'Where Are You?': An Open Letter to American Civil Liberties Groups

By Jeffrey Sterling, St. Louis Post Dispatch

16 August 15

ear NAACP, National Action Network, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Congressional Black Caucus and others:

Where were you?

Where were you when I was faced with blatant discrimination at my job, when my employer told me I was "too big and too black" to do the job?

Where were you when I, one of the first black officers to do so, filed a discrimination suit against the Central Intelligence Agency?

Where were you when the justice system of the United States dismissed my discrimination suit because the U.S. government maintained that trying my suit would endanger national security?

Where were you during the many years I reached out to you, begging, pleading for help from you while the United States government pursued and tormented me for years, bent on retaliation and persecution?

Where were you when I begged for help from Congressman Lacy Clay's office and they told me to run away, to leave the country? I was there ... and I didn't run.

Where were you when the United States government arrested me, put me in jail and branded me with espionage?

Where were you when the United States put me -- the only person and only black face investigated over a 10-year period of time -- on trial in federal court on Espionage Act charges, claiming that I am a traitor to national security? When the prosecution used against me the same issues from my discrimination case that I had not been allowed to pursue in civil court? When a jury without a single black member found me guilty, even when the FBI itself said there was no evidence?

Where were you when a white official, Gen. David Petraeus -- accused of far more violations than I -- was given a slap on the wrist?

Where were you when Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke up for me?

Where were you when the judge sentenced me to prison for 42 months?

I have seen you around.

I saw you when Michael Brown lay dead in the street only a few miles from my home.

I saw you when other black faces were either killed or mistreated. I was out there, too.

I felt the joy and promise of the Million Man March. I felt the joy and the promise when the first black president was elected. I was there with you then.

Though I am invisible to you, others, many others, see me and see the injustice that I have endured for a very long time. Have you not read the editorials, articles and commentaries?

I am now in prison for a crime I did not commit.

The many others I speak of do not claim to be mighty advocates for civil rights on the same level as you, but they are there and have been with me, and will be with me as I appeal. And, they will be with me when I am free.

Where are you?