S2E4 With Friends Like These

In a low-security federal prison, John Kiriakou learned that the line between friendship and survival is razor-thin. He describes two men he knew at FCI Loretto: Robert, an Australian arsonist and pathological liar, and Clint Goswick, a devout Christian from Texas who was convicted for a crime he did not commit. Their stories, told in detail, illustrate the strange social logic of prison—where you befriend people not because you would choose them on the outside, but because they are the people in front of you.

Robert was a serial liar who claimed to have been a nightclub owner, a bush pilot, a border guard, and the owner of the largest video store chain in three countries. He once abandoned two adopted Romanian twins at the front gate of the Romanian Embassy in Washington, D.C., because they were violent. He was also a compulsive rat. Kiriakou describes how another inmate, Dave, wrote “rat” on Robert’s pillow to spook him, and Robert checked himself into solitary confinement for his final six weeks. Kiriakou later found him on Facebook, now in the UK, married to wife number six, still selling cars. “When you act like that, when you lead a life like that, that's just one lie built on another lie, built on another lie, and you're just a lifelong criminal,” Kiriakou says. “And you're devoid of any conscience, so you can't even stop yourself.”