Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Doing Time Like A Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison
    Doing Time Like A Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison
    Doing Time Like A Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison
    Audiobook11 hours

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

    Written by John Kiriakou

    Narrated by Jonathan Yen

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

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

    Doing Time Like a Spy is Kiriakou's memoir of his twenty-three months in prison. Using twenty life skills he learned in CIA operational training, he was able to keep himself safe and at the top of the prison social heap. Including his award-winning blog series "Letters from Loretto," Doing Time Like a Spy is at once a searing journal of daily prison life and an alternately funny and heartbreaking commentary on the federal prison system.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateMay 14, 2019
    ISBN9781684572311
    Author

    John Kiriakou

    John Kiriakou is a former CIA operative and senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A target of the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers, he remains the only US official to serve time behind bars after revelations of CIA “enhanced interrogation” practices, despite openly opposing the torture program. He maintains that his case was about exposing torture, not leaking information, adding, he “would do it all over again.” He currently resides in Arlington, Virginia, with his family.

    Related to Doing Time Like A Spy

    Related audiobooks

    Social Science For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      THE secret LIFE OF A CIA AGENT

      Dec 30, 2019

      THE secret LIFE OF A CIA AGENT
      7 min read

    • Article

      CIA Recruiting: The Rare Topic The Spy Agency Likes To Talk About

      Mar 26, 2018

      The CIA is notoriously publicity shy. But when it comes to recruiting, you can find the agency's outreach all over the place, from social media to college job fairs, with an emphasis on diversity.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Eat, Drink And Be Wary: Ex-CIA Agent Reveals How Eateries Are Key To Spycraft

      Oct 16, 2019

      "Restaurants and cafés are in many ways the lifeblood of espionage," says Amaryllis Fox in her new book. They're ideal places to clandestinely meet people with access to a government or terror group.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Moscow Rules

      Apr 14, 2020

      The Moscow Rules
      2 min read

    • Article

      Great Unknowns

      May 27, 2019

      Great Unknowns
      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘They Put Two Contracts Out On Me’: Going Undercover With The Pagan Motorcycle Club

      Mar 21, 2022

      We live, thanks to the coronavirus, in the age of the Zoom interview. But not this time. Ken Croke does not want to be on camera so the words “Ken’s iPhone XR” appear on a black background instead. Nor does he disclose where he lives or where he is s

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Protection Executive

      Feb 14, 2023

      The Protection Executive
      15 min read

    • Article

      Why I Quit My Prison Gang

      Feb 1, 2019

      “The whole experience, I realized, was like a strange mix between junior high school and the Roman Senate.”

      5 min read

    • Article

      Behind LOCKED DOORS

      Sep 1, 2022

      Behind LOCKED DOORS
      4 min read

    • Article

      We Have Always Been In Crisis

      Jun 26, 2020

      We Have Always Been In Crisis
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Man Who Played with Absolute Power

      Feb 16, 2017

      In his 2008 TED Talk, Philip Zimbardo introduced his subject by showing his audience M.C. Escher’s Circle Limit IV, a set of black and white tessellated angels and demons. The art, Zimbardo explained, reminds us that “good and evil are the yin and ya

      6 min read

    • Article

      Criminal Profiling, Part 1

      Dec 22, 2020

      Criminal Profiling, Part 1
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Hard Road To Equality

      Sep 1, 2019

      The Hard Road To Equality
      9 min read

    • Article

      Coronavirus Has Sparked Another Epidemic in My Prison: Anti-Asian Racism

      Dec 4, 2020

      Sitting in my cell on a mandatory precautionary quarantine, I'm still finding it difficult to make sense of everything that's going on. In the beginning, “pandemic” was a word I had to translate for my cellie, a Vietnamese refugee who struggled with

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Human Factor

      Jun 6, 2023

      The Human Factor
      16 min read

    • Article

      Robert C. Koehler: National Vs. Human Security

      Feb 4, 2021

      “It is long past time for . . . a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security . . .” Yes, yes, yes. These words cut to the soul. Can we create a grown-up America? This is how it begins. The quote is from a letter to Presi

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Doing Time Like A Spy

    3.5/5

    13 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I enjoyed reading the author's experiences of serving time in a Federal prison. As a retired Federal Bureau of Prison's employee, I recognized much of what the author experienced. The poor health care available, the abysmal education programs, the drama between inmates, and between staff.The author is obviously not your typical inmate. Very educated, very experienced, very intelligent. Not the kind of inmate one typically runs into (but there were some!). I leave it up to you to decide if he belonged there or not.I found the book to be well written, easy to read, and engaging. I recommend it to anyone interested in corrections or inmate behavior.Time for a rant!Taking all of the author's observations about the Bureau of Prisons into account, I still feel it necessary to defend my organization. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) seems to be at the bottom of the barrel for government funding. No one wants to give money to help inmates, they just want them put away out of sight and sound. But, for the most part, most BOP employees try their best with what they have.When you have on physician assigned to a prison with over 800 inmates, it's an impossible situation. "Physician's Assistants" are hired to cover the shortages. In my experience, many of the PA's were from other countries, with poor English skills, and were just trying to get their foot in the door of the US healthcare system.Education: when I began my career in the late 1980's, inmates had a much better chance of improving themselves through education. Many inmates were enrolled in college. Unfortunately, the government seen fit to cut all of the programs, not wanting to look "soft on crime". We're left with basically a warehouse of felons with no chance of improving their lives.Food service: I had the opportunity to work with the "food dudes" for a period of time. Those folks were dedicated! Imagine turning out three meals a day to a thousand inmates. They did this with three or four BOP employees, supervising the inmates who actually did the cooking. Using government surplus food products. And with the inmates being paid about 10 cents an hour, food service got the most unmotivated "employees" that you could imagine. No wonder the inmates were always scamming to steal food, it was their only real source of income.Correctional Officers: I hate it when these books characterize CO's as lazy, stupid, or incompetent. I challenge the author to try to run a unit of 100 inmates by himself. Everyone of the inmates thinking that they have the right to the officer's undivided attention as needed. Imagine an elementary school teacher with a class of 100 students! And all of them students who would much rather be anywhere else than where they are. I admit, there are some bad apples serving as CO's. Just like there are bad apples in the police force, the trades, the schools, etc. BUT, for the most part, CO's are some of the most dedicated people I ever met. When an incident occurs, the affected officer pushes his "body alarm", setting off a signal to the entire prison's employees. He then has to try to control the situation (being assaulted, a medical emergency, or a fight between inmates) by himself, until the "calvary" arrives to help. It is a sight to see, every employee not directly involved with an inmate at the time, running at full tilt to assist the affected officer. Knowing that by giving their all to help, that when the tables are turned and they need help, others will respond the same. It's a measure of their dedication.Until the country as a whole wakes up and realizes that the men and women they send to prison are going to eventually get out and be alongside them in society, things will not improve. Without education and decent healthcare, these inmates are coming out more frustrated, more deadly, and without much hope of turning their lives around for the better.A GOOD, ENTERTAINING BOOK!
    • 4/5
      I didn't expect to find this book nearly as interesting as it ended up being. John Kiriakou was employed by the CIA in the 1990s and early 2000s, but he ended up on the wrong side of a federal investigation after speaking to the press about the CIA torture program. In the end, Kiriakoou pled guilty to a felony and served time in a low security federal prison. The prison is a unique environment and Kiriakou finds that he can utilize the skillset he used as a CIA agent to navigate prison. This book is fairly short, but it's also powerful - at times it made me laugh and other moments horrified me. Overall, this book made me think more about prison reform than I ever considered and the author makes a compelling case for why ordinary Americans should care about the welfare of those held in prisons. This is a great book to read if you're interested in exploring prison reform as more than just a political issue.