Jeffrey and Holly Sterling honeymooning on the beach in Jamica, June 2007.
(photo: Reporters Without Borders)
Let Jeffrey Sterling Go
By John Kiriakou and Holly Sterling, Reader Supported News
20 September 17
Preface by Holly Sterling
Dear Friends,
My beloved husband Jeffrey was persecuted and wrongly convicted. The
government has no shame in destroying an innocent man's life for almost two
decades because he stood up for his constitutional rights and would not
plead guilty to a crime he did not commit. Jeffrey has suffered tremendously
in his fight for innocence and the truth to prevail. Please consider making
a donation to the Sterling Family Fund to help assist with the overwhelming
financial devastation inflicted by the government. Your financial
contribution would aid in essential preparations for Jeffrey's release and
allow him to focus on the beginnings of rebuilding his life.
Respectfully and with much gratitude,
Holly Sterling
Click here to support Sterling Family Fund organized by Laurie Lewandowski
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials last week gave CIA whistleblower
Jeffrey Sterling a parting shot by adding a month of prison time to his
sentence. Sterling was due to be released from the low-security prison at
Englewood, Colorado, on December 14. He now won't leave until January 16,
2018. The BOP says that there is nothing untoward about the move. It's just
that there aren't enough open beds in a St. Louis halfway house to let him
go. That contention is disingenuous at best.
Sterling is a former CIA officer who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years
in prison on a multitude of Espionage Act convictions, despite the fact that
the government never proved that he actually had had anything to do with
espionage. The convictions rested on a book written by former New York Times
journalist James Risen, one chapter of which discussed a botched CIA
operation to damage the Iranian nuclear program with faulty technical plans.
Risen's book was published soon after Sterling filed a racial discrimination
suit against the CIA, arguing that he was denied an overseas assignment
because, as his supervisor told him at the time, he would attract attention
"as a big black guy speaking Farsi." Sterling's suit was dismissed on
national security grounds ("We'd love to defend ourselves, but to do that
we'd have to release classified information") by the hanging judge who would
later oversee Sterling's conviction and send him to prison.
After the book was published, the CIA argued that Sterling was Risen's
source, claiming that Sterling was seeking revenge against the Agency for
having his suit dismissed. Prosecutors pointed to metadata indicating that
Sterling and Risen had had a handful of phone conversations over the course
of 18 months, and that Sterling was probably giving Risen classified
information. That's it. No proof. There were no recordings, no emails, no
witnesses, no in-person meetings, no nothing. Just the CIA telling
Sterling's jury, "Take our word for it."
Sterling left for prison at Colorado's FCI Englewood in mid-2015. The BOP
has a regulation that prisoners will be assigned to prisons within 500 miles
of their homes. It's supposed to be an effort to keep families intact. But
Sterling was sent to a prison nearly 900 miles from home. The BOP said -
again, disingenuously - that it was a bed space issue.
The BOP set out from the very beginning of Sterling's sentence to make it as
difficult as possible. A year ago, Sterling suffered a heart attack in
prison that went undiagnosed and then untreated until activists petitioned
Colorado Democratic senator Michael Bennett to inquire about his health.
Sterling was denied medication until further activism forced some action. In
April, he was sent to solitary confinement for several days for "standing
too closely" to a corrections officer, an unprovoked outrage that was later
dismissed by more senior prison officials.
Sterling was eligible to be released from prison as early as next month. He
asked repeatedly why he had been given no official release date, despite the
fact that the date is supposed to be calculated a year before the latest
possible release date (that is, a release date with no good behavior time
calculated into it.) After much hemming, hawing, and gnashing of teeth, the
BOP told him that no date would be forthcoming until he met with a
delegation from the federal probation office to discuss the terms of his
release, an unusual stipulation that almost no other prisoners must go
through.
(I can tell you from first-hand experience that this is highly unusual. The
BOP and the Marshals are completely separate federal entities. One does not
need the other to give a prisoner his release date, which is calculated
solely by the BOP at its calculations center in Texas. The federal probation
office is a part of the Marshals Service. There is no reason whatsoever for
this meeting to have taken place in person. For every other federal
prisoner, including me, all of the necessary information was conveyed via
email through the prisoner's case manager. But the feds decided to give
Sterling special treatment.)
When Sterling met with the delegation, they would not commit to a release
date. When they left, he still had no idea when he would be released,
although his case manager intimated that the date would be December 14.
On Thursday, word finally came from the BOP. Sterling would be sent to a
halfway house - not to home confinement - on January 16. Again, from
first-hand experience, I can tell you that the January date was chosen on
purpose - it keeps Sterling away from home for one more Christmas. It's
another common form of harassment for prisoners the BOP doesn't like. The
BOP argues, though, that Sterling first must complete a mandatory "victim
impact" class that is supposed to teach him how to stay away from drugs,
abstain from violence, and reconnect with his children. His wife Holly told
me that one of the questions he was asked in this class was, "If you see a
woman dressed provocatively, does this mean that she wants you to rape her?"
This is all despite the fact that Sterling has never taken a drug in his
life, has no connection to violence, and has no children. Again, it's all
about control.
To make matters worse, Sterling will be sent to a halfway house 45 miles
from his home, and BOP regulations forbid him from driving. Furthermore, the
halfway house is in the center of the neighborhood that is the scene of St.
Louis's current riots. It's not the best place to be an unemployed
African-American man on federal probation right now.
And the harassment will only get worse. Probation officials already have
told him that he must complete 16 "life skills" classes at the halfway house
before he will be allowed to return home. The former CIA officer, attorney,
and decorated fraud investigator will learn how to write a check, write a
resume, get through a job interview, and rent an apartment.
The only upside here is that the worst is over. He will have to submit to
the government's nonsensical desire for control for another six or eight
months, followed by two years of invasive, infuriating probation. But the
hard part is over. Whether the government likes it or not, Jeffrey Sterling
will soon be sleeping in his own bed. And just as importantly, he'll be able
to tell the media and the American people, about what their government is
doing in their name.
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.
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