Special Operations Cobert as Spionage The Team House with your hosts Jack Murphy and David Park.
Hi, everyone, welcome to episode three hundred and fifty of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here today with our guest Valerie Plame. She is the author of Fair Game, How a top CIA Agent was betrayed by her own government, and the book Fair Game was also turned into a feature film starring the always lovely Naomi Watts portraying Valerie and Sean Penn playing Valerie's late husband, Joe Wilson, who is a State Department ambassador to West Africa and some
other places that we'll definitely get into. Valerie has an incredible story from her time at the Central Intelligence Agency, crossing over with some previous guests on The Team House, of course, and then eventually how the government outed her name. She was a protected CIA officer under the I believe
it's the National Intelligence Identities Protection Act. It's kind of illegal, especially illegal for someone in the government to out a covered intelligence officer, and that was done to Valerie because of her husband's activism against the Iraq War. So we'll get into all of that in the interview. Valerie, thank you, for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure.
Yeah, absolutely, So first question is about your origin story, if you tell us a little bit about how you grew up. And you know you grew up in a military family.
Too, I did. My dad was an Air Force officer, he served in World War Two, my brother was a marine wounded in Vietnam. And my mother was a public school teacher. So I definitely came from a family of quiet public service. And I was given the opportunity to join the agency rather young, and I jumped at it. I thought, you know, what a great way to serve. I came in at a time when it was very
clear who was wearing the black hats, the Soviets. We were the white guys wearing the white hats, and it seemed exciting, and the government was going to pay me and let me live and work overseas. So I was all in.
And I imagine you must have had a college degree at this point, at least I did.
Yeah, I did, but I ended up getting a few more degrees later.
Well, yeah, that's interesting too. We'll get into your graduate school down the line. Your brother was a real bad ass. He was a recon marine in Vietnam. Sounds like a hardcore guy. And then so, how did you actually like get recruited by the CIA? Was it like a job's fare at your school or did you go to them?
How did that work?
They came on campus. I was undergraduate at Penn State University, and they had only recently begun to sort of expand their recruitment efforts beyond the IVS and beyond just white males. So under Casey, there was a huge build up in the intelligence budget because he really had President Reagan's ear, and they started looking wider, further afield, because we obviously have a global mission and the best way to accomplish that is to have a more diverse field to throw
at it. Even though I know those are not words that are treasured today. Yeah, but I quite young, and I went through It's a very long, arduous recruitment process. It's psychological tests, it's vignettes, it's medical background checks, lots of psychological exams and so you know, fill in the blank, also written exams. And at the end of it, many many months later, they offered me a job. Okay, you know, when you're young, you really you think why not give it?
A try. So I went in and I do my paramilitary training, which, as you quickly find out, it's not because they think they will drop you in behind lines in Mother Russia. It's really to build a spree de core and to double check exactly who it is that they have only recently hired. What is your character, What are you trustworthy? Do you have integrity? Are you can you be counted on? And find that out under very
challenging conditions. It's not quite like basic training in the Marines, but they try to simulate that to ratchet up the stress.
You guys did parachute training in seer type training, you know, detention and being interrogated to I guess you're saying that's to show you know your bravery, your resiliency, These sorts of personality traits they're looking.
For absolutely, and some people do wash out. The agency tends to be kind and say, well, we can offer you a job here, you know, someplace else. But not everyone finishes who started, that's for sure. But I think in part because I was so young, and you know, you kind of ignorance is bliss right. You're like, oh, okay, I'm just going to do my best to keep up with these guys, and I loved it. It was hard,
and you're being continuously evaluated. As you might imagine. The instructors at that time were badass former Vietnam vets, and they did not give you any slack. And they are constantly reporting back to headquarters on how you're doing. And most importantly I think, is your character? Do you show up? Are you responsible? You know? Do you you know? How do you take on a challenge? How do you respond as you say resiliency as well?
And after the paramilitary training, did you go right into the farm and trade craft or do you have like some OJT in between.
Some OJT in between? And then some months later I go back. I was hired on to go in Director of Operations, which I think it's that is the core emission of what the agency does. Recruit spies, foreign spies, pass that intelligence to senior US policymakers, and there's the Intelligence Directorate is that it was called at the time Director of Science and Technology. That's where we do our research and then ADMIN. So I was recruited to go into OPS, and which, to be fair, I really had
no idea what I was doing. The Internet hadn't even been invented yet, And it's not like you could do a lot of reading on what the hell have I just said I'm going to do? But you just keep following it along and there were really good people for the most part. And so then you do the ops training, which is very much focused on tradecraft and the classic recruitment cycle, which is SPOT says, develop and recruit. How do you do that? How do you write a reports?
How do you take clandestine photographs? How do you devise and implement sdr how do you keep yourself safe? How do you keep your assets safe? Many many different aspects besides the most important one of how do you recruit?
And so you took to the training quite well, I think, yes.
I mean I enjoyed it as grumbled like everyone else, I suppose, but yeah, I did really well.
And what was your first assignment after graduating from the farm.
I don't think I can say. I have to tread carefully because of everything that happened in two thousand and three with the outing of my true CIA identity, the agency has taken the stance that I can only you know, talk about certain things with clarity.
After two thousand can I say Valerie because it's in your book. In the afterward, yes you can, I can. So Valerie's book is co written or you know. There's an apt afterward by Wara Rosen that kind of explores some of the sides of Valerie's career that the CIA
Public Review Board would not allow her to publish. And so there's a pretty extensive chapter in there about you being in Athens, Greece and going after seventeen November, and some of the other stuff that was going on in that country at that time.
There was, Yes, that whole episode of trying to get this book through the publication review Board was very painful for me. I had served the CIA loyally and well, I was very successful in my career. I was outed. I wanted to write about what happened. Of course, I would never reveal sources and methods, anything that was classified. Everyone signs a secrecy agreement at the beginning of their
employment that is sacred. But there was clearly some retribution going on, and they wanted to make the book so that it wouldn't even be published. So what the publisher did, Simon and Schuster. They hired this investigative journalist who dug up all this. You know a lot of things that she then pieced together in the afterward, and I would say,
for the most part it is correct. There were some things that she got wrong, but because there was this firewall, I truly did not even read it until after the book had been published.
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Well as you're able to, to the extent you're able to, can you tell us about that first assignment what it was like?
Well, your first assignment, you're you're putting into practice as things that they have taught you at the farm and a completely academic, relatively safe environment, and you know, how does this thing work? And I was going after indigenous terrorist groups. Of course, the Soviets were always the top target at that time. You're really the saying goes and it's true, you really it takes about five years to make a case officer. You are just You're just a baby.
You are so green. You don't really get how this works. They hire you, They bring you in based on certain characteristics that you possess, curiosity, listening, ability in a person, skills, so for so on. You know, they do these in depth psychological examinations, but there's no way of knowing how that really works in the field. You're out there, and if you're lucky, you you have some mentors there. I was. I was just speaking to one of your former guests.
He's a friend, Jim Lawler, and we were both reminiscing. And I don't know, maybe you've had him on the show. Have you had Joe Petnelly on your show?
No, we haven't, but we did have Kiriaku on the show, who I think you must have crossed paths with at some point.
Not not No, I knew him only when he became famous, but I didn't work with him. But Petnelly was one of my bosses a couple of times, and a wonderful mentor, and he we Jim and I Lawler and I both agreed one of the best recruiters in the agency. He just has a way about him that people you know, he doesn't recruit so much as people surrender to him. Okay, you know, Tailway, how could I possibly pass you intelligence?
Because he and you can't teach that. You cannot teach that, but you can do your best to emulate some of the tactics.
Well, what do you think that quality is that makes someone an exceptionally talented recruiter?
Jim has it as well in spades. It is a couple things. A deep ability to listen carefully and then pick up on what you've heard, because that's how you find out what someone's motivation potentially could be to cooperate with the United States Intelligence. You know, there's also of the old saw of mice money, ideology, compromise, ego is always, to my experience, been a bit of each. It's rarely
just one. Luck plays a role as well. But with people like Patnelly and Jim Lawler, Uh, not that they're James Bond, but they they really possess a heightened sense of sussing out in the other person what that motivation might be, as well as a deep sense that and it's true that they mean what they're what they say, and that they will keep you safe and you and you believe that and therefore go on to commit illegal
acts in your own country. You know, see it whatever it is, and it is an ineffable, effable characteristic that I don't think can be bottled and sold.
After that assignment, extensibly to grease you kind of went into a new role. It sounds like with nonofficial cover, what are you allowed to say about that?
I can speak in general terms for your audience, who probably already knows this, But there's a wide spectrum of covers. On one end, you have official cover. That's where you are affiliated with the US government, and that typically you might be saying that you work in the political section at the embassy in so and so country. That is your cover, but in fact your real job is with the agency. At the other end of that spectrum is non official cover officer. You have no affiliation whatsoever with
the United States government. You're working as a consultant for ACME, Stormdoor, whatever. And then there's a whole bunch of steps and different covers in between, depending on what the circumstances are. Do you need it just for the moment, do you need it to be quite deep? How far are they going to push? And of course in this day and age of Google and the Internet, that that is not so easy to create and maintain a legend.
Right, And was it a little odd or unique?
Maybe, I should say, for someone like you to go from serving under official cover in an embassy to nonofficial cover, it usually seems like it goes the other way around, right.
And I think I can say that I advocated strongly. I wanted to go back to school and get some additional graduate work done, so it provided me a little bit of separation. But that is not typical.
So I mean I think he went to was it the London School of Economics I did?
And the College of Europe and Bruges.
And so was that to develop your non official cover or was it the other way around that you wanted to go to graduate school and they're like, oh, maybe we can use this to send you somewhere.
I think it's the latter. I can't speak too much to that, but it all worked out, yes, except for the fact that my career ended much sooner than I had nothing to do with that.
Yeah.
So again Laura talks about and you're afterward that you were working as an energy consultant, and that's also in the film too, working for an energy company called Brewster Jennings that probably you're not allowed to say anything about, but from there it sounds like was this about the timeframe that you start to intersect with Jim Waller and Paula Doyle doing.
The counter Weapons of Mass Destruction mission?
Correct. In nineteen ninety six or seven, the CIA sent up a set up there Counter Proliferation Division, so that is distinct from the geographical divisions of Africa, Europe or Latin America. This one was focused on the transnational issues of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons WMD. And I thought that is interesting because that is if I'm going to remain in the agency, I want to do something that
is really meaningful, particularly in the nuclear aspect. So yes, I started working there in the kunter of Proliferation Division. And of course it's look, I was a liberal arts major. I'm not like a physics person. But the agency in the government is great at training you. And to be able to marry some knowledge about nuclear weapons with the
operational aspect is what we were doing. And we were going after black marketeers and rogue nation states terrorists, of course, and just to back track one step or two, it all.
I think what precipitated setting up that kind of proliferation division was in nineteen ninety five on the Tokyo Subway, if you recall, there was a staring gas attack by a cult Aram Sharinko, and I think that was really the first time that the US government sat up and said, huh, we really need to pay attention and pull together a lot of different strains in the US government to focus
on this new and emergent WMD threat. And to me, I thought, yeah, put me in coach, you know, that's exactly what I want to be working on.
Yeah.
Reading between the reactions, especially in the first third of your book, it sounds like you spent quite a bit of time.
It was at oak Ridge Laboratories.
I've spent time at I can say all the laboratories, okay, And to be honest, I can say this. I live in New Mexico and the reason I first got out here was to come to Los Alamos National Lab and I was doing a lot of work out there, working in a liaison capacity between the lab and CIA headquarters, and I really fell in love with northern New Mexico, and so that's where I am now.
And so this was to sort of like train you up on the nuclear physics side of it so that you knew what to look for and your work as an intelligence officer.
Yes, and to work closely with them on very sensitive operations.
Yeah.
At the afterward of the book that talks about James Rising digging up a few ops that didn't turn out so well from the way it sounds. But as I was mentioned to you before the show, Tim Winer's new book which is coming out this summer, The Mission the CIA in the twenty first Century, there's a whole chapter in here about Jim Waller and Paula Doyle doing some epic stuff, like some epic counter WMD stuff.
Yeah, Jim headed up what I guess we could call the aq Khn Takedown Team. I've heard him call it that, so I guess that's okay. Focused on aq Khan, who was actually not a nuclear physicist but a metallurgist by training, but certainly a nuclear entrepreneur responsible for the Pakistani nuclear bomb, and really without him and his efforts, we would not be so worried about an Iran nuclear program or a North Korean nuclear program. And thanks to Jim and Paula
and so many others who worked with them. They really put a dent in that network.
And so you mentioned h Jim Waller calling it the aq CON takedown team. You had another term in your book, the Island of Misfit Toys.
Yeah, well that was the whole CPD division. And the reason I call it that is because nothing quite well. We had a what now they call fusion centers, the counter terrorist Center had been set up some years before where they brought this is unheard of where they put an analyst next to an operative Collie that you no
one ever considered doing that. And that's we amplified that effort with CPD kind of proliferation division, bringing people experts, biological weapons experts from you know, some other place in the government, and there were analysts, and there were operatives, and we had what we were called, I think they still call him this targeteers. You know, look at a list of scientists, who's the one that we should go after?
Who was a key there? So it was a brilliant scheme and it worked very well in making a dent in what the mission was WMD.
And around this timeframe, I also feel like to tell the story I need to ask you about meeting your late husband, Joe Wilson, how that kind of came about, and that relationship came about I think somewhere during this timeframe.
Yeah, correct, Although we were both living in Europe, we met in Washington, d C. And it was love at first sight and it got very serious, very quickly. And even though he wasn't with the agency as an ambassador and having spent his career in missions overseas, he certainly understood my world. So it was that was just right, you know. I felt he understood. I didn't have to explain a lot of things to him. He understood when I couldn't tell him everything. And so we got married.
And he was working right before the millennium, the turn of the millennium. He was working for the Clinton White House. He was the head of the NSC for Africa. If you recall when Clinton went to Africa, He's the one who coordinated that whole trip. And he just I mean, he loved Africa and had been I think to all the countries there and had worked on war and peace and had quite a career. Although what he was known for when I met him, and I had to like
look this up to make sure. He wasn't just bssing me. He was a charge of a fair in Baghdad during the First Golf War April Glassbie, the ambassador had left for leave, and just in that moment, Saddam Hussein decides to invade Kuwait. So he's on the phone every day with George H. W. Bush and getting that all ramped up, and he and the communicator and maybe one other were the last ones out before the bombing started in January
ninety one, and that really obviously elevated his presence. He was holding press conferences every day and dealing with Saddam Hussein's henchmen and Tarika Zia's to try to free the hostages. Remember that that he the guests of Saddam Hussain and dealing with the Americans that were scattered around Baghdad and giving them safety, safe haven. So it was a you know, a grow time to grow up really fast. He was quite young, but a hell of a lot of responsibility,
and so that pushed his career. And when I first met him, he's telling me this story, and of course I watched you know on CNN, which was all I was watching the war like everyone else unfold and I was putting two and two together and go, oh, you're that guy, right, Okay, So yeah, we met and fell in love, got married and had twins in two thousand one.
Thing I'd like to talk about in regards to Joe that I think comes out in your book is he struck me as being like a real idealist, like he was somebody that like believes in America.
He was, I think he would be so saddened where we are now, at the erosion of our democracy. And despite the Republicans' best efforts, they tried to paint him as this, you know, hardcore lefty COMMI dem and that's not true both of us, and I would say this is true of everyone who serves oversees. You serve as an American, You don't serve as a Democrat or a Republican. You serve you know, you have your personal values, but who you vote for is secondary to maintaining the national
security of the United States. And yeah, he was not a typical diplomat, I think it's fair to say. But that's I think what also made him successful.
So on that note, Joe retires out of the State Department, has his own private consultancy liaisonning with governments around Africa. Utilizing those relationships tell us about how his trip to Nigier comes about, because that's like pivotal, pivotal to your entire story exactly.
So I'll start with nine to eleven. Nine to eleven happens. We're into Afghanistan, the CIA is in there within eleven, laying the groundwork. We begin bombing Tora Bora. But even before that happens and the hunt is on for bid Laden, we know that Secretary of Rumsfeld is out at Camp David, and he's opening up the map of a Rock, saying, you know, there's not much left to bomb in Afghanistan,
but a rock. We got something there. And for reasons we can say for another conversation that it had been a long held desire of the neo cons that in power to invade a rock. They felt that George W's father h W, during the Gulf War had not gone far enough. Remember they didn't go to Baghdad. They only you know, pushed them, pushed Saddam's troops back into Iraq, and so there's a great deal of consternation around that.
So this was an opportunity handed to them after the disaster of nine to eleven to really flex American military muscle. So it was clear at the CIA at the time I was working in Iraq operations or looking at their particular you know, what was the state of their WMD, And it was clear the administration was ramping up looking to see what was there. And in February two thousand and two, I have someone colleague come and say, you
won't believe what just happened to me. The Office of the Vice President just called me asking me about this intelligence report of five hundred tons of yellow cake uranium that had been transshipped from Niger to Iraq, and you know what's that all about? So I take it to my boss, tell him Joe had served in Niger, he knew all the players. And my boss said, well, Value, when you go home today, would you please ask Joe to come in to headquarters. We want to sit him
down talk to him about this. I mean, this is this is totally normal if you have an American, particularly a trusted one, that you could gather additional intelligence to help feed into the machine of intelligence analysis. Yay. So I did that and Joe came in. I was not in the meeting. He sat down. It's in there's a scene of this in the movie, and he's like, this sounds like nonsense, but yeah, sure, if you want me to go to Nisier and check out the origins of
this report, I'm happy to do so. So he did. He went pro bono. He did because he wanted to serve his country. There was a question asked, he wanted to answer it, and he came back and he was debriefed by CIA analysts and what he told him was, listen, there's nothing to this. This is totally bogus. Someone would have noticed five hundred tons of yellow cake karadium. I just don't think this is true. And it actually fit aligned exactly to what our ambassador was saying. There was
another four star general saying the same thing. And we get submitted and he goes, you know, we don't think anything more of it. He goes back to his consulting
business and I'm doing my work. But then fast forward to January two thousand and three and Bush gives his State of the Union address and in it he talks about how recent reporting has shown that Saddam Hussein has sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa and Joe hears that, and he goes, what the hell you know, because he knows that that's what it's referring to, and he starts discreetly inquiring his former State Department colleagues up on the hill.
How did this get into the president's speech? You know, this has been debunked. This did not happen. I don't know where you're coming up with this, but everyone's pretty much in a jingoistic fury at this point. And certainly I was in Kuwait that time frame, right before the war, right before we went in, and it was clear, I mean, the hundreds and thousands of troops and tanks and material that we had on the border was that's not just there for show, Valerie.
I just want to point out, on like a semi personal note, not to make this about myself, but I mean make it about a larger group of people, you know, Iraq war veterans, that to read your book and books written by people in similar positions and government is actually very traumatic for me. As you know, I was nineteen when the war kicked off. I was still in training, and then I deployed to Iraq twice. Other guys did way more time over there than I. Did served harder
than I did. People lost their lives, some people lost limbs.
Terrible.
We'll get into it deeper, i'm sure through the interview, but I mean, this run up to the Iraq War is like, honestly quite traumatic to read about. The you know, not the quote Noam Chomsky, but the manufacturing of consent even within the intelligence community itself.
Oh absolutely, I think we will view this as the greatest, one of our greatest follies and mistakes. Ever, there's no question that the ministration wanted to go to war. As I said, we could have a whole conversation on why that was, but they were bound and determined, and this was the piece of it to show that Saddam Hussein
was reconstituting his nuclear program. And Joe was He was many things, but he was certainly a truth teller and that's why what led him ultimately to write that a ed piece for the New York Times that came out in July two thousand and three, they said, this is the intelligence has been cherry picked. There. You know, we were told that we're going to see the smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud, and that is bullshit.
Before we move on.
Could you just speak a little bit directly towards the pressure on the CIA that was coming out of Dick Cheney's office, And it's in the film. I don't know if this is if it actually happened, Scooter Libby actually coming down to CIA and like debriefing analysts.
Is that kind of is that kind of pressure appropriate?
Is it?
Lead?
No? I mean, I think most people in the intelligence world, I'm sure you would agree, would rather chew off their right arm than be accused of somehow twisting intelligence to fit political ends. It's like just a fax, ma'am. Right, just the facts here you go. But that clearly all went to hell in the run up to the war. And it's true Scooter Libby and others came to CIA headquarters and I suppose I can give them a little
bit of latitude. And here's how and why, because after the First Golf War, Saddam Hussein's son in law defected to Jordan. We got a hold of them for a little bit a few months, and we found out through the son in law that Rock had much further advanced in their nuclear capabilities than we understood, which scared us deeply. And then the idiot went back. He redeffected back to Saddamazin, who promptly shot him. But that scared a lot of
people that we had completely missed this. Since you mentioned to Miner's book, I'm going to mention Achilles Heel and by the oh, I can't remember the author right this minute. Outstanding. It just came out maybe two years ago talking about the history of America and Iraq and how we were always talking past each other, everyone's bluffing, We don't understand. I mean, it's classic and it leads to tragic, tragic ends.
Didn't it come out in the aftermath thought Saddam Hussein had unilaterally destroyed his WMD program but wanted to trick the Iranians into thinking that he still had it exactly.
I mean, it's been pointed out rough neighborhood. You want to look as big and as scary as you possibly are. But he thought the Americans kind of knew, wink wink, what the real deal was, but we didn't. And it was just so, you know, so many miscommunications and mis cues, and there's no doubt, uh, you know, having Saddam husaying not living anymore is probably a good thing. He was
a horrible person and caused the deaths of thousands. But there is a larger question of did it make a lot of sense to go in and occupy, invade, occupy, and try to control a rock. I don't know if it's better off today.
So Joe's op ed comes out, tell us a little bit about that. It sounds like it went over like a lead balloon with the administration.
Oh yeah, they were not happy, he writes his op ed piece. And two days later, if I recall, what's his name, the spokesman ari Ari Fleer bye shir, Yes, all these aims. Uh he comes, He's like, yeah, you know, that shouldn't have been in the It didn't rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address. That should have been it go home, move on. But no,
I think this is my speculation. I think the White House was feeling particularly vulnerable at that moment in time because although combat operations have more or less finished, they're doing mop up that they are the insurgency is definitely coming on strong, and things are spiling out of control.
And they're looking for the WMDs and they're not finding.
Oh there's not there. Oh yeah, you know, you know that thing that we told you we're going to war for. It's not here. It's not here. And so you have the minds of Scooter Libby and Carl Rove like, oh my, this is not good pr at all. And again my speculation, but I think let's make this story about excuse me, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plane. And then it was off to the races. We were called traders and liars. Well
back up, Joe writes is at that piece. One week later, July fourteenth, Robert Novak, conservative columnist, writes a column and he outs me as working for the CIA, and somehow I'm complicit in all of this. And it just became it was, as I call it, like falling down Alice's rabbit hole or white as black and black as white.
It became a huge deal because I think it hit just at the moment when the American public where like you say, wait, wait, wait, what there's no WMD And here's Joe Wilson, good looking, reputable, you know US official who's sang, yeah, we've been lied to. And so a couple months later, the CIA referred the case to the Department of Justice for who leaked.
My name, because that's illegal.
Under that is illegal. Yes, as you're not supposed to do that. Now there is a cutout. Novak gets a get out of jail free card because he's a journalist. He's he died some years ago. I think he was really just a piece of grass under the elephants. You know. H'd do whatever his his ideological superiors told him to do. But it obviously ended my career abruptly. I could no longer be covert. It's there was a huge character assassination
campaign against Joe Wilson and myself. We were because it it spoke to the very heart of what the Bush administration had told us why we're going to go to war.
It does seem like it's a bit of like a precursor, like they were trying to frame you two as being like the deep state that's in yeah, trying to thwart the United States government and their righteous actions. But the way they outed you, especially, I mean, I guess Joe kind of is fair game if he's writing op eds absolutely and vocal, but the way they came after you and illegally outed you in the newspaper, I mean, was just punitive and kind of depraved honestly.
Yeah, it was no fun. There were years and years, honestly of chronic stress where you're being relent Both of us are being relentlessly attacked. Our characters are being torn apart. My career is over his, you know, Joe's consulting. Who wants to touch a consultant who's such a political hot potato? And it was it was hard. There's no The movie depicts that quite accurately. Sean Penn captured Joe Wilson very
very well, and that at least that chapter ended. In March of two thousand and seven, when Scooter Libby was convicted of lying instruction of justice. He clearly took the fall for Cheney and others. And you know, but so what he gets, I think it was disbarred for three minutes, and he never his uh he was. He was pardoned, He never served ut jail time, and he was pardoned by President Trump during his first term.
Just to go back a little bit, I think you call it in your book the Year from Hell and the the I mean tell us about how this kind of like unspools and Scooter Libby kind of is at the heart of all of it, and how you kind of learned that.
Yeah, well we learned really through reporting from uh in the Washington Post, in the New York Times, Judith Miller, who basically had the front page real estate of the New York Times and then run up to the war with the Rock writing she was as I call her Challaby's scribe. She just wrote whatever that she's not a real reporter. And Scooter Libby. There was although Libby was
one who took the fall, there was a conspiracy. And by that I mean there were multiple people who knew where I worked and somehow tried to make the claim that Joe and I were behind these insidious I don't know. I mean, when you have the power of the government, I mean, I know it doesn't make sense looking back at it, but at the time they have the whole power of the government behind them to destroy us.
And what did that feel like?
I mean, I have to ask, like for both of you as a couple, I mean, what's that like to have like the power structure is coming down on you hard?
Horrible. We had small children. Our children were very small at the time. You're trying to shield them, try to be somewhat attentive parents when there's news trucks outside of your front door. It was just bizarre. And again, I mean, my career was done, Joe's career was done, and it was and our reputations were shredded, and yeah, you're right. It was sort of a prelap to what we're seeing
today with the deep state paranoia. I think another sample run to that was what they tried to do to John Kerry during the two thousand and four election with swift voting, like how far can we test the system? Like how far can we take this?
And we sall and tell us about the Libby trial? Is that dragged on for quite a while and had you guys kind of walking on eggshells I think for a bit.
Yeah. Well, the special prosecutor named by the Justice Department was Patrick Fitzgerald. Excellent prosecutor, straight arrow kind of guy. I think unfortunately he felt he could not maybe some prosecutors like I only want to go if I have an eighty five percent chance of conviction. And because Libby took the fall, he didn't get as many as he had hoped to really uncover this.
Karl Cheney and the whole the whole.
The whole gang, the whole gang, yeah, exactly where are they now? Some of them are back in the administration. Although I did just see I don't know if he had a role in my outing or whatnot, but he was definitely involved in the run up to the war. Was Michael Ledeen And he just he just passed. He was a hardcore Neocon and pushed for the war in I Rock as much as anyone else.
So Libby gets convicted. President George W. Bush commutes his prison sentence. So, as you point out, he didn't serve any prison time. You resigned from the CIA in two thousand and six. Then two thousand and seven, some things seemed to change too. In addition to the trial, their midterm elections. People are getting really pissed off about the war in Iraq. Can tell us a little bit about the two thousand and seven pre war intel assessment? That was it one of the intelligence committees?
Did? Yes? I think the Sscience Committee and intelligence. Well, what happened in the run up to the war. In the year following, the vast majority of Americans were in favor of it. They were told, I mean, their Vice President's telling them that al Qaeda, the people who brought you nine to eleven are responsible for what's going on in Iraq, and if you know anything about geopolitics, a
bald faced lie. And over time, slowly is reality is settled in I think Americans now it went from in favor seventy to thirty to the reverse, where you know, just a small percentage of people think going into a rock was a good idea. But here we are. And General Powell had that great line of you know the pottery brine rule if you if you break it, you own it. And here we are.
So you guys both feel that it's time to escape Washington, DC around this time frame, like enough is enough.
Oh, I said to Joe, we have to get out. I mean, one of one or the other is going to die with the pressure, with the chronic stress was just too much. So, as I mentioned, I had fallen in love with northern New Mexico, and so we settled in Santa Fe with our small children and just started to remake our lives. We didn't know anyone out here, we didn't know anything about it, but it is a nice part of the world.
So I'd love to hear a little bit about you know, the movie and then the well, the book and then the movie When and When and why you decided to write the book. It's sort of the trials and tribulations. It sounds like you had getting that out there to the public.
Oh horrible. I wanted to write the book because it was frankly selfish. It was a Catharsis. Everyone had spoken about me for me, and I wanted to put it down. And as I said earlier, I would never ever reveal
sources and methods any classified information. But the agency at that time was still filled with Bush administration types or those that were aligned with them, and saw it as a threat and tried very very hard to make sure that it wasn't published, and they I ended up suing them on first amendmic grounds, but when you say national security, they always win, which is nonsense. The stuff that's underneath
the reactions has nothing to do with national security. But they just wanted to make it practically unreadable.
Yeah.
I noticed there's parts of it where like you're talking about your pregnancy and there's like these big reaction like what's that.
I know, I know, yeah, postpartum, I don't know. It was really just revenge retribution, But I did write it. It was very much my story. I just sat down and I wrote I don't know a thousand words every day, you know, boom, got it out and you run it through the process. That that became a nightmare in itself. But finally it was published in two thousand and seven, and Joe's book had been published earlier, and then we were approached to make take those two books and make
a movie out of it. So that's what happened.
Yeah, how'd that come about?
Was it like a production company or a director that contacted you?
Yeah. The director was Doug Lyman, who has done, among other things, mister Missus Smith and the Bourne Identity. Very good director and just the project came together and happily Joe and I were very engaged with it. We met with the writers excuse me, English brothers, the Butterers, Jez and John Henry, who actually just wrote Clooney's remake of The Bureau, which I yeah, they're really good. And it was surreal and weird to see a movie being made
about what it's not and the tree. You know. Look, I never wanted to be a public person ever ever, And I loved my job. I was so proud to start my country. I felt, you know, when you when you do a good job and your boss says, hey, good job, val, that is satisfying enough. I don't need to be an influencer. I don't need to be on Oprah's couch. You know, i'd but that's not the hand we were dealt. So you play it the best you can.
What did you think of the movie when it came out?
I liked it and although weird you know, feelings about it, but I think it's a good movie. I saw it not too long ago again, and my kids are now older have seen it as adults, young adults. It it's not fool obviously, it is just a slice. It's a composite of but it's absolutely accurate. I mean other than what is condensed if you will, and so forth, but what is portrayed as accurate. So it's a I'm just glad. I'm not ashamed of it. It's you know, I'm sorry,
Sorry Doug Lyman. He did a really good job. But it's scary as hell to someone say we're going to buy your life rights what.
You know, Yeah, but yeah, but you got Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, so I mean it's it's a pretty good deal.
It is. They're very they're very good actors, but you just don't know how you're going to portray, you know, shikes, it's out of your control. So but it has stood this test of time, and I think it's an important story to tell of holding your government to account.
Another question before we kind of uh start to project into the future a bit here the book comes out in two thousand and and up until this point, I mean, I have to believe that you and Joe are both still very much living this story. You're in the moment, you're having to react to these things that are happening in your lives.
Now here we.
Are in, you know, twenty twenty five. I'd like to ask you if there have been any new revelations since the time that you published the book, if there's been anything more you've learned about either what was going on in your own office or what was going on in the vice president's office, anything that.
Yeah, that's a great question. I wouldn't say there's any uha moments of I didn't know that at all, But I have read deeply and widely to have a better understanding, because you just know your little piece of it, like you know the blind men and the elephants. You just feel you just have your little part of that. I still don't have a very clear understanding of how m I have my suspicions, but how my name was passed
to the White House. How did that happen? I think I know, but I don't want to say, because I don't know for sure. And as more and more has come out subsequently to that understanding what was going on
behind the scenes. I've become friendly with Colonel Larry Wilkerson, if you know that name is because he was chief of staff to Cole and Powell, and I really admire him, and he had a he had a different perch, but a bird's eye view to what was going on, And so I've learned that, But I wouldn't say that there's anything that I was shocked by. People acted without integrity and for their own ideological reasons, and I don't know if we've learned any lessons from it.
Well, on that note, the first Trump administration gave Scooter Libby a pardon for the whole crimes that he was convicted of. Why do you think that pardon? Well, first off, obviously, George W. Bush didn't feel comfortable being, you know, given him. And I think that Wara points out in the afterward, if he had pardoned him, then he wouldn't have immunity, or his Fifth Amendment rights wouldn't have applied the same way.
There's something like that. They would could they could put him on the stand and testimony.
I don't know. My sense is Trump has absolutely no idea who Scooter Libby is. Could care less. But he was told by those around him that, you know, we we don't want to leave a soldier on the fields or and this is really important, and it's it's politics of the worst partisan, politics of the worst kind. And I did hear later that, as Bush and Cheney were in the limousine heading to Obama's inaugura in two thousand and eight, once again, Cheney's trying to talk Bush into
pardoning Libby at the last moment. I don't know it's true. I wasn't in the limo, but Bush's I don't want to hear it. Stop it. You know, I don't enough already, and I don't think they're particularly close now, but I would love to do. And let's see. So in twenty twenty three, twentieth anniversary of our invasion. They did a lot of retrospectives then on the war twenty years later. Where are we now? I want to see what I've never I would be so interested in sort of a
rogues gallery of all the men. And there were mostly men with a couple of exceptions Condi Rice, that were so gung ho on invading and occupying the rock? How'd that work out for you? Where are they now? Where's a now? What you know? The tens of hundreds of thousands of civilians that have been killed or left and terrible.
The more moderate voices like your husband's at your late husband, they.
Were shouted down.
I think a lot of younger people don't really understand what that post nine to eleven period was like. But those voices were shouted down and portrayed as pinko liberal commis.
Right, how foolish? Yeah, naive? And Joe was none of those things. But his point was, to paraphrase what he probably would say, is at least right now, Saddami saying anti bellum. You know he's contained, We know what we have. What exactly are you going to do with the country if you own it? This whole idea of the proconsul we had what was his name? You know, as it went in, there you go Bremmer and the deep othification, and it was just freaking chaos, anarchy, stupid for what end.
To push forward a little bit, you know, you had mentioned, you know, before we started the show that maybe we could talk a little bit about what's going on in the intelligence community today. Your story is profoundly, in my opinion, about the politicization of intelligence. That's the takeaway I hope people have about it. How do you see that today?
It's worse, unfortunately, far worse. We are in a very dangerous period, very dangerous. I think we're more vulnerable than we ever have been before or at certain times in history. I don't think the intelligence community got the full Doge treatment, but there is certainly people were let go. Just last week, the NSC got got cheered and not half you know, they were given half an hour to clean out their desks.
It is so specialized, and we put so much time and money into finding talent and and nurturing that talent and maintain and retaining that talent. To simply humiliate people and tell them, you know, what are the five things
you did last week? Sort of thing I mean, it's it's bad enough across in any organization to treat people without such with such disrespect, But when you're dealing with those in the intelligence community that have access to very sensitive information and have you know, a lot of money resources and poor into them, really dumb, really dumb idea. That said, I've long been an advocate of genuine reform at the IC, just not done like a banana republic, you know, with yeah, get all get out of here
with your chainsaw. Ridiculous, but we have got weird. We could have a whole conversation on how risk adverse we are and so forth, But there was just an article yesterdays so Washington Post. I think about John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA, and realizing, hmm, we really need human sources. That's right, that's what the CIA does best. We are up to I think seventeen intelligence organizations. I think it could be argued by well meaning people on both sides that that may be too many and you may need
to have to streamline that. Don't get me started. Until Gabbert and the DNI. The d N I was this hair brain I think hair brained idea that came after nine to eleven Oh, we have to. You know, it's just another layer of bureaucracy. So I'm all for reform, except how it's been executed under this administration is potentially catastrophic.
Yeah, chaotic at best.
Yeah.
Well that brings us to where you're at today. Uh, where's Valerie Plane?
Now?
I do writing and speaking. I'm still a very strong advocate, just overtly for about the nuclear threat, something I care about deeply. I think there's two existential threats, climate change and the nuclear threat, so the latter is something I know a little bit about. I also host a conference called Spic Sized Nookes and I it started when I called up some of my former colleagues lall Are being among them, say hey, you want to come out to
Santa Fe. We'll put together this conference on counterintelligence on disguise, on what the heck is going on in Gaza. Obviously there's no classified information, but it is open to the public and its purpose is to educate as well as entertain So I really enjoyed doing that. As always, I have a couple projects simmering with streamers and doing some producing and consulting in the entertainment realm. Espionage seems to be evergreen to a certain extent. Most of the time,
I roll my eyes. I cannot watch it because it's so ridiculous. But I have the luxury right now of I just work on things that I want to with people I like. Otherwise I'm not interested.
You mentioned that you keep your hand in, you know, analyzing the nuclear threat, and I want to ask you about you know, the pre eminent one that we always talk about is Iran, and we've had this talk. It feels like my entire life that something's got to be done about Iran. The counter argument people say that they're like Japan, they want to maintain a capability to create a bomb if they want one at some time in the future, but are not, and it's sort of a implied de terrence.
I guess what's your view about it?
Listen. I was a strong advocate for the Iran deal, the JCPOA or whatever japoah poor acronym. Yeah, they came up with that Obama wall put together. No deal is going to be perfect. Why it's called a deal. Each side gives something to get something in return, and I thought what we got in return, not to develop a nuclear weapon was worthwhile. Trump redline that got rid of it. Now they're back in talk. So it seemed to be going precisely nowhere. It's hard to you know, the river
has moved on. It's never the same. It was an opportunity that I believe that we have missed completely. And meanwhile, nuclear proliferation continues to pace around the world, but now we have to contend with absolutely emergent China. We have AI. You know, how does that affect the threat? It's I mean, we've just been lucky. We've just been lucky that there has not been some horrible nuclear incident we saw just a few weeks ago India and Pakistan or no to
knows to nose. That is a that isn't people say, what do you worry about? That is a night at mare scenario because millions of people's lives are at risk if something were to be lobbed over the border. So there's still work to be done. And I was fortunate enough to be in a documentary called Countown to Zero that came out some years ago. But it's just as relevant as ever. It's really not just because I'm in it,
but it's really well done. It talks about the nuclear threat and it's just it's still not only relevant, it's in fact even more intense today.
I think that we have a couple of viewer questions for you, Valerie, before we get going here today.
Okay, what do we got the.
So it's from Corbin, what's the best way to catch a Russian potato thief?
Is this a joke? Or is this a reference to In the movie Countdown to Zero? The joke was that potatoes were guarded better in post Soviet Russia nuclear weapons. So I don't know what. Possibly, yeah, possibly.
A joke from Jay we had? Did Fair Game give an accurate representation of what you and your family went through? And what did it fail to capture?
Yes, it gave an accurate representation. It couldn't possibly capture the dread and the many many sleepless nights when you have the entire power of the US government apparatus determined to destroy you.
From Duncan, Idaho, insofar as you can say anything about it. How does the training for a for a knock differ from that of a regular CIA officer?
Good question. It would be country specific. Depending on where that knock would be placed, there's usually more intensive surveillance detection training that goes into it, and there is some covert communication tweaks that you have to understand and know about.
I have one question, Valerie. When you went in front of the Senate and testified, you went from being you know, a clandestine person, somebody under cover most of your life too, now you're everywhere. What was that like? Was it nerve wracking? Was it scary?
I practically I was so nervous I practically fell out of my shoes. And can I just say for the record, I did that like without any chemical help whatsoever. And it was I was terrified. I'm not a public person. I'm good running a meeting. I got that, you know, I got my team. I tell you what to do, how to do. I'm not I'm hardly shy, but this is a whole different level. And it was uh uh, you know, my mouth was dry. I testified for I don't know, three or four hours. It seemed like three
or four days. And uh but I I did it because it was important for my at that point for my voice to be heard. And I advocated for how do you keep classified information classified? Which as a tangent but related the case against Trump and the classified documents case, myself, all my former colleagues absolutely horrified. We would have been dead ass fired if we had treated classified documents.
A way you mean, you mean having fifty boxes of TSSCI and your shit or would don't go over so well?
Not so well? Yeah, And I was like not even like nicely stacked, right, it was like, oh, just shoved in the powder room. Unbelievable. How about and his how that case ended being dismissed by a judge he appointed just makes me sick. You know, I never got a security violation, but I made sure I didn't. Right, all of us feel that way. You You can make the argument that many things are overclassified, but that doesn't matter.
You were still responsible. You took a notath that you would protect that information and those assets that information reveal.
Valerie, any questions I failed to ask anything you'd like to talk about that we didn't bring up.
No, you were fantastic. You gave the whole toward the horizon. And it's I'll tell you, when I do talks like this, it's hard for me to imagine that these events that kicked off all this how you even know my name? Happened over twenty years ago. Personally, I would have to say, just like you admitted to the little PTSD thinking about the run up to the war with Rock, I'm still
unpacking it. It impacted me profoundly, as you might imagine, personally and professionally, and it's taken me to be honest when when the COVID lockdown happened, was the first time that I sort of slowed down, that I was able to go what the hell just happened? And for me personally to have that quiet and enforced which I know was terrible for many people, but it allowed me some enforced quiet to come to terms with that crazy story.
What you experienced?
Yeah, yeah, and like kind of that out of body experience of asking yourself what did I experience?
Right?
Yeah, what the hell? What's happened? Yeah?
So is there anything you'd like to plug? Where people can find you online if they're looking to retain your services or anything else?
Yeah, thank you. You can find me either at Valerieplane dot com or the one that talks about my conference is Spy Sized Nukes dot com and you can contact me that way. And I am I had thought about doing a Mediterranean cruise for my Spy Size and nukes this fall, but I don't. I decided against it because people can't think about next week right now. There's so much volatility, geopolitical volatility, much less a couple of months from now. But we'll see where. I haven't given up
on that idea altogether. But maybe I'll just do another land based conference in Santa Fe before the end of the year. So okay, we'll see.
Great, and we will have links down the description of this podcast for all of you who are interested at checking that stuff out.
It'll be right down there in the description.
Valerie, thank you so much for your time and spending a little bit of your afternoon with us.
What a pleasure. Thank you so much. I just realized that I was put in touch with you through our mutual friend, Doug Wise.
That's right.
I definitely want to have Doug at my next SPIC sized news conference. He and he lives down the road for me, well a little further, but he's great. We did not cross professionally, but thank you for making that, you know, thanks Doug for making that.
Doug is Doug is a great guy.
And uh, you know this is getting a little bit of insider baseball. I'll just say this about Doug. The reason why I know he's a great guy is because the CIA is not a particularly nice place for the women who work there. I notice every woman that worked with Doug Wise says he's a great guy and he was great to work with.
I'm so happy to hear that, because you're absolutely right. We could do a whole pot pod as you should, maybe on women in intelligence. I wrote a ForWord for a book that's coming out Christina Hillsburg, former agency, and.
Had on her her oh you have.
Yeah, So her book is coming out Agents of Change, right, Agents of Change, and she did a great job of doing the sweep of history. And yeah, it's not a day at the beach. But I'm so glad to hear that about Doug.
Yeah, yeah, Doug. Doug's a great guy.
And yeah, we had Christina and her husband on on the show together.
They were both great. They're awesome.
Yeah. Oh good. All right, Well, come come visit us out here in New Mexico, and all the best to you and your team. Thank you.
Likewise, if you're coming through Brooklyn, let us know we'll be right.
I will, I will, and.
For everyone else out there, we will see you guys. Next time. Thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, it's Jack.
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