Why tell the truth when a good lie can be told.
I remember the Princess who wept as she told of the babies being
ripped from their incubators and thrown onto the floor. And Americans
bought it!
Carl Jarvis
On 1/16/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Not for Human Consumption
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
15 January 19
The Washington Post last week wrote one of a series of articles about the
federal shutdown that focused on the criminal justice system. The reporters
included the obligatory interviews with prison guards talking about how
overworked and understaffed they are, which is likely true. But the article
was inflammatory-not because of the interviews with the guards, but because
the Post reported that while the poor guards were suffering, the prisoners
were eating meals fit for a king, including "grilled steak, steamed rice
with gravy, black-eyed peas, green beans, macaroni and cheese, and a choice
of garlic biscuits or whole wheat bread or an assortment of holiday pies."
USA Today also got in on the act, quoting the Post article and adding that
some prisoners "even had roast beef," and they "tucked into a Christmas
spread of herb-dusted Cornish game hens, cornbread dressing, gravy, rice
pilaf, and assorted pies."
The purpose of the articles was to outrage the public. How can these
criminals eat like this while the hard-working guards are suffering? But
it's all nonsense. Many times during the 23 months that I spent in a
federal
prison for blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture program, I elected to
go
hungry or to surreptitiously cook something of my own, rather than to eat
the Bureau of Prisons' "gourmet" meals.
My first full day in prison was a Friday. One of my cellmates told me that
Friday was "fish day." "Oh, good," I said, "I love fish." "You won't love
this fish," he responded. "And you shouldn't eat it. We call it sewer
trout." I went to the cafeteria and got in line. When I finally made my way
to the serving area, where prisoners were dropping ladles of slop onto
plastic trays, I saw the boxes of fish stacked up in plain view. The sides
of the boxes were all clearly marked, "Alaskan Cod-Product of China-Not For
Human Consumption-Feed Use Only." I skipped lunch.
I've written in the past about food in the federal prison system, but the
information bears repeating. Here's a typical story. Just before I got to
prison, a private food service company, John Soules Foods Inc.,
"accidentally" sold dog food to prisons to be fed to prisoners mismarked as
"ground beef." There was no punishment for the company or its executives,
other than a $392,000 fine, the cost of the investigation, paid to the U.S.
Treasury. Prisoners got nothing. Not even an apology. And the shame of the
story is that nobody could even tell that it was dog food. It tasted the
same as everything else prisoners are served.
Let's get back to the Post and USA Today articles. It is true that on
Thanksgiving, prisoners are fed actual turkey. That's one decent meal per
year. And on Christmas they receive a disgusting, scrawny, greasy, bony
Cornish hen. I sold mine for two bags of tuna. The rest of the menu is
trash. In the two years I was in prison, for example, I never saw the crown
of a stalk of broccoli. Prisoners only get stems and only fruits and
vegetables that are so damaged and ugly that they can't possibly be sold in
a grocery store. The "selection of holiday pies" was a chocolate "Cliff
Bar"
that had expired a year earlier. Once we got bagels. But they were all dyed
green from the previous year's St. Patrick's Day, they hadn't sold, and
they
had been frozen for a year. And "steak day" is also once a year. I wouldn't
call the charred hunk of gristle and fat that they threw onto our trays a
steak. I don't know anybody who would. If the guard quoted in the
Washington
Post had wanted my "steak," I would gladly have given it to him. He likely
would have choked on it.
A subject for another column is how much of the money budgeted for prisoner
food is diverted and spent on better food that is served only to the guards
and administrators. A little of it is subsequently stolen by kitchen
workers
and sold on the black market. That's how I used to get decent fruit. But
it's the guards who eat like kings, not the prisoners.
The guards who lament their stations in life to the Washington Post or USA
Today are disingenuous at best and liars at worst. Their complaints mean
nothing to me or to any other former or current prisoner. I would have been
happy to change places with them any time they wished.
Email This Page
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior
investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the
sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the
Espionage
Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a
result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
