CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Released from Wrongful Imprisonment

Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, left, leaves the Alexandria Federal Courthouse on Jan. 26 with his wife Holly, center, and attorney Barry Pollack, after being convicted on all nine counts he faced of leaking classified information to a reporter. [image: Kevin Wolf/AP]

America notoriously honors its worst – persecutes, punishes and at times murders its best.

Sterling was wrongfully charged and convicted of seven counts under the long ago outdated 1917 Espionage Act for unproved allegations of providing classified information to then-NYT journalist James Risen – material used in his book, titled “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.”

The book discussed an unidentified firsthand account of CIA extraordinary rendition, torture and other abuses – flagrant violations of international, constitutional and US statute laws, no one at Langley ever held accountable for criminality.

Sterling was wrongfully accused of providing classified information about so-called Operation Merlin, a top-secret CIA operation, targeting Iran’s nuclear program – known to have no military component.

At trial, the DOJ failed to prove charges against him beyond a reasonable doubt – the highest standard of proof required for conviction in US judicial proceedings, especially in criminal cases.

Without it, defendants should be exonerated – not usually the case when Washington wants convictions, Sterling and other US whistleblowers wrongfully convicted like Lynne Stewart and many other notable figures.

In Jeffery Sterling’s case, the Justice Department presented unacceptable circumstantial evidence alone a fair tribunal would have rejected as inadequate to prove guilt.

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark once said “(o)ur jails are filled with saints” – individuals imprisoned for political reasons, not criminality.

Obama waged war on whistleblowers, targeting more than all his predecessors combined.

Sterling was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison. He was treated abusively, including largely denying him vital medical treatment for a heart condition.

The little he got was inadequate, punishing him for allegedly revealing CIA wrongdoing, acting courageously and honorably.

He endured episodes of atrial fibrillation experienced prior to imprisonment, requiring hospitalization and expert care.

Describing his symptoms, he said they felt like “a sudden very hard heartbeat with a sort of pause that emulates your entire body, breathing, moving, etc. being suddenly halted (along with) sharp (chest) pain,” lightheadedness and shortness of breath.

Prison authorities disgracefully claimed he feigned illness, Sterling saying “(t)here has been more effort to refute me than there has been to actually provide any care.”

Proper cardiological examination in prison could have easily diagnosed his condition and prescribed needed treatment.

Medical care in US prisons is notoriously abysmal.

Internationally recognized human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was imprisoned for defending the wrong clients Washington wanted convicted.

Obama wanted her dead. She was denied proper medical care for breast cancer, progressing to life threatening stage four because vital surgery was delayed for 18 months.

Cancer spread to her lymph nodes, shoulder, bones and lungs. She was dying when granted a compassionate release and freed on December 31, 2013.

Doctors gave her six months to live. Though seriously ill, she survived until March 7, 2017. I met with her months before her death at age-77, a shadow of the woman I knew earlier physically, her courageous spirit resolute for justice to the end.

Lots more like her and Sterling are needed. He joined the CIA for patriotic reasons. The agency “turned on him and (wrongfully) made him into a criminal,” said wrongfully imprisoned Langley whistleblower John Kiriakou.

Last month, Sterling was released to a halfway house after serving 30 months of his three-and-a-half-year sentence – mostly, not entirely free.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) hailed his release, saying “(h)is conviction was a breach of First Amendment protections. Simply being in contact with a journalist does not amount to espionage and should not incur imprisonment.”

His wife Holly explained “(w)e maintain hope that we can begin the arduous journey of rebuilding our life that the government vehemently destroyed. Jeffrey’s legacy is now branded with the scarlet letter of being a supposed traitor to his country – the country he still loves.”

Trump disgracefully believes whistleblowers should be prosecuted and imprisoned. Last November, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said his office has 27 ongoing investigations of allegedly leaked classified information.

Last year, former NSA intelligence specialist Reality Leigh Winner was charged with “removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet” while working for military contractor Pluribus International Corporation.

Sterling’s conviction was based on communications with James Risen. The DOJ failed to prove disclosure of classified information – nothing about he and Risen discussed.

Instead of dismissing the case for lack of credible evidence, Judge Leonie Brinkema accepted what she called “very powerful circumstantial evidence.”

It failed to prove Sterling’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Instead of exoneration, he was wrongfully convicted – how US injustice works against individuals Washington wants convicted and imprisoned.

The post CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Released from Wrongful Imprisonment appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

When Whistleblowers Tell the Truth They’re Traitors. When Government Lies It’s Politics

(ANTIMEDIA) Immediately after Wikileaks released thousands of documents revealing the extent of CIA surveillance and hacking practices, the government was calling for an investigation — not into why the CIA has amassed so much power, but rather, into who exposed their invasive policies.

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“A federal criminal investigation is being opened into WikiLeaks’ publication of documents detailing alleged CIA hacking operations, several US officials,” reportedly told CNN.

According to USA Today:

“The inquiry, the official said, will seek to determine whether the disclosure represented a breach from the outside or a leak from inside the organization. A separate review will attempt to assess the damage caused by such a disclosure, the official said.”

Even Democratic representative Ted Lieu, who has been urging whistleblowers to come forward to expose wrongdoing within the Trump administration, has turned his focus away from what the documents exposed and toward determining how it could have possibly happened.

“I am deeply disturbed by the allegation that the CIA lost its arsenal of hacking tools,” he said while calling for an investigation. “The ramifications could be devastating. I am calling for an immediate congressional investigation. We need to know if the CIA lost control of its hacking tools, who may have those tools, and how do we now protect the privacy of Americans.”

According to Lieu’s statements, the problem isn’t necessarily that the CIA is spying on Americans and invading innocent people’s technology without consent. It’s that the CIA mishandled their spying tools, and in doing so, endangered Americans’ privacy by exposing the tools to presumably ‘bad actors.’ The problem isn’t the corrupt agency violating basic privacy rights, but that they weren’t skillful enough to keep their corruption under wraps.

So goes the familiar whistleblower narrative in the United States. Whistleblowers step forward to expose wrongdoing on the part of government — something the government claims to support — and immediately, establishment institutions and the media bend the conversation away from the wrongdoing in order to focus on the unlawful release of secrets.

Putting aside the fact that, according to popular American mythology breaking the law is a patriotic duty, the government and politicians’ reactions are both hypocritical and habitual.

When Chelsea Manning revealed damning evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, including soldiers directly targeting Reuters news staff, the response was not to investigate who allowed those crimes (in fact, a later Pentagon manual went on to describe instances in which it’s permissible to kill journalists; that version was later retracted after outcry from reporters). Rather, Manning was subject to a military tribunal and issued multiple life sentences, a cruel and unusual punishment reversed only in President Obama’s last days in office amid his attempts to salvage his abysmal human rights, transparency, and whistleblower record.

When Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens and millions of others around the world, the government’s response was not to investigate why those programs existed in the first place. Rather, they thrashed and flailed around the world, ordering the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales to be grounded in the hopes of catching the whistleblower. Congress later passed the deceptive “USA Freedom Act,” which codified continued surveillance.

Edward Snowden remains in exile, and establishment politicians repeatedly call him a traitor for exposing the crimes of his government. Some, including Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo, have called for his execution. Mass surveillance continues, and the president himself is seeking to retain those powers as he condemns former President Obama for allegedly spying on him.

And so on and so forth. The same was true for John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Jeffrey Sterling. The government is exposed for wrongdoing, and rather than prove themselves to be representatives of the people by remedying those transgressions, they point fingers and divert, all the while refusing to relinquish the unjust power any given agency is exposed for having.

Many people are already aware that the government does little to actually serve them (Americans’ trust in political leaders and government, in general, is abysmally low). Rather, government agents and agencies operate to advance and concentrate their own interests and power. This is why penalties against killing government employees are more stringent than killing civilians. It is why stealing from the government is perceived as more outrageous to the State than stealing from a civilian. The government considers “crimes” committed against itself to carry the utmost offense, yet often fails to deliver justice to the people who provide their financial foundation.

As a result, the State does not even try to show remorse for its violative policies, even when they are exposed and splattered across social media for the world to see. Instead, with the help of corporate media, the debate is shifted to whether or not WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, or whether or not Edward Snowden is a traitor.

As White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said of the leaks:

“This is the kind of disclosure that undermines our country, our security. This alleged leak should concern every American for its impact on national security. … Anybody who leaks classified information will be held accountable to the maximum extent of the law.”

Meanwhile, we’re supposed to accept the government’s investigation of itself, which (surprise!) usually finds little or no wrongdoing on their own behalf and often consolidates and extends the very same power whistleblowers exposed in the first place.

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