Dear FBI Director Mueller,

If you could’ve been killed by an assassin and an authority, sworn to protect you, knew about it but said nothing, wouldn’t that make that authority just as guilty as the assassin if their plot succeeded?

I’m writing to you as a former member of Occupy Houston, who could’ve been shot and killed by a sniper just a little over a year ago. I learned of this plot by reading some of your agency’s redacted documents that the Partnership for Civil Justice fund obtained through a FOIA request.

In these documents, your agents reveal knowledge of a plot by unknown persons to assassinate “leaders” of the Occupy Wall Street movement in Houston, Texas, in the Fall of 2011. Your offices knew of this plot, yet none of us who were at risk of assassination were informed. In my eyes, such negligence only enables those with violent intentions to act, and makes your agents complicit in what could’ve been murder.

At many of Occupy Houston’s marches, I was the guy with the bullhorn leading the crowd in chants. Once I was arrested at a sit-in at the Mickey Leland Federal Building, when a U.S. senator who had her office there took the side of lower taxes for millionaires over jobs for hundreds of thousands of her constituents. I once helped Rice University grad students organize a mic check protest of Rep. Eric Cantor that fall. And even though I wasn’t inside during the actions, I was arrested on the site and forced to sign paperwork that banned me from ever setting foot on Rice University’s campus for the rest of my life.

While the Occupy movement doesn’t have official “leaders,” myself and several of my close friends who were also Occupy organizers in Houston were very likely targeted by these snipers, and your agency further endangered our lives by not giving us any warnings of the plot.

Despite what your agents believed, I’m not a terrorist or a criminal. I’m an American citizen nonviolently protesting the fact that corporations and banks can buy influence in Washington, and that our elected officials have chosen to do their bidding rather than listen to the voices of the people who elected them. I do it not because I want to violently overthrow my government, but because I love and care deeply about my country, my society, and my planet and want to see us overcome these obstacles as one people.

More than that, I’m a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, and a grandson. And if those who wished us harm succeeded in their plans to kill me and others organizing the movement in Houston, our blood would be on your hands. And our families wouldn’t forgive nor forget your complicity.

If there’s one thing I learned from this horror, it’s that I sadly can no longer trust my government to protect either my rights as a citizen, or even my own safety. I feel strongly that you should resign as director of the FBI, and allow someone to step in who won’t shy away from their duty to protect U.S. citizens and jail the real criminals, who are the main reason why people like me and my fellow Houston occupiers took to the streets in the first place.

Respectfully yours,

Carl R. Gibson