriakou? We ate, and I say we, I'm including myself with the Italians. We ate as a culinary experience.
5:27 Speaker 04 Yes.
5:28 John Kiriakou? Joey, welcome. Good to have you.
5:30 Speaker 04 Thank you, John.
5:32 John Kiriakou? Joey, walk us through this, man. When I first saw a stinger, I unplugged it. I said, oh, my God, what a health hazard. This is a live electrical, and the Mexicans are like, are you out of your mind? We're making dinner. I didn't know what the heck they were doing. But then when you cooked, when Mark Lanzalotti cooked, it was like being in a restaurant in Little Italy. How did you do that? Walk us through it.
5:58 Speaker 04 Well, when I first came to the prison, I'll only say this real quick. I didn't know nothing about prison, just like you.
6:04 John Kiriakou? Sure.
6:05 Speaker 04 So I walked in and this guy comes up to me. I forget his name, a black guy. And he says, what's your name, sir? I said, Joey. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, you know, nice people here, talking to me.
6:21 Speaker 04 So everybody's laughing. And I'm like, what are you laughing at? He says, we'll tell you later, just keep talking to this guy. So I'm talking to him, he says, if there's anything you need, Joey, you let me know. And I said, okay. So then I go back to myself, three guys come in that were laughing and I said, can you tell me why were you laughing? He says, the guy is gay. He wants to pick you up right away because you're new in the prison. Well, the word got out to Peter Colibreeze. When he found out, he said, Joey, stay away from them guys. If you find a Twinkie or a piece of gum or a lollipop on your bed, don't touch it.
7:03 John Kiriakou? Yep.
7:03 Speaker 04 I said, okay, Pete, I won't. So I was learning little things here and there. And with the cooking, I knew how to cook on the outside with the stove, but like John said, the stinger.
7:15 John Kiriakou? Mm hmm.
7:16 Speaker 04 Who what that was. So I bought one one day.
7:18 John Kiriakou? Oh, you're kidding me. So you you didn't know what a stinger was?
7:22 Speaker 04 I learned watching, watching everybody cook. I said, oh, okay. But the stuff they cooked was rice and the same thing.
7:30 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
7:31 Speaker 04 But pizzas, I cooked men of Gotti, I cooked spaghetti, meatballs. John, it it was two o'clock in the morning. John's sound asleep. I said, I'm hungry. I'm gonna cook. I made, I think I made a pizza or men of Gotti, something I made Italian. So I I crawled out. I walked to John's room. I said, John, John, he goes, yeah, I'm sleeping. I said, John, I got Italian food. He says, Italian food, and he got right up.
8:00 John Kiriakou? I did. I did.
8:02 Speaker 04 Morning. And this went on consistently. We did it all the time.
8:06 John Kiriakou? Yeah. How about the calzones you used to make?
8:08 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
8:09 John Kiriakou? Let me talk about the calzones for a second. So a lot of the Mexican guys used to, used to cook. And like you said, it was rice, rice, rice, rice with this saison sauce or not even sauce.
8:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:21 John Kiriakou? It was an orange powder that had no flavor at all, but they sold it in the commissary.
8:26 Speaker 04 That was.
8:26 John Kiriakou? And so they would sell these, they would call them calzones. And Pete said to me one day, Why do you buy those disgusting things? And I said, oh, they're so, they're so filling and delicious. They got all kinds of stuff in them. He goes, it's not a calzone, it's a fucking burrito.
8:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:44 John Kiriakou? Those guys wouldn't know a calzone if it walked up and introduced it itself to them.
8:48 Speaker 04 Yes.
8:49 John Kiriakou? And so I said, you're right. And then you started making calzones. And I said, oh, my God, this is an actual calzone, like from an Italian restaurant, made in a trash bucket full of boiling water.
9:01 Speaker 04 But wait a minute, I, I don't know if you knew this, I never got, I got some of the stuff from Commissary. I used to get it from the guards in the kitchen.
9:10 John Kiriakou? Yes, I wanted to ask you about that.
9:12 Speaker 04 Yes. I had a good hookup right there, especially when I got with the, I don't, can we say names on here?
9:19 John Kiriakou? Sure. Why not? We'll leave them out later if we have to.
9:22 Speaker 04 When I got with Nikki Carazo.
9:24 John Kiriakou? Yes.
9:25 Speaker 04 I had to learn the whole nine yards.
9:28 John Kiriakou? Yeah, because Nikki, Nikki was a very, very important person in a, in a certain Italian, American subculture.
9:37 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:37 John Kiriakou? And very important person. And as his status demanded, he got the best of everything, including the best food. Our friend Mark Lanzalotti, who was an absolutely brilliant cook. I once told him, he fed me, it was on my birthday, it was my 50th birthday, he had a big bash for me.
9:59 Speaker 04 I remember.
10:00 John Kiriakou? Remember that? I told my wife that night, it was the first time I had smiled in nine months.
10:04 Speaker 04 Yeah.
10:05 John Kiriakou? And, oh my God, how we laughed our heads off that night. But he made this gourmet meal. And the very first thing he did, and he did this every time he cooked, is he would pull out all of his Tupperware, he would load the Tupperware with complete meals and send them to Nikki and to Pete and everybody else of that status.
10:26 Speaker 04 Yes.
10:27 John Kiriakou? They they had a crooked a crooked guard on payroll who was bringing in everything that we needed, you know, loves of Italian bread, white wine for the marsala sauce. We got pork loin. We got beautiful chicken breasts and fresh tomatoes and fresh mushrooms and onions and all kinds of stuff. But
10:48 Speaker 04 Bags and bags of pasta and sauce.
10:50 John Kiriakou? It wasn't just crooked guards bringing it in from the inside, from the outside, rather. It was guards working in the kitchen. They're supposed to be guarding the prisoners that are cooking the food. They're actually stealing most of the food or stealing the good food and then selling it to you.
11:07 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, that's how it works. And you know, our money was books of stamps and mackerels.
11:12 John Kiriakou? Right.
11:13 Speaker 04 So whatever Nikki wanted pasta at night, I saw with books of stamps, pulled the guy aside and say, listen, we want this. We want this with this. Within 20 minutes, it was in my room.
11:25 John Kiriakou? When did you arrive, Joey?
11:27 Speaker 04 2012.
11:28 John Kiriakou? So you got there just barely before I did. I got there February 28, 2013.
11:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:35 John Kiriakou? So when I first arrived, I was there maybe a week or two weeks. And one of the guards in the kitchen was fired and escorted out. And Pete told me it was because he was allowing prisoners working in the cafeteria to steal food. And that was a very popular side hustle. They would just go from cell to cell to cell selling food for bags of mackerel or books of stamps. But he would allow them to steal the food in exchange for a blowjob. That they would they would blow him and then they could steal whatever food they wanted.
12:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:11 John Kiriakou? They walked that guy out and they allowed him to keep his pension, which was not cool at all. But then they tightened things up. And I remember they used to frisk us as we would walk out of the cafeteria because God forbid you should have an apple in your pocket or, you know, a pat of butter that you want to take back to your cell. How did you get around all that?
12:33 Speaker 04 It was easy. It was just given to me all the time. I didn't have to walk out with nothing. All I had to do, they say, who is this for? I said, Nikki, go ahead.
12:44 John Kiriakou? Done.
12:45 Speaker 04 Done.
12:46 John Kiriakou? Mm hmm.
12:47 Speaker 04 And when I brought it to Nikki's room, I was cooking for him one day, right? He called, uh, Chris. You remember Chris?
12:53 John Kiriakou? Yes.
12:55 Speaker 04 Chris came down and said, Nikki wants you up there now to cook. It was 10 o'clock in the morning. I said, okay, I'll go start cooking the pasta. While I'm cooking, getting everything ready, the peppers, the onions, the oil, everything. So Nikki says, all right, everybody out. I said, Nikki, you just called me up here to cook. I'm taking my hour nap, get out and come back in an hour. So I had to put everything away, come back and cook.
13:21 John Kiriakou? Oh, my God. And when you were cooking in Nikki's room, it was the same as cooking in your own room. We're talking about a garbage bucket full of hot water.
13:31 Speaker 04 Brand new though. Everything he had was brand new. The Mexicans, their dirty bucket, the dirty.
13:36 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
13:37 Speaker 04 At brand new.
13:38 John Kiriakou? We actually used, uh, and there were four Mexicans in my first cell.
13:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
13:44 John Kiriakou? We actually used that bucket for trash.
13:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
13:48 John Kiriakou? And then they would just pull the trash out, fill it with water, throw the stinger in and make food.
13:52 Speaker 04 Right.
13:53 John Kiriakou? It was disgusting.
13:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
13:55 John Kiriakou? Okay. So walk us through, how do you do this? You got the bucket, you fill it with water and then what?
14:02 Speaker 04 You fill it with water. While you're preparing everything, you'll put the stinger in, tie it.
14:08 John Kiriakou? And explain what a stinger is.
14:11 Speaker 04 A stinger is wires from a, an iron or TV, whatever they can get.
14:21 John Kiriakou? A lamp, yeah.
14:23 Speaker 04 And it's square pieces of metal. They would get it where the metal makers, uh, they had like a shop in there.
14:29 John Kiriakou? Yes, or, or they'd steal the faceplate off the wall.
14:32 Speaker 04 So it was two pieces of metal with something in the middle. So you don't get shocked. Well, I never got shocked, but let me tell you, every time they raided us, they took my stinger. And I, I said to the guard, I said, I just want to tell you, you know, I cooked for Nikki. Everybody in the prison knows. Okay, we won't take your stingers no more. So then, other guards would come, they would take it because they didn't know. I had twenty-six stingers after they let me had stingers in my locker. And I had them on the shelf wide open. Nobody touched nothing.
15:08 John Kiriakou? Mm-hmm.
15:09 Speaker 04 The respect we got because of Nikki.
15:11 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
15:13 Speaker 04 And I would just like to go on, I want to say something before we get into anything else. When I first came into prison, like I said, I didn't know nothing. I was sitting with the blacks eating, you know, I had the black side.
15:26 John Kiriakou? Right. Yeah, we should, we should say in the, in the cafeteria, um, all African-American inmates sit on one side.
15:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
15:34 John Kiriakou? But every one of them, on the other side, it's divided. And we talked about this in the past, the front table is what are called the good guys. That's white guys, most of them are Aryans, white guys convicted of crimes that have nothing to do with child sex crimes. And then the next table was Italians on the one side and Native Americans on the other. And then behind them were all the pedophiles and the rats. They had to sit together.
16:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:02 John Kiriakou? So go ahead.
16:04 Speaker 04 So I had colored guys when I first came to prison in my cell. So they liked me, you know, joke around. And I was the only Italian or white person to say the N-word to them. You know how they all say, I was the only one to say that. Anybody else, they would shank them.
16:24 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
16:25 Speaker 04 They loved me. I, I just, I'm, I'm that kind of person. Like I, I, me and you bonded real quick.
16:31 John Kiriakou? Immediately.
16:32 Speaker 04 Yeah. So anyway, they said, you come sit with us. I said, okay, now I don't know nothing. I see all these people. I'm there for like two weeks, three weeks, eating there all the time. So then finally Nikki says, What are you doing sitting over there? I said, Nicky, I just got to, I just got here. I don't know much. He says, from now on, you're over here with the Gambinos. You're with us.
16:54 John Kiriakou? Yes.
16:55 Speaker 04 I said, okay. So then, I'm Pete Selly now.
17:00 John Kiriakou? Yes.
17:01 Speaker 04 He says, Joey, no, no, no, no. You're not with the Gambinos. You're with the Bananos.
17:06 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
17:08 Speaker 04 And I said, Pete, I don't know which way to go now. I don't know.
17:11 John Kiriakou? You know, Pete said the same thing to me. I was sitting with the Aryans only because the Aryans told me to. And then Pete said to me one day, we were walking out, our, our cells were directly across from each other and we were walking out. And he said, let me ask you something. Why do you sit with those Nazi retards in the cafeteria? Those were his exact words. And I said, I don't know, Pete. When I first arrived, they told me to sit with them. And then very dramatically, he puts his finger in the air and he says, from today, you're with the Italians. And then I sat with the Italians the whole rest of the time I was there.
17:46 Speaker 04 When you first started sitting at the Italian tables with us, Nicky would always go, I know he lives next door to you across the hall. Is he all right? You sure Joey's all right? I said, yeah, Nicky, he's good. I vouch for him. He's good. You don't know the stuff he asked me about you.
18:00 John Kiriakou? I, I believe it because he asked Mark Lanzalotti exactly the same question. He was genuinely worried because the guy didn't know the difference between the CIA and the FBI. And he was afraid that I was a cop.
18:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:13 John Kiriakou? Yeah. And Mark told him, he said, the FBI are cops and rats. The CIA protected us from the Muslims. That's what he told him. And then I was okay after that.
18:24 Speaker 04 I said, he's a good guy, Nicky. He's a good guy. He says, all right, then he's with us. I said, all right.
18:31 Speaker 04 We're made men now, Johnny.
18:33 John Kiriakou? Seriously, right? I felt like I was.
18:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:36 John Kiriakou? Yeah, I'll tell you, man, that was a community. The Italians, I, I say all the time that the Italians in prison for stupid reasons are considered to be a gang. They even have their own suffix on the prisoner number, zero, four, seven. If you're zero, four, seven, that means you're mob. And it's not fair.
18:58 Speaker 04 Right.
18:58 John Kiriakou? But anyway. It's not a gang. Anyway, let's pretend for a moment that it is.
19:04 Speaker 04 Right.
19:05 John Kiriakou? Of all the prison gangs, and these are major gangs. You've got the Crips and the Bloods and the Latin Kings and the Burachos and the Norteños and the MS-13 and this one and that one and the other one. The Italians were the smallest and the most highly respected.
19:22 Speaker 04 Yes.
19:24 John Kiriakou? And that was hands down. There were no exceptions to that. The Italians were universally respected. And another thing, too, the Italians were the only "gang", in air quotes, that didn't have a shot caller. And they didn't have a shot caller because they didn't need a shot caller. You had made men, at any given time, there were six, seven, eight of them, and they did everything by consensus.
19:53 Speaker 04 And we would all have to sit with them, with the made men, and if something was to go on, if somebody wanted to beat somebody up, or everybody would agree. That's how it worked in there.
20:04 John Kiriakou? That's right. That's exactly right. I genuinely liked and respected them.
20:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:10 John Kiriakou? I'll tell you a funny thing, too. I was an expert witness in a trial last week. I was an expert witness for the defense. And this poor guy was charged with six felonies, all six of which carried a mandatory sentence of life without parole.
20:32 John Kiriakou? And I testified on his behalf. He had a public defender.
20:38 Speaker 04 A court public.
20:39 John Kiriakou? And in the cross-examination, all the US Attorney wanted to ask me about, and he was mean about it and aggressive, all he wanted to ask me about was the Italians at Loretto. And that, "Was I with the Italians?" I said, "You bet I was." "And you said that they were honorable." And I said, "And they were honorable." "They're all convicted murderers," I said. "I don't know what they were convicted of. It was none of my business." I can tell you that in my dealings with them, they were all honorable to a man, every single one of them. In fact, I'm still friends with a lot of them because they were honorable. And so, in the end...
21:19 John Kiriakou? I'm very, very proud to say this. The guy was found not guilty on all six counts last. Yeah, all six counts. That doesn't happen very often. But anyway, I want to get back to cooking.
21:35 Speaker 04 Okay.
21:36 John Kiriakou? You've got this pipeline of real food, actual food. Well, it's not like you're sitting in your bunk, reading out of a cookbook. So how did you know what to make? How did you know how to plan what to make? And what do you do if you're halfway through a meal? And you're like, oh crap, I don't have any tomatoes or mushrooms or chicken breast or whatever. What do you do?
22:02 Speaker 04 I always had it. We always had it. I never was out nothing. I don't know even what to say. It was there. It was there, whatever we needed. Just like the movie Goodfellas, that's how we.
22:16 John Kiriakou? Yeah, I say that all the time, Joe. That scene in Goodfellas was 1,000% true.
22:23 Speaker 04 We would.
22:24 John Kiriakou? Colvario's is shaving the garlic and then it liquefies in the oil. They ran that scene because it was true. And that's how we cooked every single day.
22:36 Speaker 04 And I'll tell you what, the Mexicans would use their ID cards to cut. We had razor blades. Yeah.
22:46 John Kiriakou? I remember. I remember you, every month, for the prisoners who were too poor to afford a commissary, they would give you a, what did they call it? The bag to keep yourself clean. They had a name for it.
23:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:09 John Kiriakou? Anyway, it included a disposable, single edge razor. And I remember you breaking, you're very strong, I should add. I mean, we're all 10 years older now, but.
23:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:22 John Kiriakou? But you're very strong. And I remember you breaking open the single blade razor and taking the blade out. And then using the blade to to cut the uh the garlic.
23:32 Speaker 04 That's how I started with the blade. I I don't know this guard's name. I forget his name, white guy. He had long hair.
23:40 John Kiriakou? Oh, I remember him. He was a cool guy. I liked him. Yeah, I remember him.
23:44 Speaker 04 Walked by, I I I heard the keys and the chains. I said, I hide my singer. He says, no, Joey, it's just me. You don't have to hide it. So he saw me with the little blade, you know, the little single blades. You cut yourself with it.
23:57 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
23:58 Speaker 04 He says, wait till tomorrow. I had packages of big razor blades.
24:03 John Kiriakou? Unbelievable.
24:05 Speaker 04 I said, are you telling me to go go whack somebody or something? Oh, you cook with this?
24:12 John Kiriakou? I liked him.
24:14 Speaker 04 So with cooking, it just comes to my mind.
24:19 Speaker 04 I can't even explain it. I mean, if I wake up and Nikki wanted pasta or whatever, I I would make whole, I would make the homemade sauce. I mean, they would bring me.
24:30 John Kiriakou? From scratch.
24:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, cans of tomatoes, uh, the paste, olive oil. It was was amazing. And I'll tell you what, if I if I didn't have nowhere to live like these bums that love prison, I would have stayed. I would have stayed in there, tell you the truth, because I, if you ever go to prison, I know you don't want to go to prison, but if you ever do anybody, federal prison, go to federal prison.
24:54 John Kiriakou? Yeah, go to federal prison. I remember, I've said this, I'm gonna say another not very nice word.
25:01 John Kiriakou? But I remember three guys sitting in the TV room, playing cards one day. It was the middle of the day, so everybody was away at work call. I had a no-show job. Yeah. Thanks to Italians, I had a no-show job. I I walked in there for some reason, and they were playing cards, and and they were in between hands. So the dealer was shuffling the cards, and one guy put his his hands behind his head. He kind of kicks back and stretches. He looks around and he says, I got a warm bed. I got free medical care. I got TV. I got three meals a day.
25:36 Speaker 04 No bills.
25:37 John Kiriakou? He said, if we had pussy, this would be paradise. And I remember thinking, oh, man, you've been inside too long, buddy. But they weren't even eating like the Italians were eating.
25:53 John Kiriakou? We got to the point Joey, and I'm sure you remember this. My sentence was short. I was in 23 months. The last six or eight months that I was in, I never went to the cafeteria.
26:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, I never did either.
26:05 John Kiriakou? There was no reason to.
26:07 Speaker 04 Only on certain things like a pizzas where.
26:09 John Kiriakou? Pizzas. One night a week was pizza, uh, one night a month was pizza night. Yeah.
26:15 Speaker 04 And let me tell you, we had trays and trays of pizza trays. They brought out, they, when Nikki was there, they brought out a whole big. It was like a pizza tray with pizzas stacked. Everybody's looking at us like.
26:28 John Kiriakou? Wow.
26:30 Speaker 04 Yeah. We didn't have dough. That's the only thing we didn't have pizza dough.
26:34 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
26:34 Speaker 04 So we would use the wraps. You know, the big wraps the Mexicans would use. So I said, let me think of something here. These wraps are kinda small. Maybe it looks like a single pizza. So I would lay four or five of them down and I would, it would come out to a big pizza, a large pizza. So with the garlic, I would chop the garlic like on Goodfellas.
26:59 John Kiriakou? Yep.
27:01 Speaker 04 And I had a piece of metal.
27:04 Speaker 04 And you would put olive oil on the metal. It was like a little cup. And it would heat up. And you would put the garlic in it and it would cook it. It would saute it. And the sauce. I, I did the same. I used the cans of tomatoes. I heated it up. You put it in a plastic bag. You put it in the water. You tie the bag, close the bag and it steams. And let me tell you, the smell from my food, everybody would come to myself. If I was gonna sell it in there for cash, I'd, I'd have been rich today.
27:37 John Kiriakou? Yes.
27:39 Speaker 04 The whole prison smelled like it. Oh, Joey's cooking, Joey's cooking. But let me tell you, sometimes I did sell stuff. I said, let me sell stuff too.
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28:58 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, on the ground, right next to David. Inside his head, in fact.
29:42 John Kiriakou? It's a hell of a podcast, and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costardandtouchstone.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.
30:12 John Kiriakou? I was next to a cell. If you, if you're, if you come out of your cell and your back, your cell is to your back and I'm on the right in front of you, the guys on the left in front of you, they were mostly Mexicans and their hustle, their hustle was to steal meat from the cafeteria. They mostly stole chicken and then they would go sell to sell every day selling chicken or selling eggs. They sold a lot of eggs.
30:39 Speaker 04 Bag they would put it.
30:40 John Kiriakou? Exactly. Exactly. They would put it in plastic bags. So is that how you got your meat too? Was it just from the, from the cops in the kitchen or were you getting the outside meat as well?
30:54 Speaker 04 I was getting, I wasn't getting it from any, from the, the guys in there. I was getting it from either the guards or the, the prisoners that worked for the guards. So they had good stuff. We had-
31:05 John Kiriakou? That's what I thought.
31:07 Speaker 04 Beef, turkey. As soon as I got it, I put it on ice. So it was good.
31:12 John Kiriakou? I remember a lot of guys buying those scrawny, bony chickens-
31:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:18 John Kiriakou? From the chow hall and just keeping it on ice and then cooking it in the, in the afternoons. We didn't eat those bony, I mean, you could barely get a broth-
31:27 Speaker 04 Spread it up and make something. I don't know what they made.
31:29 John Kiriakou? I, I used to sell, I, I used to sell my chicken. We got chicken like every Tuesday at lunch or whatever it was. And I used to sell my chicken for a bag of tuna to some guy that was like on this protein only diet. He was trying to work out and build muscle or whatever. And he would buy my nasty chicken every, every week.
31:49 Speaker 04 He'd buy the tray, the whole tray.
31:51 John Kiriakou? Yeah. He'd buy the tray. Exactly. And then I'd go back to my place and eat your food or go to Mark's and eat his food.
31:58 Speaker 04 Yeah. We had some big bowls of food. I remember the parties. Everybody bring your bowl.
32:02 John Kiriakou? Joey, I, I used to say, I gained 35 pounds in prison.
32:07 Speaker 04 So did I.
32:08 John Kiriakou? 35 pounds. I remember you and I talking about it because you showed me a picture of yourself one time.
32:14 Speaker 04 Yeah.
32:15 John Kiriakou? And it was like, you know, Mr. Mr. Olympus, Mr. America competition. And then all of a sudden we got these bellies-
32:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
32:23 John Kiriakou? From all the pasta we're eating.
32:25 Speaker 04 Yep.
32:25 John Kiriakou? And, and the warden said to me one time, he said, you're, hey, you're sure putting on a lot of weight. I said, what are you, my tailor or my warden?
32:33 Speaker 04 Yeah.
32:34 John Kiriakou? And then he walked away.
32:36 Speaker 04 Yep. The only thing I didn't want to make in there was the hooch.
32:40 John Kiriakou? No, I never messed with it.
32:41 Speaker 04 No, I wasn't smoking cigarettes. I wasn't doing nothing. You'd go to the hole for three months for that something stupid.
32:48 John Kiriakou? Not worth it. I remember the hooch, it was mostly the Native Americans would make it. They would steal fruit from the cafeteria and then ferment the fruit and make moonshine out of it.
33:01 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:01 John Kiriakou? Couple of the black guys did too. They would hide it in the, in the drop ceiling of the TV room so that it wasn't tied to any one person. But do you remember they, they found hooch in the drop ceiling during the NBA playoffs?
33:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:16 John Kiriakou? So they shut the TVs off. That was the punishment. Everybody got punished. Nobody was allowed to watch basketball for the week.
33:22 Speaker 04 Well, I don't know if you remember this. Somebody hid the hooch somewhere.
33:28 Speaker 04 And it was the bag popped.
33:31 John Kiriakou? Oh.
33:33 Speaker 04 And I don't know if it was the warden's office or somebody's office that worked there that was high ranked. All the hooch went down in that person's office.
33:41 John Kiriakou? Oh my God. I, I don't remember that.
33:44 Speaker 04 They locked down. It might've been before you came. The whole, the whole place got locked down. But they found out who did it. But imagine how stupid that person was to put it over.
33:56 John Kiriakou? Yeah, that's really stupid.
33:59 Speaker 04 And the people who made the hooch are the people who had long sentences because what they didn't care.
34:04 John Kiriakou? Yeah, they didn't care. And it was like the, the guys that just had to have a cigarette. I know I'm getting off the, the subject of food, but the guards in violation of, of, you know, all the rules would chew tobacco. And then they would just dig into their lip and fling the tobacco onto the ground. And guys, yeah, guys would collect the chewed tobacco, dry it out, roll it in toilet paper and then sell it for a Mac. And people would smoke previously chewed chewing tobacco rolled in toilet paper. Because they so desperately had to have a cigarette.
34:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
34:44 John Kiriakou? Gross.
34:45 Speaker 04 Yeah. I was a heavy smoker with cigarettes. I didn't smoke nothing in there.
34:50 John Kiriakou? No.
34:51 Speaker 04 But the minute I got out, I don't know, I bought a pack.
34:56 John Kiriakou? So how you you've got a successful restaurant right now, a successful pizzeria. You post on Facebook pictures of your beautiful food.
35:04 Speaker 04 Yeah.
35:05 John Kiriakou? How different is it now from when it was in there?
35:10 Speaker 04 Well, different is I can walk out to the refrigerator.
35:15 Speaker 04 And I ask nobody, except my wife, she's the boss too, so. But it's just, it was a really experience in there. But me, me and you and the rest of the guys, we had a good, we had a good in there.
35:32 John Kiriakou? Yeah, I hate to say that, you know, people ask me every once in a while if I miss it. And I say, absolutely not, I don't miss anything about it at all, nothing.
35:46 Speaker 04 Yeah.
35:47 John Kiriakou? But then, you know, when I'm sitting here with Joey, or I'm sitting with Mark Lanzalati.
35:52 Speaker 04 Good times.
35:53 John Kiriakou? Or Brett, yeah, we actually, we made it okay for each other.
35:58 Speaker 04 Yeah.
35:59 John Kiriakou? Yeah, I did, I used to go down to Mark's cell almost every night because he was cooking every single night. And of course, he would give me, just like you did.
36:09 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:10 John Kiriakou? Two or three times more food than I could possibly eat.
36:14 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:14 John Kiriakou? And so I'd eat until I was full. And then I'd, you know, go for the second seating two hours later and eat again. And put on those 35 pounds, but the food was so good, I told you this, and I told Mark that I would, I would spend $35 for this in an Italian restaurant outside. That's how good it was. You, more than Mark, made desserts on top of it. How in the world did you make dessert? And what desserts did you make?
36:46 Speaker 04 I made cannolis one time for Nikki.
36:50 Speaker 04 He couldn't believe it, he thought, where'd you get these from the outside? I said, no, Nikki, I bought, I, they, they had these little cookies and commensary, but they looked like a shell, and it looked like an Italian pastry.
37:04 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
37:04 Speaker 04 So I, I said, let me see what I need for this now, I gotta ask the guard. So I needed heavy whipping cream.
37:14 Speaker 04 Um, some kind of cheese.
37:18 Speaker 04 And I don't know, something else within. I say a day or two, he brought it to me. And I just, I put there, I would taste it and I just taste like cannoli. So that made the cannolis.
37:35 John Kiriakou? Amazing.
37:36 Speaker 04 Cakes, remember the cakes we made?
37:38 John Kiriakou? The cakes, I remember that.
37:40 Speaker 04 John, the cakes we made, they were like store bought in cakes.
37:44 John Kiriakou? They were, they were like, but you made, you, you made a flourless cake one time.
37:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
37:50 John Kiriakou? It was like a lemon cake or something like that. That was ridiculous. I was like, dude, you made this in a garbage pail?
37:58 Speaker 04 We even got lemons.
38:00 John Kiriakou? And we even got lemons.
38:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
38:02 John Kiriakou? You made lemon cake from scratch. Have you adapted? Any of those crazy, uh? Those crazy recipes to, to what you're doing now?
38:12 Speaker 04 Not really, no.
38:14 John Kiriakou? It actually wouldn't make sense. It would be kind of depressing.
38:17 Speaker 04 I tell you, I go on TikTok sometimes and I see these people that just got out of prison and they're, they showing their family. This is how we in and they're cooking just like they, he would have a stinger and everything. I, I would never do that. Bring that outside and do that. You know what I mean? He was kitchen at home. With a stinger and a plastic bag and the garbage pail.
38:39 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
38:40 Speaker 04 I, well, I don't want to go that.
38:41 John Kiriakou? No, no, that's, that's nuts.
38:43 Speaker 04 No.
38:44 John Kiriakou? Yeah, you don't want to do that.
38:46 Speaker 04 But not to change the subject, but I just got to say again, when I, uh, first walked into prison. Two guys. Came to my room. One was Chris and I don't know who the other one was. Nikki wants to see you. I said, okay. So I walked up to Nikki's room. There was like four or five guys. I said, oh man, to myself, what's going on? Well, Nicky says, "Sit down on this chair." I sat down. Now, the guys are standing here. Nicky's behind me. All of a sudden, he puts his hand on my head. And he goes like this. He goes, I said to myself, I said, "I think I'm gonna get something shanked or something's wrong." "Should I run or what should I do?"
39:31 Speaker 04 He goes, "You're lucky I like you, Joey. You're lucky I like you." I said, "Nicky, phew." Yeah, it was, it was crazy stuff that went on there.
39:40 John Kiriakou? Yeah, he, he was, he was a very important and very scary guy. I'll tell you, one of the things that I learned really quickly, hanging out with the Italians, is you never, ever wanted somebody to say about you, "You believe this fucking guy."
39:59 John Kiriakou? Then you knew you were on the list. Yeah. Yeah. No, you never wanted to be this fucking guy.
40:07 Speaker 04 Who was Nicky's cellmate, the old guy?
40:12 John Kiriakou? Yeah, I remember it. It was, uh...
40:15 Speaker 04 Oh, I can't remember.
40:17 John Kiriakou? Gate.
40:19 Speaker 04 I just, I don't know. I can't remember.
40:21 John Kiriakou? Ga- Gaetano is, Gaetano was his name. He went by Gate.
40:25 Speaker 04 The old guy?
40:26 John Kiriakou? Yeah, the old guy.
40:27 Speaker 04 Jake, remember Jake?
40:29 John Kiriakou? Sure.
40:30 Speaker 04 The old man, let me tell you a quick story. He was going back, he had life.
40:35 John Kiriakou? Yes.
40:35 Speaker 04 He was a high-ranked mobster, too. Upstate New York.
40:39 John Kiriakou? Yep.
40:39 Speaker 04 Got life. So, one day, we're all in a room eating, he says, "Guys, I'm going back to court. I'm gonna overturn my life." We're like, now, he's, he's, uh, seventy-two years old saying this. "Jake, we're so proud of you. All right, let us know what happens." So, he goes to court, comes back, he goes, "I did it. They overturned my life. They gave me fifty years."
41:01 John Kiriakou? I remember that.
41:02 Speaker 04 We all, we all, we all...
41:04 John Kiriakou? Yay. Only fifty years.
41:09 Speaker 04 Fake.
41:10 John Kiriakou? Hey, there was one guy from upstate. I won't say his name. He asked me if I would write his appeal. He had thirty years.
41:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
41:18 John Kiriakou? I said, "Sure. Let me see your case papers, and we'll figure something out. I'll write your appeal." "Listen, I did what they convicted me of doing. I killed a guy. Don't get me wrong," he says. "If I could, I'd dig him up and kill him again. But thirty years, it's not reasonable." I was like, "Oh, man, that's not the right attitude."
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42:40 John Kiriakou? What's next for you? You, um, you've got the pizzeria. You've moved, actually. You lived in, uh, in Connecticut.
42:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, Connecticut.
42:48 John Kiriakou? Moved down to North Carolina. So, so what's next?
42:53 Speaker 04 I'm older now, 58 years old. I just turned that June 27th. I'm gonna stay here. I, I have a wonderful wife. My mom has dementia.
43:03 John Kiriakou? I'm sorry.
43:04 Speaker 04 Lived here, so that's why I came down, because she, something was wrong with her. We didn't know what it was. Then I came down and found out she had dementia.
43:11 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
43:11 Speaker 04 Book her in with me. I will not put her in a home, John.
43:15 John Kiriakou? No, you're, you're a good son.
43:17 Speaker 04 And we live here now. I do my very best. I'm the only child, so she took care of me all them years.
43:25 John Kiriakou? That's right. That's right. I forgot you were an only child.
43:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, now it's my turn.
43:30 John Kiriakou? Yeah. Yep.
43:32 Speaker 04 But I'm happy to be out. I'm happy to be out in New York, Connecticut. Here is so peaceful.
43:38 John Kiriakou? North Carolina is nice, very nice.
43:41 Speaker 04 Oh, wait a minute, John. You know, we forgot your cellie. I don't know if we could bring that up.
43:46 John Kiriakou? Which one? Oh, that crazy guy, the Afghan?
43:49 Speaker 04 John.
43:50 John Kiriakou? Oh, my God.
43:52 Speaker 04 You gotta do something with this guy. So John, just go out to the yard.
43:55 John Kiriakou? His name was Cher. He had his arm blown off by an IED in Afghanistan. This guy was certifiably insane. Any psychiatrist in America would have certified him as insane.
44:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
44:12 John Kiriakou? Because we knew he was insane. We plotted to push him over the edge. Just to get him transferred to another prison and be rid of him. You were a major part of that operation. My bunkie was Frank Russo. He was the Auditor General of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and he was actually arrested while he was running for Governor of Ohio.
44:36 Speaker 04 Yeah.
44:36 John Kiriakou? He would have won. Frank was a natural politician, but Frank said something. When you and I finally pushed him over the edge and he lost his mind, they took him to solitary and then they sent him to another prison. Frank said, "Thank God, we finally got him into solitary because I was gonna take a poop in his boots."
44:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
44:57 John Kiriakou? And he meant it literally. He was literally going to poop in the guy's boots. You did something to him that was so funny that 11 years later, I still laugh about it when I think about it.
45:13 Speaker 04 Tell the story, John. You say it better.
45:15 John Kiriakou? Oh, my God. So this guy was nothing but trouble. He had no respect for anybody's property. He had no respect for anybody's space or time. You remember how hot it was in our housing unit because we had no windows.
45:31 Speaker 04 Yes.
45:31 John Kiriakou? And so they had these gigantic fans. And he would just like pull his pants down and air out his balls in front of the giant fan. And we're like, dude, you're gonna get shanked doing that, right? Muted is unacceptable in prison and you're just standing there airing out your balls. So we started doing things, just messing with him and...
45:59 John Kiriakou? Making a long story short, what you came up with was so friggin hilarious. He was a very, very pious Shia Muslim. I mean, it's kind of a disconnect, being very, very religious and being very, very child molester.
46:17 Speaker 04 Right.
46:18 John Kiriakou? So, um, yeah, it's incongruous. Who could explain it? So, anyway, he had this prayer rug that was his pride and joy. It was like the only possession that he cared about.
46:31 Speaker 04 John, I used to get sick of him seeing him kneeling on that rug. Choke him every day, John. John, and you were so upset. I said, John, we gotta do something to this guy. I said, go to the yard. I'll take care of this, John. You said, okay.
46:47 John Kiriakou? You did. You took care of it.
46:49 Speaker 04 Yeah.
46:50 John Kiriakou? You made me look completely innocent because it was out of the yard.
46:55 Speaker 04 Right.
46:55 John Kiriakou? Everybody thought that I was the one doing this stuff, and I was doing a lot of it. But what really pushed him over the edge was you. So, the guards were watching me.
47:04 Speaker 04 Yes.
47:05 John Kiriakou? They were gonna catch me, torture this guy.
47:08 Speaker 04 Yep.
47:08 John Kiriakou? Figuratively speaking. I went out to the yard to kill time and walk around, and you...
47:16 Speaker 04 Took every locker first.
47:18 John Kiriakou? Yeah, you stole everything out of his locker, all of his candies, all of his food, his Diet Cokes. You stole everything. So, he opened the locker and it's just empty. He lost his mind, number one. Then, you wrote a giant erect dick on the prayer rug.
47:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
47:39 John Kiriakou? Sharpie. And so, he tore the bottom. It was on the bottom. The bottom was just plain. It was like a non-slip surface. He tore it off and threw it away, and then he said something that was so odd to me. He said, "At least they didn't draw an asshole. There's nothing worse than the human asshole. Nothing is filthier than the human asshole." Well, that's all he had to say. So, I told you, and then the next time he went out to play soccer, you wrote on it, "Asshole you are," and then you wrote underneath, "Yoda."
48:19 Speaker 04 Yeah. I don't like with stuff like that. John, before we killed him.
48:28 John Kiriakou? Yeah, we were gonna kill him. And then he finally lost his mind. I ran down to the unit manager's office and I said, I said, Cher's having a mental breakdown. So he called, um, well, the cops, SIS, they ran up, you could hear the keys jingling from a quarter mile away practically. And, um, and somebody from, uh, medical and they, they cuffed him, he was screaming, swearing.
48:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
48:55 John Kiriakou? He was gonna fuck our mothers, he was gonna fuck our sisters, he was gonna fuck us up the ass. He's gonna shove his fist up our asses. And that was the last I heard of him. He was just screaming, screaming these obscenities.
49:07 Speaker 04 So they transferred him, right? They got him out of there.
49:10 John Kiriakou? Yeah, they got him, they transferred him out before I left.
49:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's what we.
49:14 John Kiriakou? And, and what really pissed, uh, he, he had these, there were these two cousins or a cousin and a brother in law. They would come like every week and visit him. And nobody told them that he wasn't in the prison anymore. And these guys, these guys drove up and came all the way to the prison from Washington. And they were like, yeah, he, he, he doesn't live here.
49:33 Speaker 04 Right.
49:34 John Kiriakou? Where is he? Well, I don't know. New Jersey, maybe. I don't know. Oh, those guys were so mad.
49:40 Speaker 04 That's in the book too, isn't it?
49:42 John Kiriakou? Yeah.
49:43 Speaker 04 The book, right? Yeah.
49:45 John Kiriakou? Oh man, we made his life miserable.
49:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, I couldn't take that guy no more.
49:52 Speaker 04 We had to get him out.
49:53 John Kiriakou? We had to, for our own mental health, we had to get him out. Even the Muslims would not allow him to pray with them.
50:00 Speaker 04 Right.
50:01 John Kiriakou? He was nuts and he was, he was judgmental and he was cruel. And he would call, he would call, cause most of the Muslims are, are black Muslims, they're converts. And he would call them fake Muslims.
50:14 Speaker 04 Yeah. Oh yeah. I remember him.
50:17 John Kiriakou? Yeah, and you're gonna tell these, these totally ripped stacked giant black guys.
50:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:23 John Kiriakou? That they're fake Muslims and they don't know what they're doing. And they're gonna, they're gonna destroy him. And do you remember what we finally did? Or you did, you put pork salami under his pillow.
50:34 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. Yes. Wait, cut it. You cut it. I remember.
50:38 John Kiriakou? I did. I cut it. I cut it into slices and we laid it out under his pillow. And it was there all day and it was so hot in the summer. We didn't have air conditioning. So it's like 90 degrees in there. We used to soak our bath towels in water.
50:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:52 John Kiriakou? And lay on our beds with a wet bath towel just to try to cool off. So that salami was, was, you know, cooking, fermenting all day under his pillow. And I remember after he freaked out and they took him to solitary. These black Muslims came to the cell and they stood at the, at the entrance.
51:09 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:10 John Kiriakou? And the stain from the salami was on the pillow and the sheets. And one of them said, they done him in with the swine.
51:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
51:20 John Kiriakou? Honest to God, if it wasn't for Joey and Mark and Pete, I'm not sure how I could have gotten through it.
51:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, cuz when you came in, everybody was like, oh, the CIA, the cops, don't, don't go near that guy.
51:35 John Kiriakou? The first like four weeks, I kept my distance. I kept my mouth shut.
51:39 Speaker 04 Yeah, you did.
51:40 John Kiriakou? I went to get a haircut and Pete was in there getting a haircut.
51:44 Speaker 04 Yep.
51:45 John Kiriakou? And I just started making small talk with him. And he said to me, listen, I gotta tell you, I know who you are. And you carry yourself far better than I expected you would. And I said, I appreciate that. I was trying to be as tough as I could. I said, truth be told, I'm not afraid of anybody.
52:03 Speaker 04 Right.
52:03 John Kiriakou? Which was bullshit, of course, but I said, I'm not afraid of anybody. And he said, good, keep that up.
52:09 Speaker 04 Yeah.
52:10 John Kiriakou? And we were friends from then on.
52:12 Speaker 04 I still talk to Nikki's main guy there, George. I don't know if you remember George.
52:16 John Kiriakou? I remember George well.
52:18 Speaker 04 With that raspy voice. I talk to him all the time.
52:21 John Kiriakou? Excellent. And I'm, I'm in constant touch with Mark and with Brett. Which came up in that trial the other day. Well, you brag that you're still in touch with members of organized crime. And I say, I said, yes, I am. And they're good and honorable men.
52:37 Speaker 04 Yeah.
52:39 John Kiriakou? Which was not the response they expected. Right. They expected me to say, "No, no, no, that was a lifetime ago." I said, "Yeah, I talk to them all the time, and they're dear friends." And then I turned to the jury. Oh, I'm so proud of myself. I turned to the jury, and I said, "There was a crooked congressman from Ohio named Nye." He was in prison in Ohio, federal prison, on a corruption charge. He did 23 months, just like I did. When he got out of prison, he said, "Nobody goes to prison to make friends, but the friends that I made in prison are lifelong friends." That was true. There are a lot of people in prison who are innocent. There are a lot of people in prison who are guilty but who don't deserve to be in prison.
53:23 John Kiriakou? And there are a lot of people in prison who are good and decent people. And those are my friends. And as I hope you now agree, one of those very good and decent people is my friend Joey. Thank you again for sitting in with me, Joey. I think I owe you dinner. A really good one. In our next episode, we'll get back to the prison grind as my outdate approaches. I've got more reason than ever to keep my head down, but, you know, it's still prison. Prison rules still applied, and I had unfinished business that needed attending to. A whistleblowing federal prisoner's gotta do what a whistleblowing federal prisoner's gotta do. Until then, please don't forget to like, rate, review, or comment on the podcast. It really does help.
54:07 John Kiriakou? Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou.
54:11 John Kiriakou? Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast. And John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.
54:37 Speaker 02 This podcast, it's a Coster and Touchstone production.
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