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BY JEFFREY STERLING


In Mid-December 2023, Charles Glass, the esteemed writer, journalist, broadcaster, and publisher visited with Julian Assange, an inmate at
Belmarsh Prison in the U.K. Assange has been confined there since
April, 2019. He is awaiting his final appeal to quash U.S. efforts to
extradite him to face some of the same Espionage Act charges I was
confronted with. Glass chronicles the visit in a recent piece in The
Nation. His account took me right back to prison. Glass’s visit with
Assange could have been a visit with me.

I fondly remember Charles Glass. He wrote to me while I was in FCI
Englewood, the prison I was bound in after being convicted of
violating the Espionage Act in 2015. He and others sent me a few of
his books, notably Americans in Paris and Tribes with Flags. I was
extremely grateful for such support. I had read them before, but
reading from prison allows a different perspective, even on paths
previously traveled. My prison eyes were reading them for the first
time. In some ways, his visit with Assange was a similar overture of
support for me and my experience in prison.

I make no attempts to compare myself to Julian Assange, but I know
what he is going through and what he is facing. Glass’s statement that Assange’s “…days are all the same: the confined space, the loneliness,
the books, the memories, the hope that his lawyers’ appeal against
extradition and life imprisonment in the United States will succeed”
also applied to me. But, what was particularly profound for me was
reading about Glass’s experience as a visitor to someone confined to
prison. For me, time with a visitor was a highly-desired oasis in the never-ending desert that is prison. It was the one time I could have a
more substantial connection with the world outside the prison walls.
Email and letters were always appreciated, but nothing could replace
actual contact, or at least being in the same room as a loved one or
supporter. The value of having a visitor cannot be understated, the
other days fighting against the droll, oppression, and monotony of
prison were all endured for the singular experience of a visit. I
imagine that Assange has had the same longing anticipation of an
upcoming visit, the one time in prison when you can be reminded that
you are still alive, still human.

Glass deftly characterizes the prison where Assange is being held as
“bleak,” and “inhumane”. I realized the same descriptors apply to the experience visitors must face. Visitors and inmates alike go through
an emotional and offensive gauntlet just for the privilege of a visit
in prison. For me, it was a painful and desired rollercoaster of
emotions with the high of the visit and the low of the eventual
parting at the end of it. It was always a struggle to resist having
the visit tainted by the dehumanizing strip searches I had to endure
before and after each visit. It was difficult to truly understand that
my visitor went through a similar hell. Glass’s visit with Assange
re-informed me of the other side of prison visit.

When visiting anyone in prison, inmate and visitor alike are faced
with arbitrary rules with no real guidance or reason. It is a daunting
task trying to comply with the rules when they change at the whims of
the gate-keepers. I had a painful chuckle reading how the gate-keepers
deemed books Glass brought for Assange as “fire hazards” and therefore
not allowed. Belmarsh’s other restrictions on books, how they can be
received, and how many an inmate can have are not dissimilar to the
same arbitrary rules at FCI Englewood. There is no redress, no
challenge of authority at this level. If you want the visit or the
books, you have to follow the rules, whatever they are and however
they are enforced at the time.

Whenever my wife Holly would visit, I could sense her effort to be
strong for me and not give in to the hell she had to go through just
to have time sitting next to me and holding my hand. Time and again
she endured a gauntlet of nonsensical and punitively arbitrary
visiting rules. Holly never knew if what she was wearing would be
acceptable or if the body search would once again border on assault. Approaching the prison on visiting day, she could only hope that the gate-keepers were having at least a good day and maybe save her some
indignity. Some guards had well-founded reputations among inmates of
being unnecessarily cruel, particularly with female visitors. I was
also fortunate enough to be visited by other friends, including Norman
Solomon from Roots Action. In many ways, I felt horrible that they had
to endure such humiliation to come see me, prison is designed to prove
to you that you don’t have much worth, if any. I imagine that Assange
may have felt the same as he was visiting with Glass.

I always wondered what it was like for Holly and Norman waiting in the
visiting room with other “free” people who had been successful in
getting past the gate-keepers to visit with their inmates. Though
strangers to each other, they shared an unfortunate commonality,
hoping for nothing more than time with a loved one or friend.
Regardless of their lives outside prison walls, each and every visitor
has to hope that the system will at least allow for the simplest of
human needs, time.

Somewhat shamefully, I found myself a bit jealous to read that Glass
and Assange were able to be face to face during their visit. The setup
in FCI Englewood was a bank of attached chairs, Holly and I could not
face each other. Any motion to sit askew or move around in the chair
to face each other could be grounds for ending the visit. Once I found
Holly, we could have an embrace at the beginning and end, maybe a
kiss. I rarely let go of her hand during the visits. Once together, a
big chunk of time was spent deciding what to get from the vending
machines. Then Holly would have to leave me to stand in line at the
vending machines and then the microwave. The choices I had, if the
gate-keepers bothered with restocking were not much different from the
junk available to Glass to get for Assange. I know that Assange felt
as I did, regardless of the food in the visiting room. It was leaps
and bounds better than the food served any other time in prison.

Once the preliminaries were taken care of, we could get down to the
visit. But, there was never time enough. There was never enough time
to say or hear what you wanted or hoped. In prison, only during visits
does time move faster. A final embrace and then getting in line for
another strip search was how the visits with Holly ended for me. I
felt lucky if she was in the first group of visitors who were escorted
out, that way neither of us could see the pain on each other’s face
from across the room. Glass’s visit with Assange ended pretty much the
same way, the visitor is free to go outside, the prison goes back to
his cell.

I encourage you to read Glass’s account of his visit with Assange. It
is much more than merely the account of a visit with a person in
prison, it is a representation of the Espionage Act and how it is
being used by the U.S. government to silence and punish those who dare
expose its wrongdoings and illegalities. Much like prison visiting
rules, use of the Espionage Act is arbitrary and punitive, justice or
security have nothing to do with it. We are all becoming prisoners to
the whims of the gate-keepers who are using the Espionage Act to keep
us ignorant and in line. With Assange’s extradition, freedom of the
press, along with government accountability and a myriad of other
supposed freedoms from government persecution are at stake. We will
each find ourselves either the visitor or the visited if the current
use of the Espionage Act is allowed to continue. Whether visitor or
visited, the Espionage Act puts us all in prison. I was there with
Charles Glass in that prison visiting room. Considering the stakes if
Julian Assange is extradited, we all were.

This first appeared on ProgressiveHub.net.

Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent, is the author of “Unwanted Spy:
The Persecution of an American Whistleblower.” He was in prison for
two and a half years after a 2015 trial convicted him of violating the Espionage Act, making him another victim of the U.S. government’s
crackdown on alleged leakers and whistleblowers. Sterling is currently
the coordinator of The Project for Accountability, sponsored by the
RootsAction Education Fund.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/07/a-visit-to-julian-assange-in-prison/

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