“Even if torture works, it cannot be tolerated — not in one case or a thousand or a million. If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sorts of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable. I may have found myself on the wrong side of government on torture. But I’m on the right side of history. There are things we should not do, even in the name of national security. One of them, I now firmly believe, is torture.” Former CIA Analyst John Kiriakou

Doing Time Like A Spy is former CIA analyst John Kiriakou’s memoir of his twenty-three months in prison. Using life skills he learned in CIA operational training, he was able to keep himself safe and at the top of the prison social heap. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today

In 2007, Kiriakou revealed the CIA’s torture program — including waterboarding technics used on Al Qaeda prisoners — during an interview with ABC News. Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months at the Loretto Federal Correctional Institution near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

His term began on February 28 2013. Kiriakou was released on February 3 2015. He served the remaining three months of his term at his home in Arlington, Virginia.

New Book: “Doing Time Like A Spy”

In his new book — to be released May 3 2017 — John Kiriakou shares his experience in prison from a perspective the Justice Department could not have imagined.

Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison.

Interview with RT about the book

CIA Life Skills — “I took 20 life lessons I learned through my years of CIA training, some of them are meant tongue in cheek, things like, ‘Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter-accusations.’ But there are others that are serious, [for instance], ‘When calm is not to your benefit, chaos is your friend.’ Or ‘Recruit spies to steal secrets or anything else that you need.’” Getting approval for the book — “It took them eight months to get back to me, they sent me a letter saying that they needed another year. I said, that’s not the way it works, you have 30 days, I’m going to send it to the publisher. And a week later, they came back and said it was clear. They redacted one sentence, which I was happy to take out.” Welcome to Jail — “My very first day in prison, the guard told me that if somebody walks into your cell uninvited, that is an act of aggression, and you’re going to have to defend yourself. Well, I’d only been in prison for 40 minutes when two Aryans walked into my cell, one of them with an enormous swastika that took up the whole front of his neck.” Aryans and Italians — The Aryans asked if he was gay, an informant or a child molester, and when he said no to all three… invited him to sit with them at the cafeteria. Later on, he met an Italian – in this case, meaning ‘a member of the organized crime family’ – who said very dramatically that Kiriakou should be sitting with the Italians from then on. Darkest Day — “Two of the guards, correction officers, tried to trick me into doing physical harm to another prisoner by telling me that he had received orders to kill me in prison. In fact, they called the other guy, and told him that I had received orders to kill him. That was kind of my darkest day.”

CIA torture whistleblower talks prison sentence, new book

REFERENCES

John Kiriakou — Webpage

Doing Time Like A Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison Hardcover – May 16, 2017 by John Kiriakou (Author)

‘Doing time as a spy’: CIA whistleblower Kiriakou on surviving jail term & his upcoming book — RT

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Former CIA John Kiriakou: “Doing Time Like A Spy”