John Kiriakou's Dead Drop - S2E2 Rules Of The Game

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

THE BLURB: One thing about prison, there are rules upon rules. Upon rules. In this episode, John realizes that he's going to have to live by his own rules in order to survive. Those rules will be entirely based on the rules John learned - and had to live by - as a spy. As John keeps learning, there's an amazing amount of similarity between living life as a federal prisoner and living life as a spy.SHOW NOTESIf you are enjoying Dead Drop, please check out our other podcasts at Costard & Touchstone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production. Every prisoner within one week of arrival at Loretto must find a job. It's one of the rules. The thing is, you see, there are four times as many prisoners as there are jobs. So it's a really dumb rule, and it's why most jobs at Loretto are either make work or no work. We'll be telling a story about corruption inside the prison system this season, so please make note. This kind of bullshit is baked into the...

architecture. It may not have been created out of corruption, but it breeds corruption. Lots of prisoners become standby orderlies, or technically they're on call in case of some sort of janitorial emergency, whatever that is. They make 60 cents a month for doing literally nothing. Just as well, I doubt any of them know much about, let's say, plumbing. The worst possible jobs, though, are in food service. That said, prisoners who work in the kitchen get larger portions, and they can steal whatever they want. Landscaping and snow removal are also horrible jobs. The work call when it's snowing is 4 a.m. For a very brief moment, my idealism got the best of me. I volunteered to be a GED tutor. I figured I could genuinely help someone learn to read and graduate with a high school

equivalency. My prison counselor slapped that down immediately. His exact words to me were, If I wanted you to teach a fucking class, I would have asked you to teach a fucking class. He shouted that right at my face. So point taken. Henceforth, I would resist all urges to help these crooked cops run their fucking prison. I'd help prisoners with their legal work, but that would be just between us prisoners. As for prison work, now that I truly understood the rule, I would do as little as humanly possible. My first job was in the library, which happened to be one of the very few air-conditioned rooms in the entire prison.

I reported to work at 7.30 a.m. For $16 a month, which was far better pay than being an orderly, I would wipe down the library's tables and chairs and dust and vacuum. Then I would just sit there, doing pretty much nothing until 10.30 a.m., which was the end of my workday. And that's when all the prisoners were moved from wherever they happen to be, back to their housing units, to wait for lunch call. I hated that library job from the second I got there. It wasn't the job itself, boring as it was. No, it was sitting in that room, even though it was air-conditioned. The library was part of the prison's education department, which, surprise, surprise, educated no one. The COs working there were lazy slabs, overbearing malcontents, and stone-cold bullies.

What I hated most about them was their attitudes. Seriously, who did these morons think they were. They get to tell me that I'm a piece of shit because I'm a prisoner when everything about them defines what being a piece of shit is. Some things are more important than air conditioning. I quit the library after six weeks and transferred to the chapel where the attitude was much more welcoming, like you might expect from a chapel. There was air conditioning. The chaplain was a genuinely nice guy. And I was free to answer letters and God knows I received a lot of letters. I I was free to watch movies as the chapel had its own video library, or I could just sit there and read books. But like everywhere else at Loretto, the chapel was filled with pedophiles.

The work was pleasant enough, though, and I got a lot of personal shit done. Part of that personal shit involved helping lots and lots of my fellow prisoners write coherent letters to judges, attorneys, and prisoners' rights groups. I helped illiterate prisoners write letters and emails home. I even designed one prisoner's website. My pay from the chapel was only $1.8 a month, but it was so worth it. Besides education and chapel, a prisoner could also work in recreation, in medical, the laundry, plumbing, facilities, wood shop, the psychology library, the barbershop, the kitchen, even in manufacturing.

Like I said, the kitchen remained the worst job in the whole prison. The morning shift began at 4 a.m. Conditions were harsh, and the COs in charge were the big, biggest douchebags. Despite all that, an enterprising prisoner could make a pretty good living in the kitchen. Not from the paltry salary, but from the outright thievery. There were two favored ways to do it. Most kitchen workers simply stole whatever was available that day. Donuts, bagels, scones, cookies. Yeah, scones. Not nice scones. Scones that had been dyed green for St. Patrick's Day from a year ago. The thieving prisoner would then go from unit to unit selling them two

bakery items for a bag of mackerel. Now, this notion of the bag of mackerel as currency is very important. Macrol, which was called a Mac in prison parlance, cost exactly $1 in the prison commissary. And so it was the de facto currency. If you wanted to gamble, you didn't have access to cash, of course, so you would throw in a bag of mac. You wanted to have an extra set of underwear. You would pay a guy who worked in the laundry to steal you some underwear for a bag of mac. You wanted to get a haircut. The barber, of course, is another prisoner who's getting paid, whatever he's getting paid every month, but you tip him a bag of Mac.

It became very, very important. The butchers and cooks had the better scam going. They would take orders from prisoners for a certain amount of meat per month, be it chicken, beef for pork, even if it was low quality. They would then steal that amount of chicken, beef, for pork for their customers. Each month, the recipient's family would then transfer $100 to, $150 into the butcher's or the cook's commissary account. That worked out great for them. For those of us eating the prison chowel, it meant chickenless chicken pot pie, hot dogs instead of roast beef, and sloppy

joes instead of porkloin. And remember, almost none of this was human-grade food. It was almost all animal-grade food. There was plenty of room for entrepreneurs. One guy made a decent living selling other prisoners used shoes. I actually bought two pairs of shoes from him. What I mean is he would sell another prisoner's old shoes that they weren't wearing anymore, or if the prisoner was being released, he would just get rid of his shoes for an extra couple of bucks, and this guy would take a commission from the sale. Some prisoners had convenience stores in their lockers. Seriously, they sold sodas, candies, chips, always with a standard 30% markup. There were also a dozen bookies at Loretto, a good friend of mine being the most successful

of them all. Some prisoners made thousands of dollars every month via gambling. The smart ones sent it all home to build a nest egg for their release. Other prisoners repaired radios. Some did unofficial, unlicensed chiropractic work. Some sold underwear, socks, and t-shirts all stolen from the laundry. And then there were the most enterprising. Their currency was Books of Stamps. Now, books of stamps sold at the time for $8.20.

On the street, so to speak, meaning in the halls of the prison, they were worth a flat $7. And so, rather than seven bags of mackerel stacked one on top of each other, a book of stamps was small, easy to hide, easy to use his currency. One prisoner provided, well, tantric massages behind the wreck building for one book of stamps. Those were complete with an index finger slathered in Vaseline. I'm not kidding. There was another prisoner who, for that same book of stamps, would let you watch him

shove an entire dialed deodorant roll on up his ass. A neat trick, if you can do it, I guess. Yet another entrepreneur sold his turnkey business and his list of a dozen clients for 65 books of stamps, quite a haul. His service offerings included a hand job for one book of stamps, a blow job for two books of stamps, or if you were feeling flush, you could pound him in the asked for five books of stamps. Me, I banked my dollar eight cents a month and relied on the generosity of family and friends for my necessary goods or anything else that I might need. But had I needed capitalism in prison, I was there. I'm John Kiriaku. Welcome to Dead Drop Season 2, doing time like a spy. As always, we thank you deeply for listening and especially

for being proactive listeners. It really does help every time you like, comment on or review the podcast. Not a revelation, life in prison is extremely regulated. It's all rules, rules, rules. The daily schedule is set in stone. Breakfast is at 6 a.m. Work call where everybody heads out to their work assignment, that's at 7.30. Recall where everybody must return to their respective housing units is at 10.20 a.m. lunch is at 11 and then afternoon work call is at 12.20 p.m. Afternoon recall is at three, dinner is at five, evening work call is at six, and final recall is 9 p.m. That's also when all prisoners are locked down for the night. Lights out is at 11.

The only change to that schedule is on weekends and holidays when breakfast is served at the leisurely hour of seven, and there is no work call. Weekends off, Yahoo. Prisoner movement is very tightly controlled. Prisoners can only move from point A to point B during something called 10-minute move. Once the 10 minutes have passed, you are locked down wherever you happen to be. If you want to go somewhere else, you'll have to wait 50 minutes. Interspersed throughout the day and the night are counts. All of them are meant to ensure that nobody has escaped.

Standing counts where you have to physically stand next to your bunk are at 4.15 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. Non-standing counts are held at midnight, 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. Since most everyone is asleep at those times, COs go from bed to bed shining a ridiculous brightly flashlight in your face. That's to make sure you haven't escaped. That was another dumb rule. Or was it?

Maybe my history with torture made me cynical. I don't know. We had been locked in our cubicle since 9 p.m. It was impossible for any prisoner to get through concrete, steel bars, bulletproof glass, over two 12-foot fences topped with concertina wire, past the night vision security cameras and the motion detectors, and then into the night. Those flashlights shined in our faces, served zero purpose. other than to disrupt our sleep.

And sleep disturbances are very much a torture technique. So stick a pin in that one. The learning curve in prison is steep, nasty, and unforgiving. There's no orientation to welcome you or to explain anything. You have to just pick everything up on your own. That's prison culture. Nobody helps anybody else. I had to constantly remind myself, John, keep quiet,

watch your back, and quickly figure out the stuff you need to know. So that's what I did. The prison had its rules? The prisoners had their rules. And I was going to have mine. Rules based on my training as a spy and every single experience I ever had as a spy working in the field. So welcome to John's rules to live by in order to survive federal prison. Rule number one.

Recruit spies to steal secrets or to steal anything else that I needed. Let's start by defining our terms, starting with the word secret. The secret is really any piece of information. information that is not publicly available. In the context of prison, most secrets are held by the prison administration and by the COs. The only way a secret might become valuable to an inmate is if that inmate could use the secret to his advantage. I'm not talking about rumors. We're going to get to rumors later. No, I'm talking about actionable information that one can use for one's own benefit. The same goes with unavailable goods. In the outside world, we take for granted

that the stuff we want or need is just to click away with free delivery. In prison, none of that stuff is easily accessible, if it's accessible at all. That means either you'll have to be open-minded about your wants and needs, or you're going to have to recruit people who are behind bars alongside you who can access the things you need and facilitate getting them to you. The CIA trained me to identify a target, ID their vulnerabilities, assess my best access to the target and their vulnerabilities, and then move in for the kill.

information, secret information especially, has great power. Used correctly, it has even more power. Now, there are four reasons why a person would go against their own best interests and steal secrets for a spy. Revenge, greed, ideology, and excitement. The best, from a spy's perspective, is ideology. Even though you may have nothing in common with your target, and even though your interests and backgrounds may be diametrically opposite, The spy's goal is to convince their target that they are kindred spirits and that doing what the spy wants is actually doing what they want.

If your target is a true believer, you could get them to believe practically anything. They really are the easiest to manipulate. Generally speaking, you really can't underestimate the collective stupidity and gullability of your average inmate peer. They'll almost always surprise you. The goal is to use that to your advantage, starting with convincing your target that you, are their best friend. Though no one helps anyone in prison, there you are, helping them, or so it seems. If you've done this correctly, your target should now be willing to take a personal risk on your behalf. Here's an example of how that might play out. Perhaps you're writing a book about

surviving and thriving in prison. Let's say you find yourself in need of a few metal binder clips to help keep your documents together. In the outside world, that's no problem. Depending on where you live. You might even be able to have them delivered into your hands in a few hours. But in prison, those metal binder clips are considered contraband and they're banned. Let's say you know, having seen them in the prison office complex supply room yourself, that there are hundreds of binder clips, rubber bands, paper clips, pens, pencils, and not the cheap ones from the commissary, and even a copy machine. Lots of goodies. How do you get access to them? One excellent way is to get to know the orderly who cleans the office. Obviously, they have regular routine access to it. If they have

access to it, you could have access to it. Another is to ask yourself, what makes this guy tick? Which of his vulnerabilities should you exploit? Which should you exploit first? What would convince him to risk a good job and the possibility of solitary confinement just to help you get those binder clips? Maybe he's got a social conscience and believes all in may be. should have binder clips, or maybe his gambling problems out of control. Maybe he needs cigarettes. Whatever could motivate him needs to be in your head. Let's examine a couple of possibilities, starting with revenge. I might say to my target, hey buddy, you know that asshole CO you work for? Did I tell you what he did to me? During a shakedown, that bastard took all my binder

clips. Now my legal work is in total chaos. It's like that jerk is trying to trample my constitutional rights to defend myself. Well, if you pitch it right, your now morally outraged target should say something like, hey, I can get you some of those binder clips. If they don't pick up on the queue, you can nudge it along with, too bad that piece of shit

doesn't trust you enough to give you access. In that case, you might hear, hey, wait a minute, I do have access, in which case you're then off and running. The best part of doing it that way, the target will walk away thinking that it was all his idea in the first place. Maybe greed is your best approach.

Let's say your target doesn't care about the CEO he works. for. Maybe he gets no money from home, or he gambles badly, or he smokes too much. You could offer to pay him with a dollar bag of mackerel, or if he really comes through for you, you could offer to pay him a whole book of stamps. Perhaps your target is deep into this us versus them thinking, the man is keeping us down, trying to control every aspect of our lives. Our first names in prison are inmate this or inmate that, and the target deeply resents such treatment. He's willing to give you those binder clips just because you're both inmates and you have to stick together against the

cops. Maybe in an earlier conversation you gave the target the impression that you care about him, you care about his family, you care about his problems. Finally, there's excitement at your disposal. Experts estimate that as many as 80% of American prison inmates have at least some degree of diagnosable mental illness. And most inmates have extremely low self-esteem. They want to be something that they simply aren't. To do something heroic and exciting, despite the fact that they are neither of those two things. What they are is impulsive. It's a good thing. Their impulsivity is your secret weapon to manipulate them. Even so, be careful. Impulsive thrill seekers, like the kind you meet in prison, are the most tricky to control, and they often get caught. I became friendly and later

roommates with Robert, an Australian arsonist. Robert had been convinced. convicted of burning down a Department of Motor Vehicles' office in Buffalo, New York, over a sales tax dispute. He was extremely gregarious, always joking, always wanting to be involved in everything. It also became clear to me quite quickly that Robert was a clinical sociopath. In fact, he would have checked every single box on Dr. Robert Hare's psychopathy checklist revised. Among the many characteristics that psychologists used to identify sociopaths is their pathological lying and my friend Robert was a full-on pathological liar. Sociopaths like Robert would rarely be motivated by greed or ideology. Frankly, a person with Robert's personality would rarely be motivated by

revenge, but Robert was an unusual case. He was an excitement junkie above all else. That made it easy to manipulate him. I just had to make him feel, well, involved. 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. It's a hell of a podcast, and you can find it 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. Properly engaged, Robert began to admire me. He wanted to be like me. That was less because of me and more because Robert was interested in other people, but only so far as he thought they could enhance his status or benefit him. By associating with me, Robert gained access to people who otherwise

would never have spoken to him. Robert had already marked some of those people for his next scam. People like me gave him access. As long as you understand sociopaths and their behaviors, you shouldn't have to fear them or fear being their next victim. You see them coming from miles and miles away. Then there's the part where you get to use their sociopathy for your benefit. Need sponges or rubber gloves?

Hey, Robert, he'd do it just because it was daring and exciting. Want food that was specific to the officer's mess? That's a job for Robert. Soon after my arrival, the prison went a full week without any meat in our meals in the cafeteria. Many of the inmates in the kitchen, the ones getting no money from home, were stealing the meat so that they could sell it to other inmates. All of the stolen meat was for sale in plastic bags in three or four cells. We all understood the profit motive.

But this was way too much. An entire week with literally no meat, I went to work on Robert. This is an outrage, I told him. We're being ripped off and they're taking food literally out of our mouths. Robert became so angry that he did exactly what I thought he would do. He dropped an anonymous note to the prison administration telling them where the meat could be found and who was stealing it. The result, almost the entire kitchen staff was fired.

The meat cellars were shaken down and the meat was confiscated. Over the next few weeks, prison meals became a bounty of carnivorous goodness. Coincidentally, two of the three meat thieves lived next door to Robert and routinely picked on him. In the end, they were sent to solitary. and then they were dispersed to other prisons. Robert would often ask me if he would have made a good CIA officer. Absolutely not, I would tell him resoundingly. Robert was congenial as hell, but that was his problem.

He just could not keep his mouth shut. Still, in the real world, if Robert had had access to classified information, I would definitely have recruited him. So he wouldn't have made a good spy, but as an intelligence asset, he would have been brilliant. Robert loved the entire idea of working clandestinely. He'd come up with ideas for operations and then go do them on his own, and then report it all back to me.

Like I said, he constantly sought my approval. One day, Robert recruited someone in the prison laundry. Very proud of himself. He came back to the cell with new sheets, new pillowcases, socks, and t-shirts for everybody. Thanks to Robert's successful operation to recruit a spy to steal laundry, I had enough underwear in socks to last a prison lifetime. Now this might all seem rather petty. That's because it is petty.

Prison life itself is petty. If you need a pencil, a highlighter, even just a rubber band, you have to steal it or you have to get somebody to steal it for you. You have to do whatever is in your power to make your life easier and more comfortable, but with as little risk as possible. Power, or the lack thereof, is the real problem in prison. You have but a limited amount of control over your own personal situation. The trick is to enhance that limited control by leveraging the skills, the access, the weaknesses, and the motivations of everyone around you.

Meanwhile, beyond Loretto's walls, America's conversation about torture was heating up. That was because, at the very same time that I was heading to Loretto, Columbia Pictures was preparing to release the movie Zero Dark 30 for a limited run in Los Angeles so that the movie could qualify for the 2013 Oscars. In January, as the film went into wider release around the country and became a resounding hit, it was inadvertently continuing what I had started. Written by Mark Bowell and directed by Catherine Bigelow, Zero Dark 30 told the story of the nearly decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden.

The movie got great reviews. In time, it would be nominated for all kinds of awards in pretty much every category, and it would go on to make over $132 million worldwide. It was a very well-made movie. Time magazine's Richard Corliss called it, quote, a fine movie, a police procedural on a grand scale, unquote. David Denby at the New Yorker wrote, quote, The virtue of Zero Dark 30 is that it pays close attention to the way life does work. It combines ruthlessness and humanity in a manner that is paradoxical and disconcerting, yet satisfying as art, unquote.

The New York Times critic Manola Dargis wrote, quote, it shows the unspeakable and lets us decide, if the death of bin Laden was worth the price we paid, unquote. The problem, and Dargis seems to have sensed it, was that the movie pushed the lie that torture had led America to Osama bin Laden. Or did it? That question, all by itself, was the movie pro-torture, caused a wave of journalistic outrage. Journalist Michael Wolf called the movie, quote,

a nasty piece of pulp and propaganda, unquote. And Bigelow, its director, he called a fetishist and a sadist. Wolfe disputed the efficacy of torture and the claim that it contributed to bin Laden's capture. Jane Mayer, the celebrated author of The Dark Side about the use of torture during the Bush administration and a writer at the New Yorker, accused Bigelow, quote, of milking the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked, unquote. In The Guardian, philosopher Slavoy Zizek criticized the movie's normalization of torture. To him, the movie's neutrality toward torture was already a type of

per se endorsement. My friend John McCain, who was tortured during his time as a POW in North Vietnam, said that the movie left him sick, quote, because it is wrong, unquote. Screenwriter Bull called the pro-torture accusations preposterous. Director Bigelow stands behind the movie completely. She said, quote, I think it's a deeply moral movie that questions the use of force. It questions what was done in the name of finding bin Laden, unquote. The key here is less the disagreement and much more the fact that America was having this conversation to begin with. Out in the open with lots of passion exactly the way we needed it to be. Torture was no longer flying under America's radar.

And how ironic. Back at Loretto, I was trying to fly under the radar. That takes us to rule number two of John's Rules for Prison Survival. Seek and utilize available cover or blend in with your environment. In the life of a field operative, this rule is very straightforward. When the shit hits the fan, get the hell away from the fan. Take cover immediately to protect yourself. Make yourself a difficult target for the flying shit.

In prison, that rule is just as important. When a predator enters a space in nature, the crickets stop chirping. The birds stop singing. the smaller animals all run for cover. It's pure survival instinct to seek cover and go silent. But as humans evolved, we lost that instinct. Now it takes training, like the kind I received at the farm, to regain those duck and cover instincts. Not having them can put you in extreme peril. In 2011 in Pakistan, a CIA contractor named Ray Davis shot and killed two Pakistani nationals who were trying to rob him in Lahore while he was stuck in traffic.

Being a contractor, Davis wasn't as well trained as he might have been. Seeing the men approach with guns drawn, he fired through his windshield, killing one of them. He then got out of his car and shot the second man in the back. Instead of seeking available cover, or in CIA parlance, getting off the X, or getting out of the kill zone, fleeing the scene, Ray Davis got back in his car, called the American Consulate for help, and sat and waited. A few minutes later, a consulate SUV sped to the scene, but before it got to Davis, the SUV struck and killed an innocent Pakistani man riding a bicycle.

That left Davis at the scene with the two dead gunmen laying in the street. He was standing there like a deer in the headlights as Pakistani police arrested him. On the plus side, they actually saved him from the murderous mob that was gathering. But Davis' situation was compounded when the Pakistani authorities found a black mask at the scene, a hundred bullets, and a cell phone containing photographs of Pakistani military installations. Had Ray Davis been a trained CIA field officer, he would have fled the shooting scene immediately and found his way to a safe house or some predetermined safe site. A good example of not seeking and utilizing available cover happened just after I arrived at Loretto.

A fight broke out in my housing unit. After the initial yelling, screaming, and swinging of fists, an eerie calm settled over. over the unit, not unlike what would happen in the jungle when a predator arrives. Everyone was quiet. The COs would be arriving any minute to investigate, having been tipped off by their many, many rats. Now, those who had spent a lot of their lives in prison, those who were used to the laws of the jungle, they did what wild animals do. Seek shelter as far from the trouble as possible. But to a white-collar first-time offender, like Randy, a newly arrived mortgage fraudster, The sudden calm seemed like a welcome relief to the chaos that preceded it.

Randy found the calm and quiet refreshing as he strolled into the unit after lunch. The halls and the nearby TV room were empty. It never occurred to Randy to even wonder why everyone was huddling in their cells, trying to make themselves invisible. Being a friendly guy, truly a fish out of water, Randy noticed Jose, a Mexican convicted of drug crimes. But Randy failed to notice Jose's puffy bruised face. You know, the kind of face you get from being in a fight.

Oblivious, Randy flashed Jose a thumbs up and said, Hey, Jose. Jose met Randy's eyes, presented a bloody fist, and squinting through his one good eye, he said, I gave him what he came for. Confused by what in the world Jose meant, Randy just smiled, flashed another thumbs up and said, okay then. As Randy continued toward his cell, he was confronted by Tyree, the six-foot-three, 300-pounder who had just been trained.

punches with Jose. Tyree had just overheard Randy's camaraderie with Jose, and he assumed that Randy had chosen sides. Without another thought, Tyree swung at Randy and began pounding him relentlessly with both fists. Had Randy known to use the rule of seeking and utilizing available cover. Rule number two, he wouldn't have been lying in a bloody heap in the corridor when the COs arrived and sent Tyree, Jose, and Randy all to solid. solitary confinement. Nothing Randy could say or do would change the fact that he would now spend the next six months in solitary pending the formal investigation that eventually would exonerate him. By then, Randy had learned the hard way that prison is a brutal combination of seventh grade,

Lord of the Flies, and a mental institution. Rule number three, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations. This rule is actually something of a joke at the CIA. It was even emblazoned on t-shirts and coffee mugs that we sold in the CIA gift shop. In truth, though, this rule can do a lot for you, especially if you're dealing with morons. Your refusal to admit anything, your quick denials of all accusations, and your incessant counter-accusations will often confuse and frustrate your accuser. You get bonus points for being extra loud and arrogant. Now, let's talk a little bit about lying. You don't necessarily have to be a bad person with dishonorable intentions to lie. Sometimes it's about something else entirely, like not wanting to disappoint someone you love,

respect, or admire. When you're a kid, it's the most natural thing in the world to deny spilling that glass of milk or taking the last cookie, even blaming a sibling that comes naturally to most kids. There's a fine line between not wanting to disappoint people and being malevolent toward them, between influence and manipulation, between being perceived. persuasive and being a con man. It's all a matter of intent. I encountered this behavior in a fellow prisoner almost as soon as I arrived at Loretto. Dennis had been convicted of running a Ponzi scheme for which he was serving a 20-year sentence. To hear Dennis tell it, it was all just a terrible mistake, a situation that got wildly out of control. Dennis admitted nothing and denied everything.

In his version, he was the victim, not the more than 500 people who lost $20 million because of him. Dennis described himself as a successful money manager who was brought down by a vindictive assistant U.S. attorney. She wanted to destroy Dennis because he had criticized her in a letter to his girlfriend that was intercepted by law enforcement authorities. In the letter, Dennis went on to brag about snookering the prosecution and the court. He predicted that he would get away with his crime because he was so much smarter than everyone else. He made no apologies for the private jet, for his condo in Beverly Hills, for his second home in London, the luxury vacations, or any other of the trappings of wealth. Dennis insisted that he had earned every one of those things, and if any

crime had been committed, his punishment should have been a short stint in a minimum security work camp. Alas, for Dennis, the court saw it differently. Yet Dennis wasn't all that perturbed. He still had plans and big ones. He told me that he still had a huge chunk of money hidden away, and that as As soon as he got to a work camp, he would escape to South America in a private jet that was waiting for him. He had lots of plans, but none of them involved taking responsibility for his actions. As Dennis's prosecution went on, he decided to cooperate with the authorities against his co-defendant. That is not at all an unusual decision, least of all for someone with Dennis' personality

type. But then a fellow inmate found Dennis' case documents on the computer in the prison's law library. he understood immediately that Dennis had been a rat, and he went to the white shot caller. The white shot caller then confronted Dennis with the document, checkmate, right? Maybe not. Dennis simply shrugged and denied the document's authenticity. He made counter-accusations against the prisoner who had ratted him out to the shot-collar. Whenever anyone asked Dennis what the trouble had been about, he said that his accuser was a rat

who had set him up to deflect attention from himself. They were crappy lies, but he stuck by them. He never admitted to testifying against his co-defendant, and he never had to move to the rat table in the cafeteria. It worked. Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations. In the next episode, I'll continue laying out my spy rules for the road in federal prison, and I'll introduce you to my small but tight circle of friends.

You're going to love them, almost as much as I did. Until you hate them, some of them anyway. So please don't forget to like, rate, comment on, or review the podcast. It helps more than you know. Thank you so much. And until then, I'm John Kirooku. Dead Drop is written by John Kirooku and Alan Katz. Kostart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast.

And John Kriaku, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers. This podcast, it's a Costa and Touchstone production.