John Kiriakou

And then he got sick.

He got a brain tumor and he wasn't named to the conference committee.

And so they pulled it back out again and then he died.

And so here I am 10 years later.

The only way that this can be made right is with a presidential pardon.

And that's what I've been working on for years now.

I was offered a job at a small think tank in Washington called the Institute for Policy Studies.

And they said, we'll give you an office, but you're gonna have to raise your own salary.

And so it was just like constant GoFundMe.

So I did that for a year, I made $20,000 for the year.

And I said, I can't do this, it's untenable.

And so I just decided, look, no company is gonna hire me, right?

I can't go back into government again.

So I'm gonna have to work for myself.

So I I had already written my first book made number number five on the New York Times bestsellers list my second book I wrote longhand from prison.

I ended up winning two literary awards for that book I won the the pen First Amendment award which along with the pen Faulkner the Pulitzer and the Edgar Allan Poe is one of the big four and then I won the forward reviews memoir of the year that year and

I thought, I'm going to keep writing books.

I started writing a column that ended up being syndicated through the Consortium for Independent Journalism.

So it's like 200 small town papers around the country.

And, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there, consulting.