WEBVTT - Weapons of Mass Destruction (with Valerie Plame) 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.200 I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'sha. I was a 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:07.640 CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts 0:00:07.640 --> 0:00:09.320 in Europe, Russia, and in Asia. 0:00:09.360 --> 0:00:12.479 And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:16.640 and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:17.560 our adversaries. 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:21.520 Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:23.320 theories large and small. 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.079 Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated? 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:28.640 This is mission implausible. 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.120 I had to do a little research for the Introduction's 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.720 holy shit, where do I? How do I introduce you? 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:38.640 But let me, let me, let me try. So today 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:43.760 we're really pleased and proud to introduce our agency colleague. 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.440 We're all formers, and we'd like to welcome Valerie Plane 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:52.680 to the show today. So, Valerie is a former CIA officer. 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.440 Unlike John or I, who were under official cover is diplomats, 0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:00.680 Valerie was a non official cover officer. So as a 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:03.720 business person who doesn't get diplomatic community, if she gets 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:06.280 into trouble, I'm like John or Iwould. But there's so 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.840 much more to Valerie. She's You're the author of two 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:14.360 really fine spine novels, you've dabbled in politics, You've had 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:18.280 a Hollywood movie Fair Game with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:22.680 I want you to head up operations. It's his top priority. 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:26.800 You're in business with a terror organization. Who if you 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:29.760 get out of this car? I can't protect you. You 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:31.959 have no idea what we can and cannot do. 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:36.520 You are the center of a huge political scandal and 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:39.600 a victim of an actual conspiracy theory by the government. 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:43.760 You're also a mom and an activist for countering nuclear proliferation. 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.120 And maybe my most maybe the most impressive thing is 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:50.680 I'm actually a fan of the music group the Decembrists, 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.040 and they have a song Valerie Plane. 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:55.920 Oh Valerie play. 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:02.360 That really is your name. I would shout the same. 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:03.400 The world. 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:10.960 Dear battery play. So they made a wreck cover the 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.920 rest of you when I'll get the world. 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:17.640 Valerie. Welcome to the show. It's really good to have you. 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:19.200 Yeah, it's been a journey. 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.799 As I say, you've lived in interesting times whatever that 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:23.440 needs right. 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.480 Problem is, you probably didn't intend to live in interesting times, right. 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:28.880 You normally would have worked at CIA, had a career, 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:30.400 retired and quietly. 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.920 There, which my career goal was to be chief of 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:38.840 station somewhere, which is like you run your own private fiefdom. 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.080 And I thought that was the be all and the 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:44.360 end all, and I but I miss my career. I 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:46.080 love what I did. I was proud to deserve my 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.120 country and it ended before I was ready. 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:53.680 So the political scandal that you were the victim of 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.760 was huge, Bick twenty three some odd years ago. It 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:00.840 was a government conspiracy and you got and with the 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.040 victim of it. Could you take us through real quick 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.080 what happened and then what it's like to be like 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:08.000 a real victim of a conspiracy. 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:13.120 So I'll recap for your listeners to refresh your memory. 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:17.240 In July two thousand and three, we had invaded Iraq, 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:22.600 and we invaded in March. By July, no WMD had 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.760 been found, even though the Bush administration had promised, and 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:28.360 that was what they predicated the whole war on. We 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:30.959 don't want to see the smoking gun in the shape 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:34.160 of a mushroom cloud, if you recall from then National 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:38.760 Security Advisor Condoise Rice and my husband at the time, 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:42.520 Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an op ed piece in The 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:45.800 New York Times entitled What I Did not find in Africa, 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.240 and in it he went after the central premise that 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.240 the Bush administration had given the American public for launching 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:57.880 a war of choice into a rock, which was Saddam 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:02.880 Museana's nuclear weapons. He went right after the Bush administration, 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:07.480 although in today's terms is probably relatively mild, but he 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:10.680 had said that the intelligence had been cherry picked, that 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.760 the intelligence was fit around the policy, and so forth. 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:20.159 And in retaliation, a week later, conservative calumnist Robert Novak 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:25.680 wrote a column and in it he named me Valerie 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.800 plain talking about Joe Wilson and what he had said 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:30.960 in his op ed. And by the way, his wife, 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:36.600 Valerie Plame, works at the CIA. So I knew immediately 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.440 when Joe tossed the paper to me that morning, at 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:45.480 five point thirty in the morning, that everything rushes through 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:49.599 your head where your life is completely different than what 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.080 it had been five seconds before. I knew the assets 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:57.400 with whom I had worked were in jeopardy people even 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:01.360 that I knew, in an innocuous fashion overseas, they too 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:06.120 could come under suspicion. I knew that my covert career 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.839 was finished. Because this column was syndicated appeared everywhere it 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:16.440 was my true name, and of course I was worried 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.440 about my three year old twins who were asleep in 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:23.160 the room next door. Because not everyone thinks highly or 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:28.400 kindly of the CIA. So that launched this huge political 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:31.840 scandal that actually went on for years. What happened was 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:36.120 the agency referred it the leak of my name to 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.719 the Justice Department, and they started digging. I mean, I 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:43.440 never wanted to be a public person. Obviously, I worked 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:46.680 for the CIA. I was perfectly happy with my kudos 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:50.839 coming from my covert colleagues. And our lives were turned 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:53.760 upside down. It was really a dark time. I was 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:57.479 called a glorified secretary because I guess because I'm a 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.880 girl that was by a member of Congress. We were 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:05.480 accused and called traders and liars because this really went 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.960 against what the Bush administration had laid out as the 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:14.599 reasoning behind the invasion. It ended up, or at least 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:18.200 that chapter of it ended, in two thousand and seven, 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:23.680 when the Special Prosecutor Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald indicted and 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:28.080 then convicted the Vice President Chenese chief of staff Scooter 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.520 Libby on lying and. 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.159 At sat of Justice perjury. 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:37.400 Auction of Justice exactly perjury. I like lying because it's 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:43.440 just so much clear what's happened. But and I ultimately 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:45.960 resigned from the agency because I felt I had the 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.520 best job in operations. I didn't want to stay too 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:52.520 much had happened. The agency did not treat me particularly 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:57.120 well in the aftermath. I was totally radioactive. They didn't 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.800 know what to do with me. We moved from Washington, 0:06:59.880 --> 0:07:02.960 d See where all this happened, to where we're in 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:07.520 New Mexico now. Joe Wilson has gone sadly, and then 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:14.240 I just began the next part and I, you know, 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:17.440 just how to figure it out. And I've done a 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.880 lot of interesting things. You play the hand you're dealt. 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.800 It's not what I wanted. I loved my career. I 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:28.520 felt working on weapons of mass destruction, in particular the 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:32.280 nuclear threat was meaningful and it was satisfying. But that's 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:33.320 not what I got to do. 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:36.320 I recall those times really well, and I didn't work 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:38.720 on Iraq or WMD. I was working on Russia things 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.120 and stuff at the time, and I think probably people 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:44.320 today have forgotten the intensity of it. So the administration 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:47.320 again went, like you said, went to war for war 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.680 of choice to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and it 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.240 wasn't going well, and so I think they wanted to 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:56.760 create a narrative of success. The president wasn'ting to run 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.880 for presidency again, and so anybody who against them to 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.680 try to say that things weren't going well like they 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:06.960 do today, and politics can get quite ugly, and public 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.960 servants usually are stay out of the political line, and 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:15.600 you got pulled into it. Scooter Libby was eventually convicted, 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:19.800 Bush commuted his sentence. Trump eventually pardoned him. 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:20.800 But there's a lot of. 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:25.000 People here, Novak, Carl Rove, Scooter Libby, Richard Armitage, Dick 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:27.680 Cheney who were involved in going after Did any of 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:29.560 them ever apologize, that's my question. 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:34.640 No, with the exception of Dick Armitage, who did not 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.280 call me up personally. But I saw in some interview 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:40.920 he's hemmed in had and acknowledge that's probably he shouldn't 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.920 have done that, which, of course not. He'd been around 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:47.640 Washington more than a minute and knew. I mean, he 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.400 was just all of them were banning about my name 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:54.920 and whether a person to be a covert or overt 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:57.840 status with the CIA. You don't share that like candy 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:02.640 with journalists, which Dick Armitage did. And typically I'm not 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:05.760 a conspiracy minded person, but it really does apply in 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:10.240 this case. The special Prosecutor Fitzgerald really wanted to go 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.480 after and he tried to get convictions on Karl Rove 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:16.959 and many others. There were many in the White House 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:21.400 that were determined to make Joe Wilson and Valerie Plain 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.320 look like, oh they're you know, they're just ridiculous. There's 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:29.360 the shiny object look over here, anything to distract from 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:31.640 the real disaster of what was going on in a rock. 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.440 So it was a there was a conspiracy, and I'm 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:41.559 I can only imagine that Fitzgerald wanted I don't know 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.520 ninety percent that he would be able to convict and 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.280 because Scooter Libby took the fall for all of them, 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.800 he couldn't quite gather what he needed to make that happen. 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:55.679 It's a long story, but I actually know Pat fitzghieald 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.280 one of the most guys with the highest integrity and 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.320 a really guy. He was voted one of the most 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.040 eligible bachelors in the US when I knew he wasn't 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:07.880 married yet, and he applied to get a rescue kitten, 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:11.120 and they turned him down because he was honest, and 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:13.560 he said, I work fifteen hours a day and I 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:16.000 sleep three times a week in my office. But so 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:20.320 on this show, we talk a lot about deconstructing and 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:24.520 debunking conspiracy theories, most of which are not true or 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:26.800 only have a German truth. But this is really different. 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.839 This isn't just a conspiracy that I'd like to drill 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.319 down with more against you, or that wasn't so much 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:35.520 against you. It was against your husband and you were 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.760 collateral damage. But there was other conspiracies involved in this. 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:42.120 And I just like to make a couple of statements 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:43.840 and hey, have you maybe run with it. The first 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:48.520 is that right after nine to eleven, within week, Vice 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.839 President Cheney was talking about going after a Rock, and 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.360 they had several different narratives. One of the narratives was 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.600 that Rock and al Qaeda were you know, technical term, 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:02.400 in cohoots with each other. The right and the CIA 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:06.079 and the intelligence community basically said there is no evidence 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:09.040 for this at all. But then they had the fallback 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.640 was he's getting weapons of mass destruction. But Cheney was 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:16.920 saying they have weapons before we'd even tried to investigate 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:19.840 it really right. And so one of the ways that 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.000 he claimed that they did was that they were getting 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:24.199 uranium yellow cake out of I think it was the 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.120 Zier And that's where your husband basically throw the bullshit 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:29.760 flag and said, I went and I investigated, they're not 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.160 getting it. And so he basically said, you're wrong, and 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.920 they came up with this office, the Office of Special 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:41.160 Plans under Doug Fight. There was all these neocons, Wolfowitz 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:45.320 and Richard Pearl and then this guy Machalabi who was 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:49.079 in a rocky and basically it was a conspiracy. They 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:53.120 created their own intelligence unit not to find out what happened. 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:56.680 They already knew what they wanted to say. They were 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.959 just looking for any evidence they could cherry pick to find. 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:02.720 So I was wondering if you could just talk about 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:06.120 how you view the conspiracies that brought us into this 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.960 horrific war that costs thousands of American lives and hundreds 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:12.720 of thousands of Iraqi lives and cost me several years 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:14.760 of my life in Iraq later. 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.679 Sure, let's start at the beginning. Nine to eleven happens, 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:22.120 and we know within a matter of a week ten 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:27.080 days Cheney is at Camp David, and he's unfolding a 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.960 map of Iraq, saying, there's not that many targets in Afghanistan, 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:35.240 but in Iraq. Now you know there's something there. And 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:38.840 we know that the neocons would have been in the 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:43.319 wilderness for some years had prepared what is it called 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:47.400 Blueprint for American Century, Proposal for American Century. They had 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.880 put this together their dog, this manifesto in nineteen ninety eight, 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:55.480 and it called for a horrific sort of attack or 0:12:55.640 --> 0:13:01.320 some sort of precipitating event, to thereby launch American might 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:05.000 and military power in ways to remake the world in 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.720 the ways they thought it should be. And lo and behold, 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:11.680 nine to eleven happens. So now the neocons are in power, 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:16.120 and they only have to take that proposal off the shelf, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:18.880 blow off the dust, and get to work. I get asked, 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:20.760 why do we go to war with the rock. I 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:25.120 think it is best explained as a waterfall of events, 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:29.160 cascading events. You have neocons in power, you have a 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:33.480 president who's not terribly comfortable in the whole foreign realm 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:36.960 of his presidency, having just been to China when his 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:41.719 dad was ambassador there. He's relying very heavily upon a 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:45.640 vice president who really wanted to see the so called 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:50.800 unitary executive theory that is bolstering the executive power. And 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:53.480 of course he came up with this one percent doctrine. 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:57.160 If there's even a one percent chance that there's some 0:13:57.200 --> 0:13:59.000 sort of harm to come to the United States, we're 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:04.040 gonna So all these things come together, we pivot from Afghanistan. 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.560 We could have a whole show on what that caused, 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:12.120 but we don't have time. So we quickly begin beating 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:16.000 the war drums for a rock and why they wanted 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:20.240 to remake the Middle East in a much more pliable 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:25.720 way for American and Israeli ambitions. And you spoke about Cheney, 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:29.360 so talk about a conspiracy. Another word for it is 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:35.720 circular reporting. He would leak something to whether it's Judith Miller, 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:38.760 who had great real estate on the front of the 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.680 New York Times, or any of these others. Cheney would 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:44.520 then go and meet the press and go just in 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.320 Sunday's paper, they talk about whatever. A lot of it 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:52.960 was these aluminum tubes, which he claimed were being used 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:57.200 as centrifuges to build up a rocks presumed nuclear program, 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:00.640 and the agency did get sucked in. As you know, 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:05.479 it was highly, highly unusual for anyone from any administration 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:09.000 to cross the Potomac River and come to CIA headquarters 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:10.800 and all of a sudden, all of a sudden, you've 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:15.240 got Scooter Libby and his little minions showing up a 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:20.760 lot more talking to analysts. Now, I do understand their 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:23.800 heightened concern. Of course, we all were after nine to 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:27.520 eleven the world had changed drastically and we didn't know 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.360 what the hell was going on. Frankly, but they also 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:34.600 were looking back to the early nineties. If you recall, 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:38.720 Saddam Hussein's son in law had defected, went to Jordan. 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:42.000 We debriefed him and were like, oh my god, we 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:45.520 had no idea rock had been so far advanced in 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:49.240 their nuclear programs. Stupidly, the son in law, red Effects, 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:52.000 goes back and he shop by Sudamasain. But that's an aside. 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:55.440 So there was a heightened sense of we really don't 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:59.000 know what's going on. So when I show up on 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:04.920 the IRAQ D desk and there's clearly the whole machinery 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.760 of state is looking to focus on a rock, what 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:13.440 we had was nothing because saddamusin had kicked out the 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:16.880 UN Weapons Inspectors in nineteen ninety eight. We didn't have 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:19.880 a station there, we didn't have an embassy, so we 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:23.560 had to start at zero in building up assets and 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:27.720 starting combing the world to see what did we know 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:32.160 about saddamis aid. Now, when Joe Wilson went to Niger 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.200 to investigate these reports of five hundred tons of yellow 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:39.520 cake uranium that allegedly had been shipped from Nize to 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.480 a Raq If that had proven to be true, that 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:48.200 would have been significant because clearly Saddam Ussein was seeking 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:52.000 to reconstitute his nuclear program. But Joe went to Nizer 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.440 determined this is all totally bogus. And he wasn't the 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.400 only one. There were a lot of other The ambassador 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:59.560 there forced our general all things like, this is totally bogus. 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:04.840 Not but boy, the administration latched on to that, and 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:09.040 in fact, the infamous now sixteen words that appeared in 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.359 George Bush's stated the Union Address of January two thousand 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:17.520 and three, before we went to war, references significant quantities 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:18.520 of uranium. 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:21.879 The British government has learned the Saddam Hussein recently sought 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:25.360 significant quantities of uranium from Africa. 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:29.240 So all this is this pot is stirring. The pot 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.919 is stirring, and we go to war and by the 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:37.240 time Joe Wilson writes his outbed piece, we hadn't found 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.840 any WMD, not nothing. The only thing that was happening 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:46.840 was the Bagdad Museum, which held countless precious ancient artifacts, 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:51.840 was being looted, and the insurgency was ramping up. And 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:55.800 I think the reason it all blew up then. I 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.080 don't know, this is just my speculation, but at that 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.199 particular moment in time, the Bush administration was feeling a 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:06.640 little bit anxious about all their things that they had 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.320 said we were going to find. We hadn't found anything. 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.800 And here comes along this ambassador. He had been in 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:16.760 a rock during the First Golf War, had dealt with Sudama, 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.560 Zane Tarika's Ease and the rest of the gang. And 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.119 he's like, no, this is you know, you're it's not 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.320 the best idea we had. And furthermore, your intelligence is 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:30.359 totally cooked. And it just hit at a moment in 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:35.280 time that Rove Cheney the rest of them were feeling 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:40.240 a little apprehensive, and so they went into overdrive. I 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:43.040 don't think this is all planned out. It's not, but 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.360 they quickly had to turn it and make it seem 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:50.520 that Joe Wilson and Valerie Plane were ridiculous. They were traders, 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.399 they were liars. She works with the CIA, so you 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:57.040 can't trust her all this, and it just went off 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:57.480 from there. 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:02.320 That's possible a second, we'll be right back. 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:14.360 When your husband puts the up edd the New York 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:17.600 Times at a time where they are politically feeling vulnerable 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:20.600 because their policy is not going so well and there's 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.960 concern that maybe there isn't weapons of mass destruction, which 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:26.639 was the reason for going to war. Your name is leaked. 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.000 It's becomes a big sort of issue. People are already saying, hey, 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.800 that's wrong. But then what they did, I think go 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:38.320 back after you too. Valerie clearly sent her husband. She 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:42.320 worked for the CIA, and so the CIA, through Valerie 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:44.879 sent her husband in Nigier to embarrass the administration. 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:47.919 Yeah. I you know, my mother has gone now, but 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:51.720 she was around then, and bless her heart, she's like, 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:54.760 why would they say that that's not true? You know? 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:59.880 I know, Mom. A year before Joe Writer's up ed piece, 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:04.240 it was when he had gone to Niger and investigated this. 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:08.880 It's not as though we had some sort of crystal 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.199 ball to understand that we were going to go to 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:16.280 war for sure, and how can we best discredit the 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:20.920 Bush administration? Joe and I were both although we were 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:23.840 socially liberal, and it doesn't matter how we voted. The 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.119 fact is, you serve as as you well know, when 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:29.400 you're overseas, you serve as an American. You don't serve 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:33.080 as a Republican or a Democrat. Joe had served in 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:38.959 senior positions under both type of administrations, and it was 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:45.480 clearly just such a smear job in their attempt to 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:49.520 detract or redirect the attention of the media and the 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:51.639 failure of the policy. 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:54.359 A number of people were involved, so there was a conspiracy. 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:56.240 They said around and said, okay, we've got to make 0:20:56.320 --> 0:21:00.200 him look bad, and then somehow your name come up 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.679 as well. Right they did. They said, they smeared you both, 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:05.760 because we talk a lot about conspiracies, but we don't 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:08.280 often talk about people who are the victims of it, 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:10.399 who suffer from It's the human cost of this. 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:14.240 My bit best to saying falling down Alice's rabbit hole, 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:17.800 where white is black and black as white. The people 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:20.760 that they're talking about, Joe Wilson and Valerie playing in 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:24.919 the media on the radio, TV, the newspapers. They have 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.960 nothing to do with us in our character is so 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:35.480 distorting and disabled and destabilizing, particularly given my career which 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:40.160 was covert until that moment. And yeah, it was really dark. 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:44.560 We had the entire machinery of the state and which 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:50.800 is significant behind the notion that they needed to crush us. 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:55.320 So Joe in his nature, he's he's He was not 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:58.280 a typical diplomat, right. He was rather belligerent and a 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:02.600 flamboyant character, and he went out and he was very public, 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:05.480 and I was just cringey. I was really in shock. 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.960 I didn't know quite what to do. And furthermore, I 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:12.000 was still working for the agency, so I couldn't go 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:15.199 on meet the press and talk about it, and the 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:19.679 agency was not giving me any guidance. I literally have 0:22:19.800 --> 0:22:23.040 in the entire time from two thousand and three until 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:26.040 I stepped away in two thousand and seven, the total 0:22:26.080 --> 0:22:31.120 amount of time I had with any senior headquarters officer 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:35.320 was ten minutes with Jim Patt. And if you know Jim, 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:39.000 he spoke nine of those minutes. And you know, look, 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:42.240 I'm a big girl. I don't need someone to hold 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:44.480 my hand. But you would think that there were some 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:49.480 equities that we needed to mutually protect. Yes, there were 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:52.560 death threats. I will tell you. I want to say 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:55.080 in two thousand and four is everything the political environments 0:22:55.080 --> 0:23:00.280 heating up along with the presidential election and my address 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:05.960 in Washington, d C. They found targeting papers in someone 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:09.679 an American Al Qaeda person, right, Remember that was a 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:13.520 thing for a while. And I went to CIA security 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:16.439 and I said, look, my security is one thing, but 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:19.600 I've got small children at home, and I requested, just 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:25.959 through that period to have some extra security. The other ones, 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:29.520 by the way, other ones that were targeted in that 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:35.640 particular batch of intelligence were George Tenant, John Ashcroft. They 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:40.240 all enjoyed twenty four to seven security protection. Anyway, the 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:43.480 security people thought about it and then said, no, we're not, No, 0:23:43.880 --> 0:23:47.520 we're not. You know how the agency likes to say, oh, 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:51.639 we're all a family, we're all in it together. Well, 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:56.440 and that was not my experience. I was very much alone. 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:00.520 And it was a thing that went on and onth Miller, 0:24:00.760 --> 0:24:04.320 the New York Times reporter, she was tossed in jail 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:06.879 for a couple months because she refused to give up 0:24:06.880 --> 0:24:10.520 her sources, as though she's in some priestly class. I 0:24:10.720 --> 0:24:16.560 literally they write whole courses around that First Amendment question 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:19.439 and so forth. So I have a certain bias for 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:24.600 sure on that. Living through that changed us. It was, 0:24:25.480 --> 0:24:29.639 and of course you become more cynical. You don't read 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:33.720 the media as you did before. In the personal toll 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:38.159 was profound, and I would say the most for me, 0:24:38.240 --> 0:24:41.080