John Kiriakou's Dead Drop - S2E3 Circle Of Friends

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

THE BLURB: In prison, nobody helps anybody. Except their friends. In this episode, John will introduce you to his circle of friends, some of whom remained his friend long after they all got out of prison. Relationships that would probably never have happened except for prison can become some of the most profound, satisfying relationships one has. As you'lll hear... SHOW NOTESIf you enjoy this podcast, please check out our other podcasts at Coastard & Touchstone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast, it's a Casterton Touchstone production. One of the things that the CIA taught us in training early on in the training program is that your success or failure as a case officer would be based on your ability to make and maintain relationships. That sounds a little bit dry, but it's true. And it's not just true in espionage. It's true in life. It's true in business, for example.

You have to be an. extrovert to be a successful spy. You have to enjoy being around people all the time. Even unsavory people. You have to be able to connect with them. You have to have something in common, something that you can talk to them about. Whether you're meeting with a president and talking about politics or meeting with a mob boss and talking about the pizza parlor business as an example, or meeting with a gang member, talking about the low quality of meth that happens to be out on the street at any given time, you have to be able to talk about everything. I'll give you another example. I recruited at one point in my career a particularly sensitive agent, so sensitive that I could not meet

with him in the country in which I recruited him. He had never been to the United States before. Headquarters reached out and said, why don't you fly him back to the U.S.? You fly him through one city. you fly home through a different city so it doesn't look like the two of you know each other or are coordinating a trip and then we'll put a team together from headquarters to meet with them welcome him debrief him so i did that he flew back to dc through milan i flew back to dc through frankfurt or munich one or the other i hate both those are the most frequent flights we reconnoitered in washington i booked him a room at the ritz carlton in northern virginia a big suite. I invited my boss, our lead analyst, and a senior case officer. He was a little bit nervous,

but very proud of himself. He had made it this far, and we were offering him tons of money. We get to the suite, and I introduce him to my colleague, and they're making small talk. My boss says something about whether or not he had ever been to the United States before, and he said, no, I've never been to the United States, and I'm very excited about it. In fact, I really hope that I have an extra day because I would love to take a quick trip to New York and see a Broadway show. I've never seen a Broadway show. And I said, oh, Iida just came out on Broadway.

And it's done by Elton John. It's a smash success. And the New York Times Review said this. And Time Magazine's Review said that. And people are coming out of the theater and they're in tears. It's so beautiful. You know what? We actually do have an extra couple of.

days. I'll get tickets to Aida and I'll take you to New York so you can see it. Oh, he said, that's wonderful. Later on, he mentioned, what is this sport that you have here called baseball? What is that exactly? And I said, oh, it's wonderful. Washington's trying to get its team back. And it looks like the Montreal Expos are going to move to Washington. They're going to call themselves something different. I said, I'm a lifelong baseball fan. Baltimore has a team. Baltimore's only an hour away, I'll get us two tickets, and then we can go see a baseball game. He said something about politics. We talked about American politics for a minute. And then he said something about the politics in his country, and we talked about that. At the end of the meeting, I told him,

I'll be back in three hours, and I'll pick you up, and we can go to dinner. And I went back to headquarters with my boss and my colleagues. And my boss said to me, I've got to tell you, I've been doing these meetings for 25 years. I have never seen somebody be able to speak so authoritatively about such disparate issues as you did today. Broadway, baseball, domestic politics, foreign politics. And we were even talking about what was on the cover of People magazine that week. And I said, you know, I enjoy those conversations.

I really do have disparate interests, but I read voracious. And I want to be able to speak intelligently with anybody about anything. And I think that when it comes right down to it, that's what made me a successful case officer. But remember, those skills are transferable to other aspects of life. And I found that I needed them very much once I got to prison. I'm John Kiriaku. Welcome to Season 2 of Dead Drop. What Makes a Spy Tick?

This is episode three of our series Doing Time Like a Spy Tick. spy. As always, we thank you from the very bottom of our hearts for listening and embracing the podcast. We thank you even more for liking, rating, reviewing, and sharing the podcast. It really does make a huge difference. It is critically, crucially important in prison to surround yourself with good people. There was a congressman from Ohio, Bob Nye, who went to prison in 2008 as part of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. And when he got out of prison after having served 30 months, he said in an interview, you don't go to prison to make friends.

But when I was in prison, I made friends that will last a lifetime. And I remember thinking that was nuts at the time. And then four years later, I was going to prison. I was determined to tough this out on my own. That is not possible. You have to be able to rely on. at least one person, somebody you can talk to to get you through it. Now, there is a huge difference between friends in prison and roommates or cellmates in prison. As I've mentioned, I was in a cell

built for four men. Six men were crammed into it. That was normal. The prison was built for 875 people. We had over 1,400 people on any given day. There's a lot of 1,000 people. There's a line for the showers, there's a line to use the toilet, there aren't enough seats in the TV room, people are living one on top of each other. You have to be able to at least tolerate the people that you're sharing a room with. And when I say sharing a room, I mean sharing a room that's roughly eight feet by 15 feet, and there are six people crammed in there. When you first arrive in prison, you don't get any say whatsoever in where you live or who you live with. You have to hope for the best and then tough it out. If you can do that for six months and not have any disciplinary

infractions, you can ask to be moved into another cell. A disciplinary infraction can be literally anything from not eating all the food on your plate, to telling a guard to go fuck himself or to getting caught stealing food from the cafeteria. You must eat all the food on your plate. That is just one of those petty modes of harassment that the guards use against you. And I'll give you one example. I've written extensively in consortium news and in covert action magazine about the quality of food in prison. Prisoners are not normally fed human-grade food.

We are fed animal-grade food. And indeed, on my very first full day in prison, it was a Friday. And Friday is, air quotes, fish day. I mentioned to one of the Italians across the hall from me, oh, okay, I like fish. And he said, oh, you're not going to like this fish. And I'm going to give you some friendly advice. Don't eat it.

We call it sewer trout. I went down to the cafeteria at lunch, and they had these boxes stacked up, completely illegally, of course, stacked up behind the serving guys in the chow line, and the boxes were clearly marked. Alaskan cod, product of China, so it's not Alaskan, it's Chinese, not for human consumption, feed use only, and they're slopping it onto the plates. So I just went hungry.

I ate the slice of white bread that they give you and a spoonful of canned green beans. And that was it. That was my food for the day. There was one incident where the warden had to send around a memo to everybody. There's this internal prison email system. So you can get an announcement from the warden. And the warden said, I'm very sorry, but a couple of months ago, you were accidentally fed dog food on taco night.

The mix up was not ours. The mix up was at the meat plant. They mislabeled the dog food as ground beef and they mislabeled the ground beef as dog food. The shame of that was not even that we were fed dog food. The shame was that we didn't even realize it was dog food because the regular food is not for human consumption. I actually did throw away my dinner one night. It was taco night, which was Tuesday nights. honest to God, I had such a bad experience with the so-called Mexican food in prison that I have never eaten Mexican food again.

So I threw it away and the warden happened to be standing there. And he always added out for me, but I outsmarted him. And he says, hey, you're supposed to eat everything on your plate. I said, I have eaten ass that tasted better than this. And I just dared him to lock me up in solitary for not eating animal-grade food. Because he knew I would go directly to CNN or to the Washington Post, and he backed off. His corruption worked in my favor. Bring it on.

Not afraid of you. Or you're solitary. Besides, I could stand to lose a couple of pounds and do nothing but sleep for 24 hours a day. There is nothing more important in prison than clemliness. People shower every single day, which I do. It's literally, before my eyes are completely open, I'm already in the shower. But everybody does that in prison, because if you are not clean and if you smell bad, you're going to get a beating from the other guys in the cell.

And so even these mentally ill homeless people who are in prison, they know enough to shower every day. Because if they don't, they're going to be stripped naked and physically thrown into a shower. And they're not going to like that experience. So everybody is very, very clean. Another thing is that everybody, and I mean this quite literally, everybody is constantly cleaning, somebody is always sweeping and mopping and dusting and rearranging. Nobody had a locker that was out of order. Besides, you're not allowed to have more than 10 books.

You're not allowed to have more than, you know, five letters. You're not allowed to have this. you're not allowed to have that, so you're constantly cleaning out your locker. Limited clutter because of the limited space. You're not allowed to have anything sitting on top of the locker. So you don't accumulate things. You do have personal space. You have your bunk and your locker.

Everything else is shared. My locker was always immaculate. Always. And so was my bunk. You have to make your bed. As soon as the lights come on at 6 a.m. you're allowed to go back to sleep, but you're only allowed to sleep on top of the made bed. You cannot be under the covers.

It's a hard and fast rule, and they'll throw you straight into solitary if you violate. So what guys do is they get up at six, they make the bed, they go straight back to sleep with their winter coat over them. So everything is very, very clean. There was one prisoner, a child molester, who was doing more than 20 years. He somehow took it on himself to just constantly, and I mean 365 days a year, constantly paint the unit. He somehow got permission from the warden to have access to paint, and he painted every single day. But that really wasn't so unusual. There was one of those guys in every housing unit, constantly painting so that it was all,

nice and fresh and clean. Now, the reason they did it is because the worst part of prison is the fact that it's Groundhog Day. Every single day is just like every other day. And it passes the time. For some of these guys, for most of these guys, it's working out and watching TV. At least in our prison, the Hispanics controlled half the TVs and the blacks controlled the other half of the TVs.

So we had eight TVs. four were Hispanic, four were black. On the black channels, I hate to stereotype, but this is just the way it is. They're watching MTV, VH1, BET, and one of the sports channels. The Hispanics are watching Telemundo, and I forget what the other Spanish language one is,

and ESPN and Español, and then, like, for whatever reason, CBS. Because some prisoner at some point liked the soap operas that CBS had on every day. And so the whites don't get to choose. Well, I just wasn't a big TV guy at the time. I don't watch Love and Hip Hop Atlanta. I don't watch, you know, Peru versus Venezuela soccer match.

And so I read, well, for many of the other prisoners, it was working out every day. And you get some prisoners who are nothing but rock, hard, knotted, muscle because there's nothing else to do but work out. I was very fortunate in that on my very first day in prison. I had only been in prison about four hours. We had mail call. And a lady from Ringgold, Georgia sent me a postcard of a rose. And she wrote a very nice note on the back of it. And I thought, my goodness, I don't even know this person. This was such a thoughtful gesture. And I made a decision at that moment that I would respond to every piece of mail that I got. Not having any idea

that in the next 23 months, I would write 7,000 letters to 675 different people. People who have become friends ever since. Ever since 2013, we've been regular friends in constant touch. It was wonderful. So for me, I was busy answering mail. And it kept me very, very, very busy and I was busy writing my book doing time like a spy, which started off as a joke. I didn't even intend for it to be a book. I just thought, I'd write down some of the more ridiculous, more absurd things that happened. When I first walked into the cell, nobody was in there. It was work call. And so they were all at their make work jobs. I was so depressed and in shock I just took a nap. So when I woke up, they were there.

And I popped up out of the bunk and I said, Hi, guys. My name's John. Are you the new Selly? I said, yes. What do you in for? They wanted to make sure I wasn't a pedophile. So I explained. None of these guys are people I would want to associate with.

I mean, even then or now. One of them moved out quickly and Frank Russo moved in. We'll get to Frank shortly. Some of them were released from prison. others wanted to be in cells with fellow gang members. It's really dangerous to mix buracos with Nortezios with MS-13, with the bloods and the crips, and you're waiting for a war to break out.

They prefer to be with their own people. And I understand that. There was one Chinese drug dealer that I was in with. I didn't understand him at all. He had been in the United States like 20-something years, and the only thing he could say was, motherfucker, and everything else was in Chinese, nobody knew what the hell he was talking about.

I very quietly did my six months. These guys generally did not like me. And they didn't like me because I had never been in prison before. And so when the red light went on signifying you have 120 seconds to get back to yourself or count, I didn't have any idea with the red light, man. Nobody ever said anything to me. With five seconds left, they ran over to the,

the email computers and physically pulled me by the shirt back into the cell before everybody got solitary because I wasn't in place for the afternoon standing count. Yeah, they didn't like that the guards didn't like me because that brought undue heat on the cell. And they were cooking and they were dealing in their stolen meat and one of them had a cell phone that you could call out for a dollar a minute and they just did not like me because I, I brought attention to them. The guards didn't like me for a couple of reasons. On my very first day, I went down to the cafeteria for a dinner call.

As I was walking past one of the guard, he whispered, traitor. And I just turned around and smiled and I said, okay, you go with that. Fucking asshole. That's why they didn't like me. They didn't like me that I ratted out the CIA. Because they all envisioned themselves one day as James Bond, which was hilarious because half of them barely got a GED. They're not going to be James Bond. And I thought, I'm tougher than you morons. Bring it. I'll take whatever you can give me. There were a couple who were decent guys. A couple,

like one in particular young guy pulled me aside and said, hey, how do I get into the CIA? I said, oh, well, you know, here's how I got into CIA, but you can't do that anymore. It's far less sexy. Now you just have to go to the website and click apply. Well, what's the training like? so I told him what the training was like. And then he kind of looked up into the air and said, no, I'm just fantasizing. My wife would never let me move out of Loretto. It's like Loretto has 1,200 people in it,

and it's in the mountains of West Central Pennsylvania. It's miserable. And literally the only job you can do there is to be a prison guard. But most of them were assholes. Later on, one of my Italian friends was talking to a guy who was arguably the most unpopular guard in the whole place. He went by the nickname Blue.

He had a piece of masking tape covering his nameplate because he didn't want anybody to track him down on the outside once they got released and knife him to death. But he never, ever caused me a problem. I don't think he ever actually spoke to me. So my Italian friend said to him one time, Hey, Blue, where are you going to be stationed from the next quarter? they would change assignments every quarter.

I'm going to go to Central One. My friend John lives in Central One. And he says, the CIA guy. And my Italian friend said, yeah, I never mess with that guy. And my Italian friend said, really, why? He said, that's all I need. Work eight hours at this job and then go outside and CNN standing next to my car. No thanks.

And I thought, yeah, good. Okay. The other ones want to fuck with me. And I'm going to fuck right back. About six weeks after I got there, I decided to file a Freedom of Information Act request on myself. Now, as part of my plea deal, I promised never to file a Freedom of Information Act request on myself. And I thought, I bet you they're too stupid to even implement that. What's the worst thing that could happen?

The worst thing that could happen is that they say no. So I filed the Freedom of Information Act request and I send it to the Bureau of Prisons. Sure enough, about six weeks later, they respond. respond. And it was a big, fat envelope, 250 pages. About 230 pages of it was silliness. It was my medical records. It was my visitors list. It was silly stuff like that. The remaining 20 pages were very, very important. Interestingly, they had all been stamped in red at the top and the bottom. FOIA exempt. Do not release to inmate. So either somebody was so stupid, at the Bureau of Prisons that they didn't notice that or didn't pay attention to it or whatever,

didn't know what it meant, or somebody at the Bureau of Prisons was taking pity on me. It could have been a fan even at the Bureau of Prisons. And that was kind of a recurring theme over the course of the next 23 months. Among what I found in these 20 pages was a memo in gigantic font. From the warden to all employees. in the prison from four days before I arrived and it says caution. Inmate has access to the media. It was followed up by a very in-depth memo on why nobody should mess with me, that I'm smart, I'm trained to be ruthless, I'm skilled, they just made this up, I'm skilled in escape.

I got to chuckle out of that one. I may have even laughed out loud and that nobody should mess with me. Well, for half of these dopes, that was licensed to mess with me, which was perfectly fine with me. And I said to one of them, I said, you're going to be in this prison far, far longer than I am. You live here eight hours a day. I'm going to be gone, living my life, making money, and you're still going to be in this prison. There was only one who meant me harm. He was the only African-American guy in the cell. He was from Virginia Beach, Virginia. He was a Ronnie guy and he wasn't connected to a gang. Everybody in the prison goes by a nickname, except most of the white guys don't, but all the Hispanics do and absolutely all the blacks do.

And so his nickname was watch out. Usually you choose your own nickname or it's a nickname from childhood. And interestingly enough, whenever they would do these pickup basketball tournaments, they would ask for your name, your prisoner ID number, your cell, and your nickname. Because you don't use your real name. You use just your nickname. Well, this guy's nickname was watch out. And he was such an asshole to me that I would never call him watch out. I would call him, look up. And then finally says, why the fuck can't you get my nickname right? And I said, who the fuck gave you that stupid nickname? Watch out, look up. What the fuck's the difference? And he backed off. He got his revenge against me, I guess, by stealing my glasses one night

while I was sleeping. It took me about five seconds to find them. He had just put them underneath the locker. But it was like so babyish and so petty. And then finally after my six months, I transferred out. It's a real process to move from one cell to the other. And there's no guarantee that you're going to be able to do it. It all comes down to the so-called counselor, right? The counselor is just a guard who's been assigned to be your designated pain in the ass.

I did my six months. There was a cell across the hall and down a couple that had a couple of good guys in it. Actually, Robert was in it, Robert the Australian arsonist, and Frank had moved there as well. They had an empty bed. Somebody had been released. I said, guys, how about if I move into your cell? They said, absolutely. So we cleared it with beard.

There was a pedophile in that cell who didn't get a vote. And then there was another empty bunk. We went to the counselor and I said, I'm going to put in for a move from this cell to that cell. And I've spoken to the guys in the new cell and they're all in agreement. You have to say that in writing. And he said, you haven't been here six months. Yeah, I have. Six months yesterday, as a matter of fact.

I'm going to check it. I said, and I expect that you would. And then he signed off on it. So I moved into the new cell. It was good. It took us a couple of weeks to sort of get it the way it ended up being. So it was Frank. Frank and I shared one bunk.

Dave Phillips had moved from Central 2 to Central 1 at the same time. So he took another bunk. The bunk above him was empty. And then there was beard and the pedophile. The pedophile knew that the rules were pedophiles can only sleep in the room. You can't hang out there. You can't sit there. You can't ever, ever have visitors.

No pedophiles are permitted to have visitors. He just sort of quietly did his time. 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 Custard 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.

Dave moved down from Central 1. And then about a week after Dave moved down, he and I were walking to lunch. And we saw a young kid who we learned later was named Eric sitting on a bunk in another cell and he was clearly scared to death. He looked like he was 18. It turned out he is 30. I believe from the very beginning, Eric should never have been in prison in the first place. Eric had autism and had zero experience with women. And so he looked at porn. He went to some website and three of the photos on the website were of underage girls. The FBI had put an electronic tag on these photos so they could see everybody who downloaded them. One morning, they broke down the door of Eric's parents' house. His dad was a sheriff, and they grabbed him.

Even the court-appointed psychologist said that he should not be prosecuted. He had no criminal intent. He wasn't out there looking for child pornography, seeking it out. He literally could not tell the difference between a 16-year-old girl to an 18-year-old girl. A lot of people couldn't. The prosecutors, though, were jerks about it, and they demanded prison time for a child sex crime in the federal system. There's a mandatory five-year minimum for a first offense. And so here this poor guy got five years in prison. We saw him sitting on that bunk on his very first day in prison, his very first hour. He had just arrived and he was scared to death. We decided Dave and I just to keep an eye on it. I had no idea at the time what his crime was, but I could tell that this poor kid was going to be raw meat for

somebody. Sure enough, there was a member of the Bloods gang who started to develop him. He would go in, hey, buddy, are you new? Oh, it looks like you don't have a pillow. Well, yeah, because he had stolen the pillow. Let me get you a pillow. Hey, I have some chocolates. Would you like some chocolate? He was doing it just to soften him up to rape him. He was weak. He was young. He was soft. He was compliant, and he was scared to death. Dave, to his credit. I mean, I'm like scoping out the situation. I'm trying to lay out a plan.

Dave says, fuck that. He just goes straight to the unit manager. And he says, this blood is going to rape this kid. Okay, well, he hasn't yet. So there's nothing I can do. What are you proposing? And I said, let's move him into our room. We can keep an eye on him there.

So not only did we move him into our room into that empty bunk, the blood was taken to solitary. And as he was being led away to solitary, he said, damn, somebody must have seen me go into that white boy's room, which is exactly what happened. That was the right thing to do. I took a lot of shit from people because technically Eric was a sex offender. Technically, that's what his crime said he was. He was not a sex offender.

He was not. He was just a guy, just a young guy who was the subject of overzealous prosecution. And so we could protect him. in our room. And that's what we ended up doing. That room stayed together as that core group of people for about 10 months. Dave ended up going to solitary and then was transferred to a prison in Ohio. We're going to talk about that. Frank, poor Frank, I was very, very close to Frank. When Frank was arrested, he was actually planning his campaign for governor of Ohio. And he would have won. Frank was one of the most natural-born politicians I've ever encountered in my life. He was as crooked as the day is long. But crooked

in kind of a good old 1930s way where he's taking kickbacks from big companies and then he's using the kickbacks to create jobs for his friends' kids. Right? So he's employing a ton of people. Sure, he used money to renovate his kitchen. or to repave his driveway. I get it. But I just love the guy. He was a terrific guy. Poor Frank.

I was laying in bed one morning early, and some guy ran into my cell and said, John, John, your friend Frank, he just had a heart attack and collapsed in pill line. What? Frank was in the hospital for six weeks. And then when he was released from the hospital, they transferred him immediately

to the prison hospital at Fort Devons, Massachusetts. And I never saw him again. And we had a couple of other new guys transfer into the room. But for the first 10 months, this was a really terrific room. I want to say a word about Beard. Beard's name was Beard, Marlon Beard. I still have such deep respect for Beard. Beard was one of these guys who had spent decades in prison.

He made a joke about it one time. We were talking about what we were going to do when we got out. And he said, I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do when I get out. I'm going to sell drugs. because that's all I know how to do. I just have to be more careful not to get caught. He said, I'm a career criminal. I can't change.

Actually, he did change. He's become a successful personal trainer and entrepreneur. He was the only African-American in the group. He worked out constantly. And when he wasn't working out, he was watching Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, 105th in Park or whatever that stupid show was called. And arguing with people. He once got into a fistfight over who had more money.

Jay-Z or Kanye. An actual fist fight. And we're like, Beard, are you nuts? You're going to go to solitary for that? Besides the fact that everybody knows Jay-Z has way more money than Kanye does. One of the reasons why I so deeply respect Beard, when my letters from Loretto took on a life of their own and became mainstream, thanks to Ariana Huffington at the Huffington Post,

I was the subject of shakedown after shakedown after shakedown. The cops would come into the room, clear everybody else. out and just trash our stuff. Throw pictures of my kids on the ground, walk all over them, just throw everybody's stuff everywhere out of their locker. And I would go in and say, guys, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, this is all my fault. It's because of me. It's because I'm so high profile.

And Beard said, buddy, you don't get it. They're doing this on purpose. They want to piss off the big black guy so that the big black guy either gives you a beating or find somebody else to give you a beating, keep doing what you're doing. You are the only reason that people on the outside know what life inside is like. And it was because of beard that I doubled down

and wrote even more than I had been writing. He protected me. Probably didn't even mean to. He just did. Roommates can be friends, but that's really the exception rather than the rule. Robert the Australian was the first person to befriend me when I first arrived. He did so on the first day. And I came to realize that's just Robert.

That's Robert's personality. Robert is, at his core, he's a sociopath. It's obvious that he's a stereotypical clinical sociopath. But he tries to mask his sociopathy with friendliness. So the minute I arrived, hi, how are you? I'm Robert. I'm from Australia. I'm here on an arson charge. What are you here for? What's your name? Let me introduce. you to the right people. You should meet Dave. Dave was in the CIA. He's upstairs in Central 2, and you should meet this guy and you should meet that guy. You're going to love Frank. Frank was the mayor of Cleveland. He wasn't the mayor. He was the editor general of Kiahoga County, which is bigger than the mayor of Cleveland. And it was Robert that introduced me to everybody at the very beginning.

Everybody. I considered Robert to be a friend, a prison friend, not a friend on the outside. He introduced me to a person that I called Dave Phillips, said he was a CIA officer. I doubted that. of course. There were a couple of problems with Dave from the outset. He wasn't exactly sure of the lingo. Lingo is a very important thing to me. It's how I can spot a CIA phony from a mile away, stolen valor, and it's like everybody who claims to be a member of SEAL Team 6. Well, you can't say Seal Team 1 and maybe budget. Everybody's got to be SEAL Team 6, the greatest of the great. Like so many of those fakes, I can spot a CIA fake from a mile away. The very first question, that two CIA officers meeting for the first time ask each other is what directorate were you in?

There are only four responses. Do, D.O., D.S.N.T. DA. The Directorate of Intelligence, the Directorate of Operations, the Directorate of Science and Technology, or the Directorate of Administration. So I asked him, what directorate were you in? He said DO. He didn't say operations. He said, DO, Directorate of Operations. That's the correct response. Then I said, what division were you in? which is always the second question. There are about three dozen answers. Near East operations, counterterrorism, Africa operations, this operations, that operations. And he said Africa operations, AF Division.

That's actually a correct response as well. Okay, but there was something that was just not quite right. He didn't know who the director of operations was. The DDO, the deputy director of the CIA for operations. He didn't know who that was. How can you not know who your boss is? There was another thing, too. There was a training center that's quite secret that he mentioned to me,

but he got the two names flip. I'm going to make this up. Cape Monroeville. He would call it Monroeville Cape. And I corrected him once. I said, actually, it's Cape Monroeville. He said, no, it's Monroeville Cape. I was like, okay, all right, that's not correct.

But I made a mental note. He obviously had some sort of exposure to the CIA at some point, but he had never been a CIA officer. He made up this very elaborate operation that he claimed to have been a member of. And he said he won a medal. Well, there are about a dozen medals that the CIA bestows. So I asked him which medal. The intelligence medal.

Yeah, which one? He didn't realize there were multiple intelligence medals. And then half of them are only given posthumously. I tripped him up there too. He was also incredibly jealous of my time. To the point where he was actively hostile when other people wanted to, to stop by and visit, go for a walk around the track. He hated it.

He was trying very, very hard to isolate me. And I resisted. I wouldn't let him isolate me. A couple of different people came up to me and said, be careful of him. There's something off about him. Mark Lanzalotti, who became my best friend in prison and remains one of my best friends in life,

was the first one to warn me about him, saying, something just doesn't sit right with this guy. You should be careful of him. Dave Phillips did not make my circle of friends. Dave Phillips also was willing to take risks that were unacceptable to me. Listen, I'm a risk taker. I've always been a risk taker, a major risk taker. But there are some things that are just plain stupid.

For instance, creating two shanks, one out of a razor blade that he dug out of a disposable razor, and the other out of an uncoiled spring. So one slashing weapon and one stabbing weapon. and then planting them in the possession of pedophile that we were having a dispute with. He asked me if I wanted to go with him, plant the shanks. And I said, are you out of your fucking mind? I don't want to be within 100 feet of shanks. I'm going home in a year.

The shanks were planted. He anonymously ratted out the pedophile as being in possession of shanks. The guards raid the cell. They find the shanks. They're not particularly well-hidden. and they arrest the pedophile. But then they also arrest Dave because they knew we were in a dispute

with this pedophile. They arrest Dave. They send the pedophile to some prison in New Jersey. They send Dave to a prison in Ohio. And then they call me into the lieutenant's office. They're trying to be tough guys. And they said, the only reason

we didn't send you to solitary and then send you to another prison is because we didn't see you on the security cameras going to North 2 where the pedophile was living. And I said, I don't go to North 2. It's full of pedophiles up there.

What do you think I am? I am. Oh, you're going to be funny guy now. I said, I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about. You call me down here all the time. You talk and talk and talk and talking. You act like I know what the fuck you're talking about. And I don't have any idea. Of course, I knew exactly what they were talking about. Remember, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. And so, Dave was gone. The pedophile was gone. John wasn't gone. I was free to go about my business. I loved Art, Rachel. Art is a very old man now. And I'm sorry to say that he suffers from dementia, and he doesn't even remember being in prison. Art was a part of a large family,

hardworking, working poor. For whatever reason, when he was about 15 years old, he decided that a life of crime was the way he was going to do. And he was arrested and taken to a children's home, one of these delinquent children's homes. He escaped repeatedly. That would just result in longer and longer sentences until he turned 18. His first long stretch was at Leavenworth. Interestingly enough, Leavenworth in 1958 was the only time that art ever got a disciplinary infraction, and it was for not eating all the food on his plate. So every time he'd get out, he would go right back into a life of crime. What got him in the most trouble was two things.

His second long stretch stemmed from his incredible ability as an artist. This guy could have been represented in museums. He was such an accomplished artist. Instead, he used his artistic talent to forge bearer bonds. Nobody could tell the difference between a real bearer bond and a fake Art Rachel bearer bond. Art's girlfriend had a sister who got arrested for a DWI. And she says, no, don't send me to jail for a DWI.

If you promise not to send me to jail, I'll tell you about a guy who's forging bearer bonds. And so straight to prison for 10 more years. There he goes. Art at the time had a reputation as being a cat burglar. He began to specialize in high-end jewels. He got a group of guys together. They flew to London.

They got an apartment and they began casing Graf's jewelers in London. Now, Graffs is like Tiffany or Cartier or Harry Winston, the greatest jewelers on the planet. They cased this place for months. and they came up with a plan to steal a diamond called the Star of Marlborough. It remains the largest diamond ever to be stolen and not recovered in history. The plan was they go in, they snatch the diamond, they're all in disguises, masks, workers' outfits, they jump into the getaway car and they go to a second getaway car. They abandon the first.

this is central London. They get into the second getaway car. They're taking off their masks. They're taking off their clothes. They get changed. And a guy happens to be walking his dog. He walks past them. And he thinks, did I just see those guys take off masks?

He turns and looks at the license plate. And then just keeps walking his dog. They get changed. They take the diamond to wherever it is they were going to take it. He would never tell me where. And they drive to Heathrow Airport. And they all get on different flights back to the United States. States. By then, it's page one breaking news. The Star of Marlboro has been stolen. This guy calls the police

and said, this might sound crazy, but I saw a carload of guys taking off masks and changing their clothes. I got the license plate number. Art had gotten on a British Airways, London to Chicago flight. He was from Chicago. The cops were waiting for him when the plane landed. They put him in cuffs and they flew him straight back to London. Everybody got caught, but they never recovered the diamond. So Art did 10 hard years in a maximum security penitentiary in London. Never breathed the word of where that diamond was. He and I were on a walk around the track one time. We walked almost every day together. And I said, Art, tell me where that diamond is. I won't tell anybody. He laughed. I lived a lot of good years on that rock. That led me to believe that they had cut it. They had broken it

into smaller diamonds and sold it. It was flawless, colorless, one of the most perfect diamonds. in the world gone. Art's last stretch in prison was where I met him. He did something very stupid. Anthony O'Cardo, the boss of the Chicago outfit, the mob in Chicago that was founded by Al Capone. Anthony O'Cardo died. As you might expect in Chicago, that's page one news.

Art got his gang of oldsters together, and they said, listen, when Ocardo's family is at the funeral, we should break into the house and just steal everything. Not thinking because it's Anthony Acardo's house, the FBI has it completely wired, and the FBI is on the house when Art and his buddies break into it, and they all got caught. The van that they took to Ricardo's house was full of their burglary tools and their equipment. He got another 10 years. He spent most of his life in prison. Art was just a sweetheart of a guy. He was just a bad kid who fell into this pattern and couldn't

break out of it. You know, his brothers and sisters were salt of the earth people. Never a day in trouble. They were kind of ashamed of him. But while I was in prison with Art, there were several different times when Hollywood screenwriters would send him letters saying, hey, I'd love to write a movie about your life. What do you think? And he said, ah, no, I'm not interested. I said, Art, you should be interested. You have a hell of a story here. Frank Russo was one of the finest people I've ever met, not just in prison, but I mean just one of the finest overall people I've ever met. He was a very, very powerful politician in the state of Ohio. He was the Cuyahoga County auditor. You know, every time you go pump gas and you see a little sticker on the gas pump and it says

certified by Cuyahoga County auditor, that's Frank. He had a friend, a partner in crime named Jimmy D'Amora, who was the Cuyahoga County Commissioner. He was the chief commissioner. Together they came up with a plan right out of Al Capone, Chicago, where if you want a job, any job with the county or the state, you're going to pay them a kickback. If you want a permit to do something, you're going to pay them a kickback. I can't speak for Jimmy DeMora, but what Frank did was use this money as a slush fund to then hire the sons and daughters of contributors or business associates. So, yes, Frank remodeled his house.

Yes, Frank installed a new kitchen. Yes, Frank poured a new driveway and bought himself a Mercedes. Sure, he was corrupt. I'm not making any excuses. But he wasn't as corrupt as his sentence would have you believe. Frank was known to have a heart condition, a very serious one, and he got 25 years in prison. That's a death sentence. So what he agreed to do was to rat out Jimmy DeMora. Jimmy DeMora went to the mat and pleaded not guilty and went to trial and was convicted on every single account with Frank up there on the stand testifying against him. Jamie Demora got a draconian sentence. He's still alive. He's an old man and he's in prison and he will die in a cold steel prison bunk. So Frank knew what he was getting into. He knew that being a rat would mark him in prison. He would have to sit at the rat pedophile table in the cafeteria.

He wasn't permitted to watch TV in the TV room because rats and pedophiles weren't allowed to watch TV. And he knew that he would just have to keep his head down because people were going to be gunning for him. But he was such a nice guy with such a hilarious sense of humor that he won everybody over. Everybody except the Italian. Pete Calabrese, Peter the Rabbit Calabrese, a senior, senior member of the Banana family, said to me one time, why do you hang out with that fucking rat? Well, he's my bunkmate, first of all. But secondly, he's a really great guy.

I know what he did. I'm not making any excuses for him. I know he ratted out Jimmy DeMora. Pete said he brings dishonor to the Italians. Yeah, he does. You're right. But that doesn't make him any less of a sweetheart. So I always had a very warm and close relationship with Frank.

Mark Lanzalotti is literally one of the finest human beings I've ever known in my life. I consider him to be like a brother. In some ways, I'm closer to Mark than I am to my own brother. talk about being screwed by the system. Mark had a stepfather, John One Star, Native American guy, and One Star was involved in the meth trade. And so he said to Mark one day, listen, I'm getting a group of guys together. We're going to cook some meth. We're going to make some serious money. You in? He's in his 20s. He's an impressionable young guy. This is his mom's husband. Guy's kind of a giant in his life. Mark never had a relationship with his father. He says, sure, I'm in. So one of the first. So one

Star gets three or four of their guys together. They start cooking meth. They make a trip to Florida, to buy whatever chemical you need. It's like a pool chemical. And then they go to Jamaica, I think it was, and they make a deal. They go back to suburban Philly on the New Jersey side. They rent a house in a terrible part of town. That's where they're going to do the cook. And then from the house, they get an airstream trailer, and they start cooking there. Mark does this for six months. And he says, you know what, this is not for me. Mark doesn't take drugs. He never took drugs. He told me one time that he had never tried drugs in his life, any drugs, not even weed. He said, this just isn't for me. I'm out. And he quit. As it turned out, he was the only person to voluntarily leave the conspiracy.

He's out for over a year and somebody rats out the group. So the DEA and the ATF raid the house, they raid the airstream, they grab one star, they grab the other guys. In the meantime, has opened a successful detailing and body shop, and he's making money. He's got half a dozen people working for him. He just waited for the hammer to fall. Another year passes. He's at work one day. ATF and DEA bust down the door, and they grab him.

One star's out on bail, and one star says, I have an attorney for you. He doesn't represent rats. You cannot rat anybody else. And Mark's like, I'm not a rat. I'm not saying anything to anybody. having no idea that everybody else is ratting him out. The government comes back and they say, take a guilty plea, you do five years and three months.

That's the deal that they offered everybody else. One star took it, all the other guys took it. Mark says, no, I'm not a rat. Having no idea, everybody else has even been offered this deal. Refuses the deal. They come back a couple of times. Five years, three months. He said, no, I'm not doing it.

Even the attorney said, I don't represent rats. He goes to trial. He didn't have a prayer. He was guilty. Plus, everybody ended up testifying against him. Made it look like he was the mastermind. He was the only one to voluntarily leave the conspiracy. He had never, ever been in trouble before. This was a first-time, non-violent drug offense. He's convicted and he is sentenced to triple life without parole. They send him to the maximum security penitentiary at Springfield, Missouri. Interestingly enough, his son cellmate there is Vinnie the chin gigante, the boss of the Genovese crime family. But Mark has this reputation that he took it on the chin. He refused to rat anybody out. And so he's a hero. Triple

Life Without Pearl? What's there to live for? You're 27 years old? He repeatedly attempts to kill himself. To make matters worse, while he's at Springfield, he notices a lump begin to form on his wrist and it's getting bigger. He finally goes to medical unit. That's probably assist. We'll take a look. It's bone cancer. If you're in the maximum security penitentiary, they're not taking you to a hospital. They bring a mobile operating room onto the prison ground, and they remove the bone cancer

from his wrist. He has a nasty scar. And then they give him radiation treatments inside the prison. He appeals his sentence, as cruel and unusual, and he wins. And they reduce it to 30 years, maximum. security. Then he's transferred to the prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina, then he's transferred to a god-awful place in Pennsylvania, and then he's finally transferred to Loretto. I meet Mark when he's 15 years into the 30-year center, and I immediately took a liking to him. There is nothing pretentious

about Mark. He's just a genuinely sweet guy, and not just a sweet guy. He is a complete guy. He is a completely honest guy. I'm 61. He's like 59 or 58 and he will occasionally call me. He did this as recently as a week ago and say, buddy, you said something on Facebook that you're going to need to edit. Oh man, you are exactly right. And while we're on the phone, I edited it. Or hey buddy, you tweeted something the other day. This could cause you a problem. And I read it and I say, oh my God, what was I thinking? And then I'll delete the tweet. He's just that kind of a guy. Very level-headed. very, very smart. Mark disliked Dave from the moment they met and he told me, don't trust this guy, this guy's trouble. And I said, I actually don't trust it, but I appreciate it. Thanks for looking

out for me. I have so much to say about Mark. We could do an entire episode just about Mark. Mark was one of the most gifted, I'm not going to call him a cook. I'm going to call him a chef. One of the most gifted chefs in prison, in any prison. What this guy could do with a garbage bucket of water and a live electrical wire was miraculous. I gained 35 pounds in prison, and it was all because of Mark Lancelotti. The Italians had some crooked cop on the payroll. Almost everybody's just buying whatever the kitchen worker's steal,

bony chicken or, you know, whatever. The Italians are having this cop bring in pork loin and white wine for the marsala sauce and fresh pasta and fresh tomatoes and fresh mushrooms and garlic. It was a scene right out of good. Goodfellas. Literally it was right out of Goodfellas. We would be cooking all day. Even the guards would come by. This just made me nuts. Mark, what are you cooking today? I can smell a garlic

all the way down the hall. Oh, don't worry. Don't worry, he would tell the guard, I got a bowl coming for you. And he would put this heap and bowl of the most delicious Italian food you've ever had and send it to the guard. Another thing Mark always did, and this was a learning lesson for me. There were about a half a dozen made men in Loretto. One was the actual boss of the Gambino family. the boss of the Boston Patriarcha family and his brother, the underboss. One was the underboss of New Jersey's Decavalcante family. These were very serious guys, serious made men. The others were from Philly. One was from Cleveland. Serious high-ranking, high-level mafia members. And they were always the first ones to eat. Mark would make this mountain of delicious food.

Where he got all these Tupperwares, I have no idea. He would load up the Tupperware. and then just deliver the hot dinners to all the made men. And they loved it. They loved it. Mark and I would sit in his cell for hours to the point where I actually got in trouble. There was one asshole guard. He was like, what are you doing here? Kiriaku, you're not in North Two.

You're in Central One. What, I can't visit? No, actually, you can't visit. All right, Mark, I'll see you tomorrow. What the fuck's your problem he would say to the guard? You know the rules, Mark. He can't be down here. And I told him afterwards.

I said, Mark, that was not at all. about you. That was about me. So I'd back off for a few days and then I'd start going back to Marks again. And we would go through the whole rigmarole again a couple of weeks later. Mark used to get the USA today every day and I would get the New York time. So I'd take my times down there and he would, well, there's no harm in saying it. Now he's not in prison anymore. Mark was the foremost, literally the foremost bookie in the entire prison, the foremost bookie. And he would send these books of stamps home to sort of make a little nest egg for himself. It was a very most. It was very, very smart planning. So I'm reading the Times, and there's an article about the Second

Chance Act that had just passed Congress and Obama signed it into law. Buddy, did you read this article? This article is about you. He said, what do you mean? It's talking about people who have no violence in their crime and receive draconian sentences where if they were to be prosecuted today, they would get shorter sentences. You're the poster boy for this thing. It says that you can file a petition with the Justice Department. They'll review your case and if you qualify, they'll hire an A-list firm to represent you in a resentencing hearing. And he said, I don't even know where I would begin to do something like that. I'm not smart enough to handle something like that.

I said, I'll write it. This thing's about you. You don't deserve to be in prison. So I wrote it. I got out of prison February 3rd, 2015, after 23 months. In August of 2015, Mark's mom called me. Mark's mom is one of the sweetest ladies out there. She called me and when I answered the phone, I said, hi, Ro. She's crying. Oh my God, what happened to him?

No, you don't understand. They're letting him go. What? She said, that appeal you wrote, it worked. They're letting him go. 17 years into a 30-year sentence. She had a surprise party for him. What they do is if you're slated for release after a long sentence, they let you go home for eight hours. And in that eight hours, you have to run around and get a copy of your birth certificate and get a copy of your Social Security card and get a driver's license and then go back to the prison. She had a party for him. We all shout, surprise. Oh, my God. And hugs all around. I can't stay.

I got to go to the DMV. And off they went and he got himself ready. And then he got out eight weeks later and we had a proper party for him. He and I had a couple of conversations. What am I going to do? I don't have any skills. I've never seen an ATM machine. never used the internet. What am I going to do for a living? Well, what are you interested in? Honestly,

I'm interested in real estate. You should take your real estate licensing exam. He said, I can't. With a felony conviction, I can't get a license. Buddy, I just got a pardon from the governor of Virginia, a pardon that I didn't even apply for. He followed my case and just pardon me when I got out. Go to the governor's website. It was Chris Christie and say, you just had your sentence commuted by President Obama that you did not deserve what you got, you got this draconian sentence, and that you want to be a productive member of society and you want permission to take your real estate licensing exam. So he did, and Christy approved it. This just goes to show you how crazy life can be sometimes. Now Mark is literally the top ranked realtor on the Jersey Shore. Literally no one in the state of

New Jersey sells more real estate on the Jersey Shore than Mark Lanzalati does. I went to see and recently. He lives in a beautiful home. He drives a beautiful car. He has all the toys that any 50-something-year-old man would want to have. Live in a good life. I was fortunate, especially with Mark, because with Mark came a lot of added benefits, the projection of the Italians. Once the word got around that I was with the Italians, it was hands off, not just for other prisoners, but for the guards. The Italians have a very long arm that extends far, far beyond the prison. and walls. And the guards just did not want to take that risk. It wasn't just that John has access to CNN or the Washington Post. It was that John's with the Italians. Yeah, having friends beats the hell

out of not having friends. And having the right friends, it made a huge difference when I was at the CIA. It made a huge difference at Loretto. In fact, there's so much to talk about on the subject of friends that we're continuing the topic into the next episode. Thanks as always for listening and for being a friend. Don't forget to like, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. Hey, that's what friends do for each other, right? Until next time, I'm John Kirooku. Dead Drop is written by John Kriaku and Alan Katz.

Costard 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.