How did Jeffrey Sterling get through his long ordeal in prison for more than two and a half years? With enormous help from his wonderful wife Holly, many friends, and countless supporters he’d never met. And from Shakespeare.
 Below are some new reflections that Jeffrey has written for the RootsAction Education Fund. He asked that we send them along to you -- with his deep appreciation for the wide range of support that so many people have provided.
Jeffrey went to prison in mid-2015, after proceedings that BBC News called “trial by metadata.” Now, he says, “I would like to address the need for accountability of power.”
You can help Jeffrey do that by supporting his new work as the coordinator of The Project for Accountability. You’ll give him a lift with the project if you make a tax-deductible donation in support of this exciting new venture.
The RootsAction Education Fund is sponsoring this project for the same reason that we’ve actively supported Jeffrey for the last four years, while he withstood the vengeful weight of the “national security” state.
Jeffrey infuriated powerful CIA officials when he sued the agency for racial discrimination, and later when he went through channels to tell Senate Intelligence Committee staffers about a botched and dangerous covert operation by the CIA. In retaliation, the CIA unleashed its unaccountable power against Jeffrey.
You can help The Project for Accountability if you click here and make a tax-deductible contribution. Half of every dollar you donate will go directly to Jeffrey as he works to rebuild his life, while the other half will go to sustaining his project.
If you don’t already know about Jeffrey’s real-life nightmare of harassment, legal threats and persecution by the CIA hierarchy and the Justice Department, please take a look at the Background information we link to at the bottom of this email.
We plan to keep you informed about Jeffrey’s future activities on behalf of The Project for Accountability. A tax-deductible donation of whatever you can afford would be greatly appreciated.
Here’s the latest from Jeffrey Sterling:
 It has been a year since I walked out of a federal prison after two and a half years of incarceration. Though “free” of the prison, I remain a prisoner of the criminal justice system for a time longer -- having been wrongfully tried, wrongfully convicted and wrongfully sentenced as a whistleblower. A big question for me has been, What has this all really been about?
I have not been really sure if I could be categorized as a whistleblower, at least in the sense of the current times. I had indeed blown the whistle on wrongs I witnessed and experienced while in the Central Intelligence Agency, but unlike what had been in the charges and the trial, I did so officially to both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. And for those actions, I was sent to prison.
There have been so many moments during this ordeal -- from the time when I decided to file a lawsuit against the CIA to being found guilty and sent to prison for a crime I did not commit -- I have struggled mightily to find any meaning to it all. The search may be in vain, but I may have found at least some semblance of meaning to add to this ordeal through one of my saving graces while in prison, Shakespeare.
While in the hell of prison, I was hungry for the words of the Bard. I had always found a comfort in the tales told by Shakespeare and did my best to read any and everything of his I could get my hands on. I was so very fortunate that so many supporters sent me many analytical works to go along with my tattered, unabridged version.
That hunger has continued since leaving prison.
I recently finished reading Stephen Greenblatt’s excellent book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics and had my eyes opened to an interpretation of the whistleblower I had known for longer than I realized.
What has always attracted me to Shakespeare was his depiction of us and the drama of our lives. What is wonderful about Tyrant is that Greenblatt once again reminds us that the supposed uniqueness of today is nothing new, it was depicted over four hundred years ago. I was particularly struck by what Greenblatt wrote about King Lear. I had no idea when I first read King Lear so many years ago that Shakespeare had written about whistleblowers.
The very definition of the whistleblower is embodied in one of the most un-noted characters in Shakespeare, Cornwall’s servant from King Lear. I find that some of the most didactic characters in Shakespeare can come from so-called lesser knowns, the “knocking” porter in Macbeth, the asp-bearing clown in Antony and Cleopatra and the gravedigging clown in Hamlet. Greenblatt teaches of another unsung character with the servant’s first lines in King Lear, “Hold your hand, my lord…”
It is such a powerful first line as Greenblatt points out, “The words are not spoken by one of Gloucester's sons, by a noble bystander, by a gentleman in disguise, or even by someone in Gloucester's household. They are spoken by one of Cornwall's own servants, someone long accustomed simply to doing his bidding. ‘I have served you ever since I was a child,’ he declares. ‘But better service have I never done you/Than now to bid you hold.’ … it stages unforgettably a moment when someone in the ruler's service feels compelled to stop what he is witnessing.”
Greenblatt also is astute in noting how Shakespeare depicts how power does not react kindly to those who have the nerve to stand up to it; the punishment is swift and terrible. Greenblatt shows in Tyrant how “Regan is outraged at the interruption: ‘How now, you dog?’ And Cornwall, drawing his sword and using the term for feudal vassal, is no less so: ‘My villein?’ There follows a violent skirmish, master against servant, that ends when Regan, astonished that a menial would dare anything of the kind -- ‘A peasant stand up thus?’ -- runs him through and kills him.”
That scene, as a servant attempts to stop Cornwall from gouging out the eyes of Gloucester, is the very embodiment of what it means to be a whistleblower and what a whistleblower faces. This man, this nameless minor character stands up to the powers that be, the powers that he dutifully serves and says “stop.”
I particularly like the way Greenblatt summarizes this nameless hero and where he stood with Shakespeare: “Shakespeare did not believe that the common people could be counted upon as a bulwark against tyranny. They were, he thought, too easily manipulated by slogans, cowed by threats, or bribed by trivial gifts to serve as reliable defenders of freedom. His tyrannicides are drawn, for the most part, from the same elite whose members generate the unjust rulers they oppose and eventually kill. In King Lear’s nameless servant, however, he created a figure who serves as the very essence of popular resistance to tyrants. That man refuses to remain silent and watch. It cost him his life, but he stands up for human decency. Though he is a very minor figure with only a handful of lines, he is one of Shakespeare's great heroes.”
It was difficult reading that scene while in prison, and Greenblatt has helped me understand why. I won’t go so far as to see myself as a hero. But, I can certainly identify with that nameless character and the anguish he must have felt. Against discrimination at the CIA and a dangerously flawed operation I stood up and said “Hold your hand…” And much like that nameless servant, for such insolence I was essentially “run through” by the Department of Justice who played an effective Regan to the CIA’s Cornwall.
Whether I am to be considered a whistleblower or not, having some meaning to grasp onto provides some peace despite the hurt and loss. Finding this identification has been like discovering a sort of acceptance with other nameless servants like John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, Daniel Ellsberg, Terry Albury among countless, un-noted others who also said “Hold your hand…” to power. They remind us as Greenblatt points out that it is usually the unsung who take a stand and usually pay an unjust price.
As I near the time when the shackles of my ordeal are removed, I feel a motivation and obligation to give name to the nameless and fight against the condemnation that has been the unfortunate norm when the servant stands up to the wrongs of power. The RootsAction Education Fund is part of that effort and I am grateful for the platform and assistance it continues to provide.
Jeffrey Sterling
February 2019
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PS from the RootsAction Education Fund team:
Jeffrey’s refusal to knuckle under to illegitimate power has come at a very steep personal cost. That’s the way top CIA officials wanted it. His enduring capacity to speak truthfully can help strengthen a wide range of whistleblowers -- past, present and future.
You can help make that happen with a tax-deductible donation of any amount.
Please do what you can to support Jeffrey’s new work as coordinator of The Project for Accountability.
Thank you!
Please share on Facebook and Twitter.
--- The RootsAction Education Fund team
Background:
>> BBC News: "Jeffrey Sterling's Trial by Metadata"
>> John Kiriakou: “CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Placed in Solitary Confinement”
>> ExposeFacts: Special Coverage of the Jeffrey Sterling Trial
>> Marcy Wheeler, ExposeFacts: "Sterling Verdict Another Measure of Declining Government Credibility on Secrets"
>> Norman Solomon, The Nation: "CIA Officer Jeffrey Sterling Sentenced to Prison: The Latest Blow in the Government's War on Journalism"
>> Reporters Without Borders: "Jeffrey Sterling Latest Victim of the U.S.' War on Whistleblowers"
>> AFP: "Pardon Sought for Ex-CIA Officer in Leak Case"
>> Documentary film: "The Invisible Man: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling"
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