Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'sha. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 2: Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible.
Speaker 2: I had to do a little research for the Introduction's
Speaker 2: holy shit, where do I? How do I introduce you?
Speaker 2: But let me, let me, let me try. So today
Speaker 2: we're really pleased and proud to introduce our agency colleague.
Speaker 2: We're all formers, and we'd like to welcome Valerie Plane
Speaker 2: to the show today. So, Valerie is a former CIA officer.
Speaker 2: Unlike John or I, who were under official cover is diplomats,
Speaker 2: Valerie was a non official cover officer. So as a
Speaker 2: business person who doesn't get diplomatic community, if she gets
Speaker 2: into trouble, I'm like John or Iwould. But there's so
Speaker 2: much more to Valerie. She's You're the author of two
Speaker 2: really fine spine novels, you've dabbled in politics, You've had
Speaker 2: a Hollywood movie Fair Game with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts.
Speaker 3: I want you to head up operations. It's his top priority.
Speaker 4: You're in business with a terror organization. Who if you
Speaker 4: get out of this car? I can't protect you. You
Speaker 4: have no idea what we can and cannot do.
Speaker 2: You are the center of a huge political scandal and
Speaker 2: a victim of an actual conspiracy theory by the government.
Speaker 2: You're also a mom and an activist for countering nuclear proliferation.
Speaker 2: And maybe my most maybe the most impressive thing is
Speaker 2: I'm actually a fan of the music group the Decembrists,
Speaker 2: and they have a song Valerie Plane.
Speaker 1: Oh Valerie play.
Speaker 4: That really is your name. I would shout the same.
Speaker 1: The world.
Speaker 4: Dear battery play. So they made a wreck cover the
Speaker 4: rest of you when I'll get the world.
Speaker 2: Valerie. Welcome to the show. It's really good to have you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been a journey.
Speaker 2: As I say, you've lived in interesting times whatever that
Speaker 2: needs right.
Speaker 1: Problem is, you probably didn't intend to live in interesting times, right.
Speaker 1: You normally would have worked at CIA, had a career,
Speaker 1: retired and quietly.
Speaker 4: There, which my career goal was to be chief of
Speaker 4: station somewhere, which is like you run your own private fiefdom.
Speaker 4: And I thought that was the be all and the
Speaker 4: end all, and I but I miss my career. I
Speaker 4: love what I did. I was proud to deserve my
Speaker 4: country and it ended before I was ready.
Speaker 2: So the political scandal that you were the victim of
Speaker 2: was huge, Bick twenty three some odd years ago. It
Speaker 2: was a government conspiracy and you got and with the
Speaker 2: victim of it. Could you take us through real quick
Speaker 2: what happened and then what it's like to be like
Speaker 2: a real victim of a conspiracy.
Speaker 4: So I'll recap for your listeners to refresh your memory.
Speaker 4: In July two thousand and three, we had invaded Iraq,
Speaker 4: and we invaded in March. By July, no WMD had
Speaker 4: been found, even though the Bush administration had promised, and
Speaker 4: that was what they predicated the whole war on. We
Speaker 4: don't want to see the smoking gun in the shape
Speaker 4: of a mushroom cloud, if you recall from then National
Speaker 4: Security Advisor Condoise Rice and my husband at the time,
Speaker 4: Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an op ed piece in The
Speaker 4: New York Times entitled What I Did not find in Africa,
Speaker 4: and in it he went after the central premise that
Speaker 4: the Bush administration had given the American public for launching
Speaker 4: a war of choice into a rock, which was Saddam
Speaker 4: Museana's nuclear weapons. He went right after the Bush administration,
Speaker 4: although in today's terms is probably relatively mild, but he
Speaker 4: had said that the intelligence had been cherry picked, that
Speaker 4: the intelligence was fit around the policy, and so forth.
Speaker 4: And in retaliation, a week later, conservative calumnist Robert Novak
Speaker 4: wrote a column and in it he named me Valerie
Speaker 4: plain talking about Joe Wilson and what he had said
Speaker 4: in his op ed. And by the way, his wife,
Speaker 4: Valerie Plame, works at the CIA. So I knew immediately
Speaker 4: when Joe tossed the paper to me that morning, at
Speaker 4: five point thirty in the morning, that everything rushes through
Speaker 4: your head where your life is completely different than what
Speaker 4: it had been five seconds before. I knew the assets
Speaker 4: with whom I had worked were in jeopardy people even
Speaker 4: that I knew, in an innocuous fashion overseas, they too
Speaker 4: could come under suspicion. I knew that my covert career
Speaker 4: was finished. Because this column was syndicated appeared everywhere it
Speaker 4: was my true name, and of course I was worried
Speaker 4: about my three year old twins who were asleep in
Speaker 4: the room next door. Because not everyone thinks highly or
Speaker 4: kindly of the CIA. So that launched this huge political
Speaker 4: scandal that actually went on for years. What happened was
Speaker 4: the agency referred it the leak of my name to
Speaker 4: the Justice Department, and they started digging. I mean, I
Speaker 4: never wanted to be a public person. Obviously, I worked
Speaker 4: for the CIA. I was perfectly happy with my kudos
Speaker 4: coming from my covert colleagues. And our lives were turned
Speaker 4: upside down. It was really a dark time. I was
Speaker 4: called a glorified secretary because I guess because I'm a
Speaker 4: girl that was by a member of Congress. We were
Speaker 4: accused and called traders and liars because this really went
Speaker 4: against what the Bush administration had laid out as the
Speaker 4: reasoning behind the invasion. It ended up, or at least
Speaker 4: that chapter of it ended, in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 4: when the Special Prosecutor Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald indicted and
Speaker 4: then convicted the Vice President Chenese chief of staff Scooter
Speaker 4: Libby on lying and.
Speaker 2: At sat of Justice perjury.
Speaker 4: Auction of Justice exactly perjury. I like lying because it's
Speaker 4: just so much clear what's happened. But and I ultimately
Speaker 4: resigned from the agency because I felt I had the
Speaker 4: best job in operations. I didn't want to stay too
Speaker 4: much had happened. The agency did not treat me particularly
Speaker 4: well in the aftermath. I was totally radioactive. They didn't
Speaker 4: know what to do with me. We moved from Washington,
Speaker 4: d See where all this happened, to where we're in
Speaker 4: New Mexico now. Joe Wilson has gone sadly, and then
Speaker 4: I just began the next part and I, you know,
Speaker 4: just how to figure it out. And I've done a
Speaker 4: lot of interesting things. You play the hand you're dealt.
Speaker 4: It's not what I wanted. I loved my career. I
Speaker 4: felt working on weapons of mass destruction, in particular the
Speaker 4: nuclear threat was meaningful and it was satisfying. But that's
Speaker 4: not what I got to do.
Speaker 1: I recall those times really well, and I didn't work
Speaker 1: on Iraq or WMD. I was working on Russia things
Speaker 1: and stuff at the time, and I think probably people
Speaker 1: today have forgotten the intensity of it. So the administration
Speaker 1: again went, like you said, went to war for war
Speaker 1: of choice to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't going well, and so I think they wanted to
Speaker 1: create a narrative of success. The president wasn'ting to run
Speaker 1: for presidency again, and so anybody who against them to
Speaker 1: try to say that things weren't going well like they
Speaker 1: do today, and politics can get quite ugly, and public
Speaker 1: servants usually are stay out of the political line, and
Speaker 1: you got pulled into it. Scooter Libby was eventually convicted,
Speaker 1: Bush commuted his sentence. Trump eventually pardoned him.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of.
Speaker 1: People here, Novak, Carl Rove, Scooter Libby, Richard Armitage, Dick
Speaker 1: Cheney who were involved in going after Did any of
Speaker 1: them ever apologize, that's my question.
Speaker 4: No, with the exception of Dick Armitage, who did not
Speaker 4: call me up personally. But I saw in some interview
Speaker 4: he's hemmed in had and acknowledge that's probably he shouldn't
Speaker 4: have done that, which, of course not. He'd been around
Speaker 4: Washington more than a minute and knew. I mean, he
Speaker 4: was just all of them were banning about my name
Speaker 4: and whether a person to be a covert or overt
Speaker 4: status with the CIA. You don't share that like candy
Speaker 4: with journalists, which Dick Armitage did. And typically I'm not
Speaker 4: a conspiracy minded person, but it really does apply in
Speaker 4: this case. The special Prosecutor Fitzgerald really wanted to go
Speaker 4: after and he tried to get convictions on Karl Rove
Speaker 4: and many others. There were many in the White House
Speaker 4: that were determined to make Joe Wilson and Valerie Plain
Speaker 4: look like, oh they're you know, they're just ridiculous. There's
Speaker 4: the shiny object look over here, anything to distract from
Speaker 4: the real disaster of what was going on in a rock.
Speaker 4: So it was a there was a conspiracy, and I'm
Speaker 4: I can only imagine that Fitzgerald wanted I don't know
Speaker 4: ninety percent that he would be able to convict and
Speaker 4: because Scooter Libby took the fall for all of them,
Speaker 4: he couldn't quite gather what he needed to make that happen.
Speaker 2: It's a long story, but I actually know Pat fitzghieald
Speaker 2: one of the most guys with the highest integrity and
Speaker 2: a really guy. He was voted one of the most
Speaker 2: eligible bachelors in the US when I knew he wasn't
Speaker 2: married yet, and he applied to get a rescue kitten,
Speaker 2: and they turned him down because he was honest, and
Speaker 2: he said, I work fifteen hours a day and I
Speaker 2: sleep three times a week in my office. But so
Speaker 2: on this show, we talk a lot about deconstructing and
Speaker 2: debunking conspiracy theories, most of which are not true or
Speaker 2: only have a German truth. But this is really different.
Speaker 2: This isn't just a conspiracy that I'd like to drill
Speaker 2: down with more against you, or that wasn't so much
Speaker 2: against you. It was against your husband and you were
Speaker 2: collateral damage. But there was other conspiracies involved in this.
Speaker 2: And I just like to make a couple of statements
Speaker 2: and hey, have you maybe run with it. The first
Speaker 2: is that right after nine to eleven, within week, Vice
Speaker 2: President Cheney was talking about going after a Rock, and
Speaker 2: they had several different narratives. One of the narratives was
Speaker 2: that Rock and al Qaeda were you know, technical term,
Speaker 2: in cohoots with each other. The right and the CIA
Speaker 2: and the intelligence community basically said there is no evidence
Speaker 2: for this at all. But then they had the fallback
Speaker 2: was he's getting weapons of mass destruction. But Cheney was
Speaker 2: saying they have weapons before we'd even tried to investigate
Speaker 2: it really right. And so one of the ways that
Speaker 2: he claimed that they did was that they were getting
Speaker 2: uranium yellow cake out of I think it was the
Speaker 2: Zier And that's where your husband basically throw the bullshit
Speaker 2: flag and said, I went and I investigated, they're not
Speaker 2: getting it. And so he basically said, you're wrong, and
Speaker 2: they came up with this office, the Office of Special
Speaker 2: Plans under Doug Fight. There was all these neocons, Wolfowitz
Speaker 2: and Richard Pearl and then this guy Machalabi who was
Speaker 2: in a rocky and basically it was a conspiracy. They
Speaker 2: created their own intelligence unit not to find out what happened.
Speaker 2: They already knew what they wanted to say. They were
Speaker 2: just looking for any evidence they could cherry pick to find.
Speaker 2: So I was wondering if you could just talk about
Speaker 2: how you view the conspiracies that brought us into this
Speaker 2: horrific war that costs thousands of American lives and hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of Iraqi lives and cost me several years
Speaker 2: of my life in Iraq later.
Speaker 4: Sure, let's start at the beginning. Nine to eleven happens,
Speaker 4: and we know within a matter of a week ten
Speaker 4: days Cheney is at Camp David, and he's unfolding a
Speaker 4: map of Iraq, saying, there's not that many targets in Afghanistan,
Speaker 4: but in Iraq. Now you know there's something there. And
Speaker 4: we know that the neocons would have been in the
Speaker 4: wilderness for some years had prepared what is it called
Speaker 4: Blueprint for American Century, Proposal for American Century. They had
Speaker 4: put this together their dog, this manifesto in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 4: and it called for a horrific sort of attack or
Speaker 4: some sort of precipitating event, to thereby launch American might
Speaker 4: and military power in ways to remake the world in
Speaker 4: the ways they thought it should be. And lo and behold,
Speaker 4: nine to eleven happens. So now the neocons are in power,
Speaker 4: and they only have to take that proposal off the shelf,
Speaker 4: blow off the dust, and get to work. I get asked,
Speaker 4: why do we go to war with the rock. I
Speaker 4: think it is best explained as a waterfall of events,
Speaker 4: cascading events. You have neocons in power, you have a
Speaker 4: president who's not terribly comfortable in the whole foreign realm
Speaker 4: of his presidency, having just been to China when his
Speaker 4: dad was ambassador there. He's relying very heavily upon a
Speaker 4: vice president who really wanted to see the so called
Speaker 4: unitary executive theory that is bolstering the executive power. And
Speaker 4: of course he came up with this one percent doctrine.
Speaker 4: If there's even a one percent chance that there's some
Speaker 4: sort of harm to come to the United States, we're
Speaker 4: gonna So all these things come together, we pivot from Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: We could have a whole show on what that caused,
Speaker 4: but we don't have time. So we quickly begin beating
Speaker 4: the war drums for a rock and why they wanted
Speaker 4: to remake the Middle East in a much more pliable
Speaker 4: way for American and Israeli ambitions. And you spoke about Cheney,
Speaker 4: so talk about a conspiracy. Another word for it is
Speaker 4: circular reporting. He would leak something to whether it's Judith Miller,
Speaker 4: who had great real estate on the front of the
Speaker 4: New York Times, or any of these others. Cheney would
Speaker 4: then go and meet the press and go just in
Speaker 4: Sunday's paper, they talk about whatever. A lot of it
Speaker 4: was these aluminum tubes, which he claimed were being used
Speaker 4: as centrifuges to build up a rocks presumed nuclear program,
Speaker 4: and the agency did get sucked in. As you know,
Speaker 4: it was highly, highly unusual for anyone from any administration
Speaker 4: to cross the Potomac River and come to CIA headquarters
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, all of a sudden, you've
Speaker 4: got Scooter Libby and his little minions showing up a
Speaker 4: lot more talking to analysts. Now, I do understand their
Speaker 4: heightened concern. Of course, we all were after nine to
Speaker 4: eleven the world had changed drastically and we didn't know
Speaker 4: what the hell was going on. Frankly, but they also
Speaker 4: were looking back to the early nineties. If you recall,
Speaker 4: Saddam Hussein's son in law had defected, went to Jordan.
Speaker 4: We debriefed him and were like, oh my god, we
Speaker 4: had no idea rock had been so far advanced in
Speaker 4: their nuclear programs. Stupidly, the son in law, red Effects,
Speaker 4: goes back and he shop by Sudamasain. But that's an aside.
Speaker 4: So there was a heightened sense of we really don't
Speaker 4: know what's going on. So when I show up on
Speaker 4: the IRAQ D desk and there's clearly the whole machinery
Speaker 4: of state is looking to focus on a rock, what
Speaker 4: we had was nothing because saddamusin had kicked out the
Speaker 4: UN Weapons Inspectors in nineteen ninety eight. We didn't have
Speaker 4: a station there, we didn't have an embassy, so we
Speaker 4: had to start at zero in building up assets and
Speaker 4: starting combing the world to see what did we know
Speaker 4: about saddamis aid. Now, when Joe Wilson went to Niger
Speaker 4: to investigate these reports of five hundred tons of yellow
Speaker 4: cake uranium that allegedly had been shipped from Nize to
Speaker 4: a Raq If that had proven to be true, that
Speaker 4: would have been significant because clearly Saddam Ussein was seeking
Speaker 4: to reconstitute his nuclear program. But Joe went to Nizer
Speaker 4: determined this is all totally bogus. And he wasn't the
Speaker 4: only one. There were a lot of other The ambassador
Speaker 4: there forced our general all things like, this is totally bogus.
Speaker 4: Not but boy, the administration latched on to that, and
Speaker 4: in fact, the infamous now sixteen words that appeared in
Speaker 4: George Bush's stated the Union Address of January two thousand
Speaker 4: and three, before we went to war, references significant quantities
Speaker 4: of uranium.
Speaker 1: The British government has learned the Saddam Hussein recently sought
Speaker 1: significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Speaker 4: So all this is this pot is stirring. The pot
Speaker 4: is stirring, and we go to war and by the
Speaker 4: time Joe Wilson writes his outbed piece, we hadn't found
Speaker 4: any WMD, not nothing. The only thing that was happening
Speaker 4: was the Bagdad Museum, which held countless precious ancient artifacts,
Speaker 4: was being looted, and the insurgency was ramping up. And
Speaker 4: I think the reason it all blew up then. I
Speaker 4: don't know, this is just my speculation, but at that
Speaker 4: particular moment in time, the Bush administration was feeling a
Speaker 4: little bit anxious about all their things that they had
Speaker 4: said we were going to find. We hadn't found anything.
Speaker 4: And here comes along this ambassador. He had been in
Speaker 4: a rock during the First Golf War, had dealt with Sudama,
Speaker 4: Zane Tarika's Ease and the rest of the gang. And
Speaker 4: he's like, no, this is you know, you're it's not
Speaker 4: the best idea we had. And furthermore, your intelligence is
Speaker 4: totally cooked. And it just hit at a moment in
Speaker 4: time that Rove Cheney the rest of them were feeling
Speaker 4: a little apprehensive, and so they went into overdrive. I
Speaker 4: don't think this is all planned out. It's not, but
Speaker 4: they quickly had to turn it and make it seem
Speaker 4: that Joe Wilson and Valerie Plane were ridiculous. They were traders,
Speaker 4: they were liars. She works with the CIA, so you
Speaker 4: can't trust her all this, and it just went off
Speaker 4: from there.
Speaker 2: That's possible a second, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: When your husband puts the up edd the New York
Speaker 1: Times at a time where they are politically feeling vulnerable
Speaker 1: because their policy is not going so well and there's
Speaker 1: concern that maybe there isn't weapons of mass destruction, which
Speaker 1: was the reason for going to war. Your name is leaked.
Speaker 1: It's becomes a big sort of issue. People are already saying, hey,
Speaker 1: that's wrong. But then what they did, I think go
Speaker 1: back after you too. Valerie clearly sent her husband. She
Speaker 1: worked for the CIA, and so the CIA, through Valerie
Speaker 1: sent her husband in Nigier to embarrass the administration.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I you know, my mother has gone now, but
Speaker 4: she was around then, and bless her heart, she's like,
Speaker 4: why would they say that that's not true? You know?
Speaker 4: I know, Mom. A year before Joe Writer's up ed piece,
Speaker 4: it was when he had gone to Niger and investigated this.
Speaker 4: It's not as though we had some sort of crystal
Speaker 4: ball to understand that we were going to go to
Speaker 4: war for sure, and how can we best discredit the
Speaker 4: Bush administration? Joe and I were both although we were
Speaker 4: socially liberal, and it doesn't matter how we voted. The
Speaker 4: fact is, you serve as as you well know, when
Speaker 4: you're overseas, you serve as an American. You don't serve
Speaker 4: as a Republican or a Democrat. Joe had served in
Speaker 4: senior positions under both type of administrations, and it was
Speaker 4: clearly just such a smear job in their attempt to
Speaker 4: detract or redirect the attention of the media and the
Speaker 4: failure of the policy.
Speaker 2: A number of people were involved, so there was a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: They said around and said, okay, we've got to make
Speaker 2: him look bad, and then somehow your name come up
Speaker 2: as well. Right they did. They said, they smeared you both,
Speaker 2: because we talk a lot about conspiracies, but we don't
Speaker 2: often talk about people who are the victims of it,
Speaker 2: who suffer from It's the human cost of this.
Speaker 4: My bit best to saying falling down Alice's rabbit hole,
Speaker 4: where white is black and black as white. The people
Speaker 4: that they're talking about, Joe Wilson and Valerie playing in
Speaker 4: the media on the radio, TV, the newspapers. They have
Speaker 4: nothing to do with us in our character is so
Speaker 4: distorting and disabled and destabilizing, particularly given my career which
Speaker 4: was covert until that moment. And yeah, it was really dark.
Speaker 4: We had the entire machinery of the state and which
Speaker 4: is significant behind the notion that they needed to crush us.
Speaker 4: So Joe in his nature, he's he's He was not
Speaker 4: a typical diplomat, right. He was rather belligerent and a
Speaker 4: flamboyant character, and he went out and he was very public,
Speaker 4: and I was just cringey. I was really in shock.
Speaker 4: I didn't know quite what to do. And furthermore, I
Speaker 4: was still working for the agency, so I couldn't go
Speaker 4: on meet the press and talk about it, and the
Speaker 4: agency was not giving me any guidance. I literally have
Speaker 4: in the entire time from two thousand and three until
Speaker 4: I stepped away in two thousand and seven, the total
Speaker 4: amount of time I had with any senior headquarters officer
Speaker 4: was ten minutes with Jim Patt. And if you know Jim,
Speaker 4: he spoke nine of those minutes. And you know, look,
Speaker 4: I'm a big girl. I don't need someone to hold
Speaker 4: my hand. But you would think that there were some
Speaker 4: equities that we needed to mutually protect. Yes, there were
Speaker 4: death threats. I will tell you. I want to say
Speaker 4: in two thousand and four is everything the political environments
Speaker 4: heating up along with the presidential election and my address
Speaker 4: in Washington, d C. They found targeting papers in someone
Speaker 4: an American Al Qaeda person, right, Remember that was a
Speaker 4: thing for a while. And I went to CIA security
Speaker 4: and I said, look, my security is one thing, but
Speaker 4: I've got small children at home, and I requested, just
Speaker 4: through that period to have some extra security. The other ones,
Speaker 4: by the way, other ones that were targeted in that
Speaker 4: particular batch of intelligence were George Tenant, John Ashcroft. They
Speaker 4: all enjoyed twenty four to seven security protection. Anyway, the
Speaker 4: security people thought about it and then said, no, we're not, No,
Speaker 4: we're not. You know how the agency likes to say, oh,
Speaker 4: we're all a family, we're all in it together. Well,
Speaker 4: and that was not my experience. I was very much alone.
Speaker 4: And it was a thing that went on and onth Miller,
Speaker 4: the New York Times reporter, she was tossed in jail
Speaker 4: for a couple months because she refused to give up
Speaker 4: her sources, as though she's in some priestly class. I
Speaker 4: literally they write whole courses around that First Amendment question
Speaker 4: and so forth. So I have a certain bias for
Speaker 4: sure on that. Living through that changed us. It was,
Speaker 4: and of course you become more cynical. You don't read
Speaker 4: the media as you did before. In the personal toll
Speaker 4: was profound, and I would say the most for me,
Speaker 4: but just on the personal side of things. And I know,
Speaker 4: of course thousands of US servicemen and women lost their
Speaker 4: lives in Afghanistan, and I rock, so I'm not comparing
Speaker 4: it to that, but I had small children. I will
Speaker 4: never get back those years of dealing with the crazy shit.
Speaker 2: Be back in a room.
Speaker 1: I'm really surprised at the fact that the agency, for
Speaker 1: their own purposes, wouldn't want to engage with you more
Speaker 1: to protect it. But can you give us a little
Speaker 1: bit more background about yourself, how you got to the CIA,
Speaker 1: and what you did in the CIA that you can
Speaker 1: talk about before your whole life change and became public.
Speaker 4: I was recruited very young. My dad was a career
Speaker 4: Air Force, who was a colonel fought More War two.
Speaker 4: My brother was a marine in Vietnam. He was wounded there.
Speaker 4: So I was drawn to this idea of public service.
Speaker 4: And when I got in it was very clear the
Speaker 4: Soviets were the bad guys, and you know, the United
Speaker 4: States are the good guys. And I thought it was
Speaker 4: a lot more interesting than what most of my friends
Speaker 4: were doing. To be honest, you go through the training
Speaker 4: and turned out I was at it, and I liked it,
Speaker 4: and I liked the people with whom I was working.
Speaker 4: So I did my different tours abroad, primarily in Europe.
Speaker 4: Then I really began to focus on what had been
Speaker 4: stood up in the mid nineties, the kind of proliferation division.
Speaker 4: It came along, frankly, just in the nick of time,
Speaker 4: because the agency had been really at loose ends. The
Speaker 4: budgets were going down, remember there was the piece dividend.
Speaker 4: We're like, oh, let we won, let's all just go home.
Speaker 4: The wall came down. But within a few years it
Speaker 4: was clear that the interception of terrorism in WMD was
Speaker 4: a real national security problem. So I was delighted to
Speaker 4: be able to work on that as I could. So
Speaker 4: I really I love what I did, and that's that
Speaker 4: was as as my father said, why are they not
Speaker 4: telling their truth? I was working on what the agency,
Speaker 4: or more importantly, what the minister duration said was their priority,
Speaker 4: what they cared about fail.
Speaker 2: What's your sense now, twenty five years later when you
Speaker 2: look at like conspiracy theories that are completely without merit,
Speaker 2: like the twenty twenty election was stolen, right? Or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: we were conspiracy theories not only rife, but their Laura
Speaker 2: Lumer goes in with the conspiracy theory right and gets
Speaker 2: the head of the NSA fired, right, and.
Speaker 4: Some crazy shit there. I think that's the technical term.
Speaker 4: I think that we are living in a time where
Speaker 4: critical thought is no longer understood or applied. Of course,
Speaker 4: we're deeply polarized as a nation. Everyone's in their own foxhole,
Speaker 4: and it's an echo chamber of what you want to
Speaker 4: hear because it's very satisfying to have your world views validated.
Speaker 2: Let me gently push back on that just a little bit,
Speaker 2: and that we're all in our own foxholes, right, we
Speaker 2: all watch what happened on January sixth. It was not
Speaker 2: a parade of love. It was a violent incident. There's
Speaker 2: no evidence that twenty twenty election was stolen, right, But
Speaker 2: there is a set of fis and it's really one
Speaker 2: side more than the other.
Speaker 4: Now I agree with you that said, here's what's happening.
Speaker 4: For instance, where we are right now, we're in the
Speaker 4: throes of the early days of the tariffs. We don't
Speaker 4: know where this is going to go. If you read
Speaker 4: the New York Times, of Wall Street Journal or other
Speaker 4: mainstream lamestream media, you will see that the stock market
Speaker 4: is crashing. If you go on Fox News or Newsmax
Speaker 4: or any of the others on the right, the top
Speaker 4: story is some blonde girl got kidnapped or something that
Speaker 4: you know, Hunter Biden has done. And so we are
Speaker 4: inhabiting very different universes.
Speaker 1: So you talked a little bit about what it was
Speaker 1: like right then and you know, threats and dealing with
Speaker 1: your kids. Tell us a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of your lifew this impacted it and how
Speaker 1: you've gotten past it if you.
Speaker 4: Have the truth is it was I wasn't shocked for
Speaker 4: a few years, and it took me a while to
Speaker 4: find my footing again. And it didn't really happen for
Speaker 4: me because I was like, what am I gonna do,
Speaker 4: send out a resume, what do I put? How do
Speaker 4: I find another job? At the time, I was still
Speaker 4: really young. I'm not ready to golf. So what happened
Speaker 4: was in two thousand and nine I was contacted by
Speaker 4: the producers who did an Inconvenient Truth Al Gore movie
Speaker 4: on climate change, and they wanted to do for the
Speaker 4: nuclear threat what they had done for climate change, and
Speaker 4: they made a documentary count Down to Zero, and I
Speaker 4: helped narrate it and was very much involved. Various groups
Speaker 4: have been focused on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, in
Speaker 4: particular nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3: All the black market seizures that I'm aware of were.
Speaker 4: Caught luck at a Russian naval base in the early
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: Potatoes reguarded better, and.
Speaker 4: That was a light bulb moment for me. I thought, oh,
Speaker 4: I can actually still advocate for this that I used
Speaker 4: to do covertly in a way that was more overt
Speaker 4: and it's meaningful to me. So that started it. So
Speaker 4: I did write my memoir Fair Game, which was a
Speaker 4: horrible experience because I had to sue the agency they
Speaker 4: wanted they blacked out, you know, So like I didn't
Speaker 4: exist until two thousand and three when my husband's article
Speaker 4: came out. Of course we all as signed secrecy agreements.
Speaker 4: I would show off my right arm before I would
Speaker 4: ever reveal classified information. But I wasn't. I was talking
Speaker 4: about my story and it wasn't particularly flattering to the agency,
Speaker 4: but you know, it was the truth. It was the
Speaker 4: truth classified not classified, but they so they made it
Speaker 4: very difficult. So then I wrote these two spy thrillers,
Speaker 4: all which is, you know, you can tell a lot
Speaker 4: more truth in fiction sometimes, So that was fun. And
Speaker 4: then in twenty nineteen I ran for Congress in northern
Speaker 4: New Mexico and I lost in the primary, and I'm
Speaker 4: can I tell you how happy I am?
Speaker 1: I mean, your ad was good, though, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a great It was a good ad through the car
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 4: Here. I come from Ukrainian Jewish immigrants.
Speaker 3: Now I'm running for Congress because we're running backwards on
Speaker 3: national security, healthcare, and women's rights.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, and which of course I learned of
Speaker 4: the farm right who didn't learn that I did? They
Speaker 4: did about forty takes before they got one. That was
Speaker 4: you know, So I spent one all day doing jay terms,
Speaker 4: but no, I ran for Congress with an open heart right.
Speaker 4: I wanted to serve my country again, and I thought,
Speaker 4: I can do this job. I can do this and
Speaker 4: do this well. But I am so happy now not
Speaker 4: to be in Congress because it is utterly dysfunctional. There's
Speaker 4: always been bad, but it's just gotten worse. And so
Speaker 4: now I still do a lot of speaking, I do
Speaker 4: a lot of writing, and I do mentor a lot
Speaker 4: of young people. You can imagine, probably like yourselves, get
Speaker 4: a lot of people. Oh, my nephew was thinking about
Speaker 4: joining the CIA, can you talk to him? And I'm
Speaker 4: sorry to say that the last one I spoke to,
Speaker 4: a really bright, wonderful young man who just would have
Speaker 4: been amazing. For the first time, I had to say,
Speaker 4: don't do it, not now, And it kills me because
Speaker 4: we need that fresh blood smart and why given what
Speaker 4: has just happened through DOGE and how humiliating the whole experiences,
Speaker 4: who wants to join.
Speaker 1: Well, and they're firing young people that you go through
Speaker 1: the trending, you go through all of the polygrass background
Speaker 1: check security, you go through all the training, you move
Speaker 1: to Washington, you're spending money, and then they fire you
Speaker 1: like two years in like it's.
Speaker 4: No, then not only fire you, but they send your
Speaker 4: name with your last initial in open channels from the
Speaker 4: agency to the White House. OPM, Yeah, OPM whatever.
Speaker 2: You're also involved with nuclear proliferation stuff, right. One of
Speaker 2: the concerns is with this administration I think based off
Speaker 2: of a huge conspiracy or conspiracy theories certainly behind this.
Speaker 2: With NATO falling apart, in our alliances falling apart, what
Speaker 2: is to keep some of our allies from saying if
Speaker 2: we don't have the nuclear umbrella Poland or Ukraine which
Speaker 2: gave up its nuclear weapons right because it got a
Speaker 2: guarantee from US in the Russians that they would have
Speaker 2: their territorial integrity, or Saudi Arabia, why would you not
Speaker 2: want nuclear weapons?
Speaker 4: Yeah? All the guardrails are gone. The New Start Treaty
Speaker 4: is set to expire next year, which will not be revalidated. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we are entering a new arms race. I was on
Speaker 4: the board and continue to support the Plowshares Fund. They
Speaker 4: do great work in that space, but a lot of
Speaker 4: the money has just drained out of the whole arms
Speaker 4: control field, very little money. The sole authority for your
Speaker 4: listeners is the protocol, whereby only one human being. The
Speaker 4: president of the United States has the authority to launch
Speaker 4: offensive nuclear weapons or defensive sorry both. And this comes
Speaker 4: out of the Cold War when we were afraid of
Speaker 4: a bolt out of the blue from the Soviet Union.
Speaker 4: You don't want to convene a committee as missiles are incoming.
Speaker 4: I get that, but that was really in fact overplayed anyway,
Speaker 4: So right now we have a whether Biden, who no
Speaker 4: doubt was compromised by his age, or are current president
Speaker 4: who no doubt is compromised by his volatility. I don't
Speaker 4: like and it's so antithetical to democracy to have just
Speaker 4: one person make this a horrific decision of whether to
Speaker 4: launch a nuclear weapon potentially to kill millions. So I
Speaker 4: was working quite a bit on that. Some legislation has
Speaker 4: been put forward, but right now things are in such chaos.
Speaker 4: It's just poo flinging chaos monkeys everywhere that you know
Speaker 4: you can you cannot really have sober reasonable debate on this,
Speaker 4: and I don't think there should be much of a
Speaker 4: debate because on it's just madness.
Speaker 2: The guy listening to Laura Lumer has his finger on
Speaker 2: the button. People need to think about that.
Speaker 4: Imagine this young woman who's an influencer, comes in and
Speaker 4: starts saying who the President needs to fire?
Speaker 1: This I mean thirty one year old conspiracy theory woman
Speaker 1: who said that nine to eleven was an inside job.
Speaker 1: She comes into the White House and says, fire these people,
Speaker 1: to include the head of the National Security Agency, and
Speaker 1: people like radcliffeo runs a CIA, and Gaber who runs
Speaker 1: a DNI, and Walls who runs an air security agency.
Speaker 1: Just take it and allow their own people to be fired.
Speaker 1: They're totally neutered. They have no authority over their own organizations.
Speaker 1: How can they lead their people when these crazies can
Speaker 1: come in and there's nothing they can do. They can't
Speaker 1: protect their own people.
Speaker 4: I know, I think where it leaves us, it's obvious
Speaker 4: we are extremely vulnerable. We have pissed off pretty much
Speaker 4: everyone other than Putin, and he'll just take advantage of us.
Speaker 2: You run a spy cruise, so if people want to
Speaker 2: an ostrich hole to stick their head into, just.
Speaker 4: Broth on fire, why not go on a cruise. Let
Speaker 4: me tell you a little bit about it. I've been
Speaker 4: running for the last couple of years hosting spy slizes
Speaker 4: and nukes conferences in Santa Fe and it was hugely popular,
Speaker 4: so we decided year to do a Mediterranean cruise. It's
Speaker 4: August thirtieth to September seventh. It's an amazing itinerary from
Speaker 4: Malta to Naples, ephesis Rome. It's on the Celebrity line
Speaker 4: and it's their newest ship, and I have to say
Speaker 4: our lineup is just amazing. I have John Amendez, former
Speaker 4: head of Disguise. She and her husband Tony wrote the
Speaker 4: book that Argo was based on Michael Morrell former director
Speaker 4: Mark Polymaropolis. So I guess you've had on your podcast too,
Speaker 4: Raleigh Flynn, Doug Wise. The Days at Sea will do
Speaker 4: a couple hours of programming in the morning, but when
Speaker 4: we're in ports, say Malta, we'll have excursions around built
Speaker 4: around espionage and what happened there. So if your listeners
Speaker 4: are interested, go to Spiesliesanukes dot com and all the
Speaker 4: information on the cruise is there.
Speaker 2: I did a cool operation in Malta once, I can't
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 1: He's trying to get on. He's trying to get on
Speaker 1: the cruise. Don't fall for it. Well, listen, we don't
Speaker 1: want to take up too much to your time.
Speaker 2: Valerie.
Speaker 1: We as former professionals who worked in the same place
Speaker 1: as you. Feel terrible that you got dragged into this
Speaker 1: public mosh pit, and we're also very pleased that you've
Speaker 1: been able to come out of it and have such
Speaker 1: a successful professional career afterward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, such a pleasure. You guys run a great podcast,
Speaker 4: and I'm delighted to be one of your guests today.
Speaker 1: Really short
Speaker 3: Shout sight