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

by John Kiriakou

Overview

Winner of the 2016 PEN First Amendment Award
Winner of the 2016 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence
Winner of the 2016 Blueprint International Whistleblowing Prize for Bravery and Integrity in the Public Interest
Winner of the 2013 Peacemaker of the Year Award
Winner of the 2012 Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage

On February 28, 2013, after pleading guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, John Kiriakou began serving a thirty month prison sentence. His crime: blowing the whistle on the CIA's use of torture on al Qaeda prisoners.

Doing Time Like a Spy is Kiriakou's memoir of his twenty-three months in prison. Using twenty life skills he learned in CIA operational training, he was able to keep himself safe and at the top of the prison social heap. Including his award-winning blog series "Letters from Loretto," Doing Time Like a Spy is at once a searing journal of daily prison life and an alternately funny and heartbreaking commentary on the federal prison system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947856325
Publisher:	Rare Bird Books
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	413,932
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. He was responsible for the capture in Pakistan in 2002 of Abu Zubaydah, then believed to be the third-ranking official in al Qaeda. In 2007, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, telling ABC News that the CIA tortured prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved by then-President George W. Bush. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act — a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of the revelation.

In 2012, Kiriakou was honored with the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, an award given to individuals who “advance truth and justice despite the personal risk it creates,” and by the inclusion of his portrait in artist Robert Shetterly’s series Americans Who Tell the Truth, which features notable truth-tellers throughout American history. He won the PEN Center USA’s prestigious First Amendment Award in 2015, the first Blueprint International Whistleblowing Prize for Bravery and Integrity in the Public Interest in 2016, and the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, also in 2016.

Kiriakou is the author of The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror and The Convenient Terrorist: Abu Zubaydah and the Weird Wonderland of America’s Secret Wars.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Kiriakou cracks open the CIA’s vault, revealing an unusually human inside account of what goes on inside. A vivid picture of the tradeoffs facing America in the post 9/11 world."

—Jane Mayer, staff writer, The New Yorker Magazine and author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right and The Dark Side: How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

“Doing Time Like a Spy is an unusual and outstanding book: part prison memoir, part CIA tradecraft instruction manual. If you ever wondered how a seasoned CIA case officer operates, or how he might use his covert skills to survive an experience as brutal as prison, this is your book. In fact, it contains so much valuable information and so many insights the Agency ought to issue it to new recruits. But of course, its author is John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on torture, and if the powers that be were vindictive enough to imprison him for that, it’s a safe bet they’ll be spiteful enough to try to keep young recruits from reading him. Go around the censors—you’ll be glad you did.”

—Barry Eisler, Former CIA Officer and bestselling author of The God's Eye View

"The true life story of a US spy on the frontlines of the war on terror, and what that meant for both his personal and professional life. Doing Time Like A Spy is a gripping page turner that reads better than fiction. A great read about the murky world of American espionage."

—Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. and Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden

"The Obama Administration and the US Government set out to make an example of John Kiriakou. They succeeded beyond the wildest dreams. John is a shining example of courage, principal, and the America we are struggling to preserve. This guy took a bullet for all of us. We are forever in his debt."

—Marc Ash, publisher, Reader Supported News

"John Kiriakou has done things the hard way, standing up to federal authority for years. The CIA couldn't silence him when, after fifteen years as an analyst and operations officer, he said the CIA was torturing its prisoners, an act of heroism that cost him two years of his freedom. The Bureau of Prisons couldn't silence him when, wrongly-confined, he exposed waste, fraud, abuse, and illegality in the prison system in a series of blogs that put him under constant threat of solitary confinement. And he did it all without losing his sense of humor. Doing Time Like a Spy is a must read."

—Daniel Ellsberg, Whistleblower and author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

With a touch of humor and more than a bit of irony, Kiriakou sheds light on the sad reality that his CIA training amply prepared him to thrive in a US prison. What should outrage the rest of us is that Kiriakou was in prison at all! In fact, Kiriakou's gentleness is on full display in this book—which makes his circumstances more understandable and outrageous at the same time. And it causes me to ask, "How can we ever call it a 'Justice' system when an act of conscience that exposes US state crimes is punished and not those who authorized the crimes?"

—Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

Editorial Reviews

"Kiriakou confidently portrays himself as a larger-than-life survivor type, justifiably proud of his stance against CIA-sanctioned torture...An irreverent and unsettling footnote to the war on terror."
—Kirkus Reviews

"A great memoir offers the-rest-of-the-story appeal, and when the CIA, 9/11, waterboarding, whistleblowing, scapegoating, coverups, and federal prison all factor in, the page turning reaches hyperdrive."
—Foreword Reviews

"Ex–CIA agent and anti-torture whistleblower Kiriakou wrote this book while serving 30 months for disclosing classified information. Part jailhouse memoir, part tradecraft manual, it shares Agency skills that kept him at the top of the prison pecking order—relevant advice for our new age of executive leaks and consequences."
—The Washingtonian

"An especially appreciated and uncommon contribution to our national discussion about the value of revealing governmental misconduct despite federal laws prohibiting such exposures, Doing Time Like A Spy deserves as wide an audience and readership as possible."
—Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher

2017-03-15
A maverick spy's season in prison.Kiriakou (The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror, 2010) writes that whistleblowing the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program ended his career and led to his prosecution for inadvertently violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act: "I took a plea to one count," he writes. "I didn't fear prison. I was tougher than the CIA thought I was." Still, he was surprised to find that "the training and experience that I had amassed in my CIA career would prepare me to survive and thrive in prison." Kiriakou references 20 famous espionage "rules"—e.g., "admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations"—as being particularly suited to incarceration, given that "prison is a combination of seventh grade, Lord of the Flies, and a mental institution." The author had expected to serve about two years in a federal work camp, but he was placed in a low-security prison. Although Kiriakou's burly physique and black-ops reputation protected him, he still found prison's brutal, unwritten social codes to be challenging: "There were many more weirdos, lunatics, and freaks than there were good guys." He notes that due to persistent segregation, he spent a year dining with the self-proclaimed "Aryans" before being invited to join the "Italians" (organized crime members). While Kiriakou speaks highly of a few helpful friends, he is disparaging of most of the people he encountered behind bars, particularly the high population of pedophiles (scorned by all other inmates) and the guards. "There were certainly some COs I respected," he writes. "The sad truth, however, is that most COs are assholes." Kiriakou confidently portrays himself as a larger-than-life survivor type, justifiably proud of his stance against CIA-sanctioned torture, but the book suffers from being overly cranky and exceedingly anecdotal. An irreverent and unsettling footnote to the war on terror.

Kirkus Reviews