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This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production. I've talked a lot over the years about food in prison. I hate to even call it food, to tell you the truth. It was slop. On my very first full day in prison, it was a Friday, one of the Italians with whom I became very friendly, Pete Calabrese, mentioned offhandedly that it's Friday. that means it's fish day and I responded by saying oh great I love fish and he said oh don't eat this fish we call it sewer trout and it's not fit for human consumption well he and I walked down to the chow hall together and what I saw was something that I'll never forget the guys in the chow line were slopping the slop onto your tray but behind them were boxes boxes of fish and on the side of these boxes, every one of them. It was clearly marked Alaskan cod, product of China, feed use only, not for human consumption. And that's what they were putting on our plates. I looked at Pete, he said, I told you. And so I never, ever, ever ate the fish. I've also talked about another incident that happened about halfway through my sentence, where every Wednesday night was so-called taco night. And excuse the filthy thing I'm going to say. I once threw away the entire taco and the warden saw me throw the whole thing away. And he said, in the old days, you could get written up for that. And I responded, I've eaten ass that tasted better than this taco. What do you do if you can't eat the food, if you won't eat the food, if you shouldn't eat the food, if the food is going to make you sick. I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Drop. What makes a spy tick? This is episode 10 in our series, Doing Time Like a Spy. And as always, we thank you for listening. We thank you even more for liking, rating, reviewing, and commenting on the podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening to it. Prison food is institutional food that other institutional food laughs at. No, that's actually not true. It sneers at it. And with good reason. The prison authorities don't want to spend a single dollar more than they have to. Fold in a bunch of competing interests, plenty of corruption and greed, and the result is a hellish jambalaya of gastronomic awfulness. There was one incident where, for taco night, they accidentally fed us dog food. The reason we know that is that the warden, months after the fact, sent everybody a memo saying, hey, sorry, but a couple of months ago on taco night, we accidentally fed you dog food. It's not our fault. The packaging was mixed up at the meat plant. They labeled dog food as

ground beef and they labeled the ground beef as dog food. The shame is not even that we were fed dog food. The shame is that we were fed dog food and we couldn't even tell the difference. So what did we do? We relied on people like our guest tonight, Joey Casalo. Joey Casalo was one of the finest, I'm going to call him chefs at FCI Loretto. A lot of guys cook. The Mexicans all cook, right? You have a trash can of water, you throw in.

in a live electrical wire called a stinger. It immediately brings the water to a boil. You put some food in a plastic bag. Next thing you know, you've got a gourmet meal. The Mexicans ate to survive. We ate, and I say we, I'm including myself with the Italians. We ate as a culinary experience. Yes. Joey, welcome. Good to have you. Thank you, John. Joey, walk us through this man. When I first saw a stinger, I unplugged it. I said, oh, my God, what a health hazard. This is a live electrical. And the Mexicans are like, are you out of your mind? We're making dinner. I didn't know what the heck they were doing. But then when you cooked, when Mark Lanzolotti cooked, it was like being in a restaurant in Little Italy. How did you do that? Walk us through it.

Well, when I first came to the prison, let me say this real quick. i didn't know nothing about prison just like you sure so i walked in and this guy comes up to me i forget his name a black guy and he says what's your name sir i said joey and i'm thinking to myself wow you know nice people here talking to me so everybody's laughing and i'm like what are you laughing at he says we'll tell you later just keep talking to this guy so i'm talking to him he says if there's anything you need joey you let me know and i said okay so then i go back to myself three guys come in that were laughing and i said can you tell me why were you laughing he says the guy is gay he wants to pick you up right away because you're new in the prison well the word got out to peter calabrese when he found out he said joey stay away from them guys if you find a twinkie or a piece of gum or a lollipop on your bed don't touch it yep i said okay pete i won't so i was learning little things here and there and with the cooking i knew how to cook on the outside with the stove but like john said the stinger i knew what that was so i bought

one one day oh you're kidding me so you you didn't know what a stinger was i learned watching

watching everybody cook i said oh okay but the stuff they cooked was rice and the same thing yeah yeah cooked pizzas i cooked managotti i cooked spaghetti meatballs john it it was two o'clock in the morning john sound asleep i said i'm hungry i'm gonna cook i made i think i made a pizza or managotti something i made italian so i i crawled out i walked to john's room i said john john he goes yeah i'm sleeping i said john i got italian food he says italian food and he got right up i did i did morning and this went on consistently we did it all the time yeah how

about the calzones you used to make let me let me talk about the calzones for a second so a lot of the mexican guys used to used to cook and like you said it was rice rice rice rice with this uh saison sauce or not even sauce it was an orange powder that had no flavor at all but they sold it in the commissary and so they would sell these they would call them calzones and pete said to me one day why do you buy those disgusting things and i said oh they're they're so they're so filling and delicious they got all kinds of stuff in them he goes it's not a calzone it's a fucking burrito yeah those guys wouldn't know a calzone if it walked up and introduced it itself to them yes and so i said you're right and then you started making calzones and i said oh my god this is an actual calzone like from an italian restaurant made in a trash bucket full of boiling

water but wait a minute i i don't know if you knew this i never got my i got some of the stuff from commensary i used to get it from the guards in the kitchen yes i wanted to ask you about that Yes. I had a good hookup right there, especially when I got with the, I don't, can we say names on here?

Sure. Why not? We'll believe him out later if we have to.

When I got with Nicky Carrazzo.

Yes.

I had to learn the whole nine yards.

Yeah, because Nicky was a very, very important person in a certain Italian-American subculture.

Yeah.

And very important person. and as his status demanded he got the best of everything including the best food our friend mark lancelotti who was an absolutely brilliant cook i once told him he fed me it was on my birthday it was my 50th birthday he had a big bash for me i remember you remember that i told my wife that night it was the first time i had smiled in nine months yeah and um oh my god how

Thank you.

we laughed our heads off that night but he made this gourmet meal and the very first thing he did and he did this every time he cooked is he would pull out all of his tupperware he would load the tupperware with complete meals and send them to nikki and to pete and everybody else of that status yes they they had a crooked a crooked guard on payroll who was bringing in everything that we needed you know loaves of italian bread white wine for the marsala sauce we got pork loin we got beautiful chicken breasts and fresh tomatoes and fresh mushrooms and onions and all kinds of stuff but bags and bags of pasta and sauce it wasn't just crooked guards bringing it in from the inside from the outside rather it was guards working in the kitchen they're supposed to be guarding the prisoners that are cooking the food they're actually stealing most of the food or stealing the good food and then selling it to you well yeah that's how it works and you know

our money was books of stamps and mackerels right so whatever i nikki wanted pasta that night i go with books of stamps pull the guy aside and say listen we want this we want this with this within 20 minutes it was in my room when did you arrive joey 2012 so you got there just

barely before i did i got there february 28th 2013 yeah so when i first arrived i was there maybe a week or two weeks and one of the guards in the kitchen um was fired and escorted out and pete told me it was because he was allowing prisoners working in the cafeteria to steal food and that was a very popular side hustle they would just go from cell to cell to cell selling food for bags of mackerel or books of stamps, but he would allow them to steal the food in exchange for a blow job that they would, they would blow him and then they could steal whatever food they wanted.

Yeah.

They walked that guy out and they allowed him to keep his pension, which was not cool at all. But then they tighten things up. And I remember they used to frisk us as we would walk out of the cafeteria because God forbid you should have an apple in your pocket or you know a pat of butter that you want to take

back to yourself how did you get around all that it was easy it was just given to me all the time i didn't have to walk out with nothing all i had to do they say who is this for i said nikki go ahead done done and when i brought it to nikki's room i was looking for him one day right he called uh chris you remember chris yes chris came down and said nikki wants you up there now to cook it was 10 o'clock in the morning i said okay i'll go start cooking the pasta while i'm cooking getting everything ready the peppers the onions the oil everything so nikki says all right everybody out i said nikki you just called me up here to cook i'm taking my hour nap get out and come back in an hour so i had to put everything away

come back and cook oh my god and when you were cooking in nikki's room it was the same as cooking in your own room we're talking about a garbage bucket full of hot water brand new though

everything he had was brand new the mexicans are dirty bucket the dirt yeah brand new we actually

used and there were four mexicans in my first cell yeah we actually used that bucket for trash yeah and then they would just pull the trash out fill it with water throw the stinger in and make food right it was disgusting yeah okay so walk us through how do you do this you got the bucket you fill it with water and then what you fill it with water while you're preparing everything you'll put the stinger in tie it and explain what a stinger is a stinger is

wires from uh an iron or tv whatever they can get their lamp yeah and it's square pieces of metal they would get it where the metal makers uh they had like a shop in there yes or or they'd steal the face plate off the wall so it was two pieces of metal with something in the middle so you don't get shocked well i never got shocked but let me tell you every time they raided us they took my stinger and i i said to the guard i said i just want to tell you you know i cook for nikki everybody in the prison knows okay we won't take your stingles no more so then other guards would come they would take it because they didn't know i had 26 stingers after they let me had stingers in my locker and i had them on the shelf wide open nobody touched nothing the respect we got because of nikki yeah and i would just like to go on i want to say something before we get into anything else when i first came into prison like i said i didn't know nothing i was sitting with the blacks eating you know i had the black the black side right

we should say in the in the cafeteria um all african-american inmates sit on one side Yeah. Every one of them. On the other side, it's divided. And we talked about this in the past. The front table is what are called the good guys. That's white guys. Most of them are Aryans, white guys convicted of crimes that have nothing to do with child sex crimes. And then the next table was Italians on one side and Native Americans on the other. And then behind them were all the pedophiles and the rats. They had to sit together.

yeah so go ahead so i had colored guys when i first came to prison and myself so they liked me you know joke around and i was the only italian or white person to say the n-word to them you know how they all say i was the only one to say that anybody else they would shank them yeah they loved me i i just i'm i'm that kind of person like i i me and you bond it real quick immediately yeah so anyway they said you come sit with i said okay now i don't know nothing i see all these people i'm there for like two weeks three weeks eating there all the time so then finally nicky says what are you doing sitting over there i said nicky i just got the i just got here i don't know much he says for now on you're over here with the gambinos you're with us yes i said okay so then i'm pete celly now he says joey no no no no you're not with the gambinos you're with the bananas yeah and i said pete i don't know which way to go now

i don't know you know pete said the same thing to me i was sitting with the arians only because the arians told me to and then pete said to me one day we were walking out our cells were directly across from each other and we were walking out and he said let me ask you something why do you sit with those nazi retards in the cafeteria those were his exact words and i said i don't know pete when i first arrived they told me sit with them and then very dramatically he puts his finger in the air and he says from today you're with the italians and then i sat with the italians the

whole rest of the time i was there when you first started sitting at the italian tables with us Nicky would always go, I know he lives next door to you across the hall. Is he all right? You sure, Joe? He's all right. I said, yeah, Nicky, he's good. I vouch for him. He's good. You don't know the stuff he asked me about you.

I believe it because he asked Mark Lanzalotti exactly the same question. He was genuinely worried because the guy didn't know the difference between the CIA and the FBI. Right. And he was afraid that I was a cop.

Yeah.

Yeah. And Mark told him, he said, the FBI are cops and rats. The CIA protected us from the Muslims. That's what he told him. And then I was okay after that.

I said, he's a good guy, Nick. He's a good guy. He says, all right, then he's with us. I said, all right. We're made men now, Johnny.

Seriously, right? I felt like I was.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, man, that was a community, the Italians. I say all the time that the Italians in prison for stupid reasons are considered to be a gang. they even have their own suffix on the prisoner number zero four seven if you're zero four seven that means you're mob and it's not fair right but anyway it's not a gang anyway let's let's pretend for a moment that it is right of all the prison gangs and and they're these are major gangs you got the crips and the bloods and the latin kings and the burachos and the norteños and the ms-13 and this one and that one and the other one the italians were the smallest and the most highly respected yes and that was hands down there there were no exceptions to that the italians were universally respected and another thing too the italians were the only gang in air quotes that didn't have a shot caller and they didn't have a shot caller because they didn't need a color you had made men at any given time there were six seven eight of them and they did everything

by consensus and we would all have to sit with them with the made men and if something was to go on if somebody wanted to beat somebody up or everybody would agree that's how it worked in

there that's right that's exactly right i i

genuinely liked and respected them. I'll tell you a funny thing too. I was an expert witness in a trial last week. I was an expert witness for the defense. And this poor guy was charged with six felonies, all six of which carried a mandatory sentence of life without parole. And I testified on his behalf he had a public defender and in in the cross-examination all the u.s attorney wanted to ask me about and he was mean about it and aggressive all he wanted to ask me about was the italians at loretto and that was i with the italians i said you bet i was and you said that they were honorable and i said and they were honorable they're all convicted murderers i said i don't know what they were convicted of it was none of my business i can tell you that in my dealings with them they were all honorable to a man every single one of them in fact i'm still friends with a lot of them because they were honorable and so in the end i'm very very proud to say this the guy was found not guilty on all six counts last week yeah all six counts that doesn't happen very often. Oh, but anyway, I want to get back to cooking. Okay. You've got this pipeline of real food, actual food. Well, it's not like you're sitting in your, in your bunk reading out of a cookbook. So how did you know what to make? How did you know how to plan what to make? And what do you do if you're halfway through a meal and you're like, Oh crap, I don't have any tomatoes or mushrooms or chicken breast or whatever what do you do i always had it we

always had it i i never was out nothing i just i don't know even what to say we just it was there it was there whatever we needed just like the movie goodfellas that's how we yeah i say that

all the time joe that scene in goodfellas was one thousand percent true we would gave the vario's even the the garlic and that it liquefies in the oil they ran that scene because it was true and that's how we cooked every single day and i'll tell you what the mexicans would use their id cards to cut we had razor blades yeah i remember i remember you every month for the for the prisoners who were too poor to afford um uh commissary they would give you a what did they call it the the the bag uh to keep yourself clean what do you what they they had a name for it yeah um anyway it included a a disposable single-edge razor and i remember you breaking you're very strong i i should add i mean we're all 10 years older now but But you're very strong. And I remember you breaking open the single-blade razor and taking the blade out and then using the blade to cut the garlic.

That's how I started with the blade. I don't know this guard's name. I forget his name. White guy. He had long hair.

Oh, I remember him. He was a cool guy. I liked him. Yeah, I remember him.

I walked by. I heard the keys and the chains. I said, I hide my singer. He says, no, Joey, it's just me. you don't have to hide it so he saw me with the little blade you know the little single blade cut yourself with it yeah he says wait till tomorrow i had packages of big razor blades i said are you telling me to go go whack somebody or something oh you cook with this i liked him so what's cooking it just comes to my mind i can't even explain it i mean if i wake up and uh nikki wanted pasta or whatever i i would make whole i would make the homemade sauce i mean they would bring me scratch yeah cans of tomatoes uh the paste olive oil it was was amazing and i'll tell you what if i if i didn't have nowhere to live like these bums that love prison i would have stayed i would have stayed in there tell you the truth because i if you ever go to prison i know you don't want to go to prison but if you

ever do anybody federal prison go to federal prison yeah go to federal prison i remember i've said this i'm going to say another not very nice word um but i remember three guys sitting in the tv room playing cards one day it was the middle of the day so everybody

was a way at work call i had a no-show job thanks to the italians i had a no-show job i walked in there for some reason and they were playing cards and and they were in between hands so the dealer was shuffling the cards and one guy put his his hands behind his head he kind of kicks back and stretches he looks around and he says i got a warm bed i got free medical care i got tv i got three meals a day no bills he said if we had pussy this would be paradise and I remember thinking oh man you've been inside too long buddy but they weren't even eating like the Italians were eating we got to the point Joey and I'm sure you remember this my sentence was short I was in 23 months the last six or eight months that I was in I never went to the cafeteria yeah I

never did either there was no reason to only on certain things like a pizza's word it says

whatever one night a week was pizza one night a month was pizza night yeah and let me tell you

we had trays and trays of pizza trays they brought out they when nikki was there they brought out a whole big it was like a pizza tray with pizza stacked everybody's looking at us like wow yeah we didn't have dough that's the only thing we didn't have pizza dough yeah so we would use the wraps you know the big wraps the mexicans would use so i said let me think of something here these wraps are kind of small maybe it looks like a single pizza so i would lay four or five of them down and i would it would come out to a big pizza a large pizza so with the garlic i would chop the garlic like on goodfellas yep and i had a piece of metal and you would put olive oil on the metal it was like a little cup and it would heat up and you would put the garlic in it and it would cook it it would saute it and the sauce i did the same i used the cans of tomatoes i heated it up You put it in a plastic bag, you put it in the water, you tie the bag, close the bag, and it steams. And let me tell you, the smell from my food, everybody would come to myself. If I was going to sell it in there for cash, I'd have been rich today.

Yes.

The whole prison smelled like it. Oh, Joey's cooking, Joey's cooking. But let me tell you, sometimes I did sell stuff. I said, let me sell stuff too.

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slash ICHRA. 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 costardandtouchstone.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 i was next to a cell if you if you're if you come out of your cell and your back your cell is to your back and i'm on the right in front of you the guys on the left in front of you they were mostly mexicans and their hustle their hustle was to steal meat from the cafeteria they mostly stole chicken and then they would go sell to sell every day selling chicken or selling eggs they sold a lot of eggs bag they would put it exactly exactly they would put it in plastic bags so is that how you got your meat too was it just from the from the cops in the kitchen or were you getting the outside meat as well i was getting i wasn't

getting it from any from the the guys in there i was getting it from either the guards or the the prisoners that worked for the guards so they had good stuff we had that's what i thought beef

turkey as soon as i got it i put it on ice so it was good i remember a lot of guys buying those scrawny bony chickens yeah from the chow hall and just keeping it on ice and then cooking it in the in the afternoons we didn't eat those bony i mean you could really get a broth spread it up and make something i don't know what they mean i i used to sell my i used to sell my chicken we got chicken like every tuesday at lunch or whatever it was and i used to sell my chicken for a bag of tuna uh to some guy that was like on this protein only diet he was trying to work out and build muscle whatever and he would buy my nasty chicken every every week he'd buy the tray the whole tray yeah he'd buy the tray exactly and then i'd go back to my place and eat your food or go to mark's and eat

his food yeah we had some big bowls of food i remember the parties everybody bring your bowl

well joey i i used to say i gained 35 pounds in prison oh did i 35 pounds i remember you and i talking about it because you showed me a picture of yourself one time yeah and it was like you know mr mr olympus mr america competition and then all of a sudden we got these bellies yeah from all the pasta we're eating yeah and and the warden said to me one time he said hey you're sure putting on a lot of weight i said what are you my tailor or my warden yeah and then he walked away yeah

the only thing i didn't want to make in there was the hooch no i never messed with it no i wasn't smoking cigarettes i wasn't

doing nothing you'd go to the home for three months for that something stupid not worth it

i remember the hooch it was mostly the native americans would make it they would steal fruit from the cafeteria and then ferment the fruit and make moonshine out of it yeah a couple of black guys did too they would hide it in the in the drop ceiling of the tv room so that it wasn't tied to any one person but do you remember they they found hooch in the drop ceiling during the nba playoffs yeah so they shut the tvs off that was the punishment everybody got punished nobody was allowed to watch basketball for the week well i don't know if you remember this somebody hid the

hooch somewhere and it was the bag popped oh and i don't know if it was the warden's office or somebody's office that worked there that was high ranked all the hoots went down in that person's office oh my god i don't remember that they locked down might have been before you came the whole the whole place got locked down but they found out who did it but imagine how stupid that person was to put it over yeah that's really stupid and the people who made the hoots are the people who had long sentences because of what they didn't care yeah they didn't care and it was like the

the guys that just had to have a cigarette i know i'm getting off the the subject of food but the guards in violation of of you know all the rules would chew tobacco and then they would just dig into their lip and fling the you're gonna go under the ground and guys yeah guys would collect the chewed tobacco dry it out and roll it in toilet paper and then sell it for a mac yeah and people would smoke previously chewed chewing tobacco rolled in toilet paper because they so desperately had to have a cigarette yeah gross yeah i was a heavy

smoker with cigarettes i didn't smoke nothing in there no but the minute i got out i don't know i

bought a pack so how is you you've got a successful restaurant right now a successful pizzeria you post on facebook pictures of your beautiful food yeah how different is it now from when it was in

there well different is i can walk out to the refrigerator and i asked nobody except my wife she's the boss too so but uh it's just it was a a really experience in there yeah but i tell you me me and you and the rest of the guys we had a good we had a good in there yeah i hate to say

that you know people ask me every once in a while um if i miss it and i say absolutely not i don't miss anything about it at all nothing yeah but then you know when i'm sitting here with joey or i'm sitting with mark lanzalotti good times or grant yeah we actually we made it okay for each other yeah yeah i did i used to go down to mark's uh cell almost every night because he was cooking every single night and of course he would give me just like you did yeah like two or three times more food than i could possibly eat yeah and so i'd eat until i was full and then i'd you know go for the second seating two hours later and eat again and put on those 35 pounds but the food was so good i told you this and i told mark that i would i would spend 35 for this in an italian restaurant outside that's how good it was you more than mark made desserts yeah with it how in the world did you make dessert and what desserts did you make i made cannolis one time for he

he couldn't believe it he thought where'd you get these from the outside i said no nikki i bought i they had these little cookies and commissary but they looked like a shell and it looked like an italian pastry yeah so i i said let me see what i need for this now i gotta ask the guard so i needed heavy whipping cream um some kind of cheese and i don't know something else within i say a day or two he brought it to me and i just i put it there i would taste it and this tastes like cannoli. So I made the cannolis.

Amazing.

We made cakes. Remember the cakes we made?

The cakes, I remember that.

John, the cakes we made, they were like store-bought cakes.

They were, they were like, but you made, you, you made a flourless cake one time. Yeah. It was like a lemon cake or something like that. That was ridiculous. And I was like, dude, you made this in a garbage pail. We even got lemons and we even got lemons. That's right. You made lemon cake from scratch. Have you adapted any of those crazy, those crazy recipes to, to what you're doing now? Not really. No, it actually wouldn't make sense. It would be kind of depressing.

I tell you, I go on TikTok sometimes and I see these people that just got out of prison and they're showing their family, this is how we eat and they're cooking just like he would have a stinger and everything. I would never do that. Bring that outside and do that. You know what I mean? He would go to the kitchen at home with a stinger and a plastic bag and the garbage peel.

Yeah.

I don't want to go that way.

No, no. That's nuts.

you know yeah you don't want to do that but not to change the subject but i just got to say again when i uh first walked in the prison two guys came to my room one was chris and i don't know who the other one was nikki wants to see you i said okay so i walked up to nikki's room there was like four or five guys i said oh man to myself what's going on well nicky says sit down on this chair i sat down now the guys are standing here nicky's behind me all of a sudden he puts his hand on my head and he goes like this he goes i said to myself i said i think i'm gonna get something shanked or something's wrong should i run or what should i do he goes you're lucky i like you joey you're lucky i like you I said, Nicky. Yeah, it was it was crazy stuff that went on there.

Yeah, he was he was a very important and very scary guy. One of the things that I learned really quickly hanging out with the Italians is you never, ever wanted somebody to say about you, you believe this fucking guy. Then you knew you were on the list. Yeah. Yeah. No, you never wanted to be this fucking guy.

Who was Nicky's cellmate, the old guy?

Yeah, I remember. It was... Oh, I can't remember.

Gate. I just, I don't know. I can't remember.

Gaetano was his name. He went by Gate.

The old guy.

Yeah, the old guy.

Gate. Remember Jake? Sure. The old man. Let me tell you a quick story. He was going back. he had life yes he was a high-ranked mobster too upstate new york yep got life so one day we're all in a room eating he says guys i'm going back to court i'm gonna overturn my life we're like now he's he's uh 72 years old saying this jake we're so crowded all right let us know what happens so he goes to court comes back he goes i did it they overturned my life they gave

me 50 years i remember that we all we all like yay only 50 years hey there was one guy from upstate i won't say his name he asked me if i would write his appeal he had 30 years yeah i said sure let me see your case papers and we'll figure something out i'll write your appeal listen i did what they convicted me of doing i killed a guy don't get me wrong he says If I could, I'd dig them up and kill them again. But 30 years, it's not reasonable. I was like, oh man, that's not the right attitude.

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I'm older now, 58 years old. I just turned that June 27th. I'm going to stay here. I have a wonderful wife. My mom has dementia.

I'm sorry.

She lived here, so that's why I came down, because something was wrong with her. We didn't know what it was. Then I came down and found out she had dementia. yeah hook her in with me i will not put her in a home john no you're you're a good son and we live here now i do my very best i'm the only child so she took care of me all them years that's

right that's right i forgot you were an only child yeah now it's my turn yeah yep but i'm happy to be

out i'm happy to be out of new york connecticut here is so peaceful north carolina is nice very nice. Oh, wait a minute, John. You know what we forgot? Your celly. I don't know if we could bring

that up. Which one? Oh, that crazy guy. The Afghan? John. Oh my God. You got to do something with this guy. So John, just go out to the yard. His name was Cher. He had his arm blown off by an IED in Afghanistan. This guy was certifiably insane. Any psychiatrist in America would have certified him as insane. Yeah. Because we knew he was insane. We plotted to push him over the edge just to get him transferred to another prison and be rid of him. You were a major part of that operation. My bunkie was Frank Russo. He was the Auditor General of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. And he was actually arrested while he was running for governor of Ohio. Yeah. He would have won. Frank was a natural politician but frank said something when you and i finally pushed him over the edge and he lost his mind they took him to solitary and then they sent him to another prison frank said thank god we finally got him into solitary because i was going to take a poop in his boots yeah and he meant it literally he was literally going to poop in the guy's boots You did something to him that was so funny that 11 years later, I still laugh about it when I think about it.

Tell the story, John. You say it better.

Oh, my God. So this guy was nothing but trouble. He had no respect for anybody's property. He had no respect for anybody's space or time. You remember how hot it was in our housing unit because we had no windows. And so they had these gigantic fans and he would just like pull his pants down and air out his balls in the front of the giant fan. And we're like, dude, you're going to get shanked doing that, right? Nudity is unacceptable in prison and you're just standing there airing out your balls. So we started doing things, just messing with him and making a long story short. What you came up with was so friggin' hilarious. He was a very, very pious Shia Muslim. I mean, it's kind of a disconnect, being very, very religious and being very, very child molester. So, yeah, it's incongruous. Who could explain it? So anyway, he had this prayer rug that was his pride and joy. It was like the only possession that he cared about.

John, I used to get sick of him seeing him kneeling on that rug, choke him every day, John. John, and you were so upset. I said, John, we got to do something to this guy. I said, go to the yard. I'll take care of this, John. Okay.

You did. You took care of it. You made me look completely innocent because it was out of the yard. Everybody thought that I was the one doing this stuff, and I was doing a lot of it. but what really pushed him over the edge was you so the guards were watching me yes they were going to catch me torturing this guy yep figuratively speaking i went out to the yard to kill time and and walk around and you took every locker first yeah you stole you stole everything out of his locker all of his candies all of his food his diet cokes you stole everything So he opened the locker and it's just empty. He lost his mind. Number one. Then you wrote a giant erect dick on the prayer rug. Yeah. Sharpie. And so he. tore the bottom it was on the bottom the bottom was just plain it was like a non non-slip surface he tore it off and threw it away and then he said something that was so odd to me he said at least they didn't draw an asshole there's nothing worse than the human asshole nothing is filthier than the human asshole well that's all he had to say so i told you And then the next time he went out to play soccer, you wrote on it, asshole, you are. And then you wrote underneath Yoda.

Yeah. I don't know what's up with stuff like that. John, before we killed him.

Yeah, we were going to kill him. And then he finally lost his mind. I ran down to the unit manager's office and I said, I said, Cher's having a mental breakdown. and so he called um well the cops sis they ran up you could hear the keys jingling from a quarter mile away practically and um and somebody from uh medical and they they cuffed him he was screaming swearing yeah he was gonna fuck our mothers he was gonna fuck our sisters he was gonna fuck us up the ass he's gonna shove his fist up our asses and that was the last i heard of him he was just screaming screaming these obscenities so they transferred him right they got him out of yeah yeah they got him they transferred him out before i left yeah that's what yeah and and what really pissed uh he had these there were these two cousins or a cousin and a brother-in-law they would come like every week and visit him and nobody told them that he wasn't in the prison anymore and these guys these guys drove up and came all the way to the prison from washington and they were like yeah he he he doesn't live here right where is he well i don't know new

jersey maybe i don't know oh those guys were so mad that's in the book too isn't it yeah the book

right yeah oh man we made his life miserable yeah i couldn't take that guy no more we had to get him out we had to for our own mental health we had to get him out even the muslims would not allow him to pray with them right he was nuts and he was judgmental and he was cruel and he would call he would call because most of the muslims are are black muslims they're converts and he would call them fake muslims oh yeah i remember yeah yeah and you're going to tell these these totally ripped stacked giant black guys yeah that they're fake muslims and they don't know what they're doing and they're going to they're going to destroy him and do you remember what we finally did or you did you put pork salami under his pillow oh yeah

yes wait cut it you cut it i remember i did i cut it i cut it into slices and we laid it out under

his pillow and it was there all day and it was so hot in the summer we didn't have air conditioning so it's like 90 degrees in there we used to soak our bath towels in water yeah and lay on our beds with a wet bath towel just to try to cool off so that salami was was you know cooking fermenting all day under his pillow and i remember after he freaked out and they took him to solitary these black muslims came to the cell and they stood at the at the entrance yeah and the stain from the salami was on the pillow and the sheets and one of them said they'd done him in with the swine yeah yeah honest to god if it wasn't for joey and mark and pete i'm not sure how i could

have gotten through it yeah because when you came in everybody was like oh the cia the cops don't

don't go near that guy the first like four weeks i kept my distance i kept my mouth shut yeah i went to get a haircut and pete was in there getting a haircut yep and i just started making small talk with him. And he said to me, listen, I got to tell you, I know who you are and you carry yourself far better than I expected you would. And I said, I appreciate that. I was trying to be as tough as I could. I said, truth be told, I'm not afraid of anybody. Right. Which was bullshit, of course. But I said, I'm not afraid of anybody. And he said, good. Keep that

up. Yeah. We were friends from then on. I still talk to Nikki's main guy there, George. I don't know if you remember george i remember george well with that raspy voice i talk to him all the time

excellent and i'm i'm in constant touch with mark and with brett which came up in that trial the other day well are you brag that you're still in touch with members of organized crime and i say i said yes i am and they're good and honorable men yeah which was not the response they expected right

me to say, no, no, no, that was a lifetime ago. I said, yeah, I talk to them all the time and they're dear friends. And then I turned to the jury. Oh, I'm so proud of myself. I turned to the jury and I said, there was a crooked congressman from Ohio named Nye, N-Y-E. He was in prison in Ohio, federal prison on a corruption charge. He did 23 months, just like I did. When he got out of prison, he said, nobody goes to prison to make friends, but the friends that i made in prison are lifelong friends that was true there are a lot of people in prison who are innocent there are a lot of people in prison who are guilty but who don't deserve to be in prison and there are a lot of people in prison who are good and decent people and those are my friends and as i hope you now agree one of those very good and decent people is my friend joey thank you again for sitting in with me joey i think i owe you dinner a really good one in our next episode, we'll get back to the prison grind as my outdate approaches. I've got more reason than ever to keep my head down, but you know, it's still prison. Prison rules still applied and I had unfinished business that needed attending to. A whistleblowing federal prisoner's got to do what a whistleblowing federal prisoner's got to do. Until then, please don't forget to like, rate, review, or comment on the podcast. It really does help. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Costard and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast, and John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.

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