 What I've done in my professional life that I'm most proud of was the opportunity to represent Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson in their civil suit against Dick Cheney, Carl Rove, Lewis Libby and Richard Arvidage for violating the rights. The context of this of course occurred in 2003 when President Bush in the State of the Union Address said that Iraq was planning to try to acquire uranium from Africa. At this time, Joe Wilson, who had been a deputy ambassador and ambassador to other countries, did an investigation. There was no truth to this. In June of 2003, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times indicating what he had found in his investigation. He did find. But he did find. Didn't find. That's probably the better way to put it. And he also appeared on talk shows. At this point, we know that Richard Arvidage leaked to Robert Novak that Valerie was a CIA agent. And as a result of this, there was a concerted effort by the vice president, by his top aide, Lewis Libby, by Carl Rove, by Richard Arvidage to destroy the career of Valerie Plame and retaliation for Joe Wilson's speech. In fact, it was a statement by Carl Rove to Chris Matthews at Hardball that Valerie Plame was now fair game to give rise to the title of her book in the movie based on her book. Just a little bit of biography of Valerie. Born at Anchorage, she attended Penn State University, got a master's in the London School of Economics, and then had a very distinguished service, distinguished career in government service. I was so thrilled and honored when Valerie and Joe agreed to speak here today. Joe apologizes that he's in tunis for work and couldn't be here, but so delighted to welcome Valerie to the law school. Thank you so much. Thank you for that very kind introduction. I'm delighted to be here. Good afternoon. I want to say the first time that I met Irwin was when he so kindly stepped up and agreed to help us in our legal civil suit. And I will remember always, I'm not a lawyer, and I feel sometimes when I was watching the initial proceedings that I really only got the prepositions, you know, and verbs. But I looked as I was settling into my seat. I was an observer and I saw the entire legal team of Cheney, Libby, Rove. There must have been at least eight lawyers and they were like the picture, the Hollywood picture of the snappy lawyers. They came and they had their briefcases and their hair was perfect and their suits were sharp and they took up the entire table on that side. And then I looked over at Irwin, who had like a legal pad. I'm not making this up. It was like, you know, he had like eight pages of legal notes and I thought, okay. And they went for, those lawyers went first for Cheney, Libby, Rove and they did their thing and Irwin stood up and completely eviscerated their arguments on from not even using his legal pad. The judge you could tell whose name right this man I forget is Bates, was clearly totally intellectually engaged and they were sparring and back and forth. I've never seen anything like it. I still don't feel that I had complete comprehension, but I got that I had outstanding counsel and I'm so grateful for all that you've done. Thank you. So this is a story, as Irwin said, that started in 2003 and not for everyone, but for many people in this room, I think you were in grade school. So, which is true, right? So, and it was one of those stories that waxed and waned in the media. Sometimes there was a great hot media light on it and then it would go away and then come back in a different form. And it was really hard to follow the thread. So what I want like to do today is to speak to you about my story, helpfully put it into context, refresh your memories and explain why it matters. Why it matters is because this is a story of power and the abuse of power. Let me be very clear. This is not an issue, a partisan issue. It's not a democratic issue. It's not a Republican issue of what happened to me. But it's an issue of national security and power and the consequences of speaking truth to power. I was fortunate enough and I proudly served my country as a CIA covert operations officer. I love my job. I thought I had the best job in the world. And I was highly trained to do it. In my training, I got to do things like fire, a variety of automatic weapons, jump out of airplanes. I went through a variety of different interrogation exercises. I got to do escape and evasion in the woods for weeks at a time. And then in my career, I traveled the world. I recruited spies on behalf of U.S. intelligence. I developed an expertise in nuclear counter-proliferation, which means essentially I tried to make sure that the bad guys, whether they're rogue states or terrorists, did not get a nuclear weapon. And I did this as a woman and then as a wife and then as a mother. And all of that changed very suddenly one day in 2003, when a conservative columnist, Robert Novak, at the request and direction of senior White House officials, published my covert CIA affiliation and identity in his column. And this was done as political payback to my husband, Joe Wilson, because he had the audacity to go after the primary rationale that the Bush administration had given for our war in Iraq, which was the nuclear threat, an imminent nuclear threat. Some of you may recall that senior administrations were using the refrain. We don't want to see the smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud over and over again. So that's why it was, that's what happened. I was, you know, it was political payback, but I'm getting a little bit ahead of my story so you can understand what led up to that. First, I want to tell you why I joined the CIA, because I'm pretty sure that me standing before you is maybe not what you had in mind of someone whose work under undercover for the CIA. Because the popular culture and movies always tend to show particularly female operatives, highly sexualized, highly physical guns. I'm sorry, I don't have a sequined gown on. But I joined the CIA because in my family, public service was seen as something noble. My father was an Air Force career officer. He fought in the South Pacific during World War II. My brother was a Marine who was wounded in Vietnam. My mother was a public school teacher. So this notion of public service was something that seemed to be perfectly normal in my family. And so when I was given this opportunity to join the CIA, I leapt at it because first of all, it seemed like a lot more interesting than what any of my friends were doing. The government was going to pay me to live and work overseas. And it sounds corny, but it was a chance to do something really interesting while I served my country. So as you might imagine, it's a really long and involved process to get into the CIA. I went through many, many interviews, psychological evaluations. They do a security background check, medical exams, all of that. And it was all pretty much a blur. Except to this day, I remember on one of the multiple-choice exams that I took, one of the questions was, do you like tall women? I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. So I don't know. I guess I answered whatever I did that was right because they offer me a job. And I ended up in the directorate of operations. Let me very briefly give you a little wiring diagram of how the CIA is set up so you know where I was. There's four directorates. One of them is director of operations. They do the core mission of the CIA, which is recruiting foreign spies to provide intelligence to senior U.S. policymakers so hopefully they can make right decisions. There's a directorate of intelligence, DI. Those are the analysts. There are the people that are bringing in all this information from around the world, collaborating it, collating it, disseminating it back out into the intelligence community. There is the DS&T, director of science and technology. Everyone knows who Q is, right? And they find the shoe phone. I don't have a shoe phone, but you get the idea. Satellites and all that stuff. And the directorate of administration. They're the logistics folks who make sure that this truly worldwide operation functions. So I was in the directorate of operations. And specifically in the time period in the run-up to the war, I was in a division within that called counter-proliferation division. The DO is primarily set up along geographic lines. You know, there was the European division, Latin American division, so forth. But there were two aberrations. One was the counter-terrorist center and one was where I was, counter-proliferation division. These two places, really in the first time in the history of the CIA, put operations people such as myself literally side by side with the analysts with the hopes of getting better results. Prior to that, there was really a very firm line between those people. But they realized these two issues of terrorism and WMD were emergent threats. They're transnational issues. We have to approach it in a whole different way. Some of you may recall, you may have read in the mid-90s there was a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. And that was the first time that U.S. government as a whole really sat up straight and paid attention to this issue of WMD, this emergent threat. Prior to that, there had just been, you know, like two people over here who thought about it and someone over there in that agency and someone there. But they pulled them all together, set up this division, counter-proliferation division. And it was brilliant working there because they were people, they're world experts in whatever their field, not physicists, world experts in biological weapons. And I thought of it when I was working there as sort of the island of misfit toys because they didn't always play well together, but the mission was very clear. And I'm proud to say that one of the first big successes of that division, I worked alongside people that we brought down the AQ Khan nuclear network. You might recall in December of 2003, Libya was caught red-handed in trying to implement their own nuclear program of which AQ Khan had a really important part. And it took years of operational planning and really creative thinking about how to do that. So that's where I was. So let me take you to 9-11. Everyone in this room remembers exactly where you were. I was in CIA headquarters talking to Jordanian liaison. And as we now know, there was still smoke coming off the World Trade Towers when then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was unfolding targeting maps at the conference table at Camp David saying, you know, there's not much in Afghanistan but in Iraq. Here we've got some things here and here and here. So the CIA immediately pivoted, as they do, and set up what I'll call an Iraq Task Force. And the idea was to try to have a better understanding of what exactly was going on in Iraq at that time. Our intelligence at that moment in time was extremely thin because we hadn't had an embassy there since the First Gulf War. Saddam Hussein had kicked out the UN weapons inspectors in 1998. So when I sat down as Chief of Operations of this Iraq Task Force, we had almost nothing. And what my job and my colleagues' job at the time was to figure out what were the scientists up to, what was the state of the play of their presumed weapons program, how were they acquiring the materials needed for their nuclear program, their R&D, all of that. How were they procuring it, the whole thing? So that's where I was. Let me fast forward a little bit then to February 2002. So it's just a couple months after still the shocks of 9-11. And a young woman who worked for me came up to me very agitated because she had just received a phone call from the Office of the Vice President. And they were inquiring about this intelligence report that had been circulating in the community for some weeks at that time about the transfer or the sale of yellow cake uranium from Niger, a very poor West African country, to Iraq. Now if this had proven true, that would be really significant. It would demonstrate for sure that Saddam Hussein was seeking to reconstitute his nuclear program. But I have to tell you the truth. At that moment, I was more sort of taken with the notion that the Office of the Vice President called this very junior officer at their desk at CIA headquarters to inquire about this report. I've got to tell you, we have protocols. There's channels, there's ways that happens, and that wasn't it. So I was sort of taking this in and a reports officer walked by, one of those analysts I told you about earlier, and he heard what was going on. And he said, well, what about asking Joe, meaning Joe Wilson, my husband, to look into this? And the reason he said that, well, there were three reasons. He knew that Joe had lived and worked in Africa for over 20 years as a U.S. diplomat. He knew that Joe had served as our charged affair at the embassy in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. He had met with and negotiated with Saddam Hussein for the safe release of hundreds of hostages. And Joe had done a clandestine mission for the agency on another issue previously, so it was a known quantity. So he said, well, okay, let's go talk to the boss about this. So we told the boss what was going on in this situation, and he said, well, Valerie, when you go home tonight, would you please ask Joe to come into headquarters next week and we'll get the right people in the room and we'll figure out what we're going to do? Sure, of course, which I did. So Joe came into headquarters the next week, and I was not at that meeting. I escorted him in, that was it. And it was determined that he should go out to Niger and check out these reports, because things were moving quickly. The administration was keen to get any intelligence. 500 tons of yellow cake uranium, that's a big deal. So he went, and he was literally getting out of the taxi in front of our home in Washington, D.C., when he was on his return. And he was met by an analyst in this reports office who had initially suggested him, and they debriefed him in our home. And what Joe said was, these reports totally bogus. There's no way, and here's why. But they were so, and they took all that information, they were so eager to turn that report around and get it back to the vice president's office and within the intelligence community. Very important. Okay, so Joe and I, he felt good that he had been asked to do something. He went, of course, pro bono, because it was a serious question. I mean, just his travel expenses were paid. I was glad that he could perhaps be of help, move on to something else. I had lots of other things I had to do at the office for sure. And it was left at that. So now let me fast-forward you again to January of 2003. And President Bush gives his State of the Union address. And in it, he uses now infamous 16 words. Through the British government, we have learned that Saddam Hussein has recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Huh, so I was watching this at home, and of course I was remembering Joe's trip of almost a year previously. But, you know, there are other countries on the continent that mine and produce this yellow cake uranium. Maybe the president wasn't referring to Niger. And Joe said the same thing. He had been watching it somewhere else. So we just took note, but moved on. Because the war drums are beating big time at this point. We're really here, we're being, the American public is being, the words are washing over us about how dangerous Saddam Hussein is, his weapons of mass destruction. We don't want to see the smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud. So just, I think it's almost just a week later, then Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his address before the United Nations. His job was to sell to the rest of the world this notion that we would go to war with Iraq. And I don't know about you, but I was really interested to see what Colin Powell would have to say, because he has served his country so well. His reputation was just sterling. Almost everyone thought extremely highly of him. And as I watched his presentation, I was watching it from headquarters on the TV with my colleagues. It was, I was experiencing what I can only describe as cognitive dissonance, whereby what General Powell was saying in no way matched the intelligence that I was seeing. It just, he made it sound much more robust and sort of like an open and shut case, and that wasn't what I was seeing at all. In particular, there was that case of a source called Curveball, who was the primary source for the administration's claims of a biological weapons capability in Iraq. Turns out, as I knew then, that Curveball was a drunk, a fabricator, a known fabricator. He had, he had defected from Iraq. He was now at that point under German intelligence control. We didn't have any access to him. Everyone who followed this case knew he was useless. So there was a colleague of mine sitting next to me watching this. She had followed that case much more closely than I, and I said, what the hell is going on? She said, I don't know. So I went back to my desk, hoping that the president and those in his immediate circle knew a hell of a lot more about this than I did. That they really had intelligence, that they were going to take this country to war on, because I didn't see it. I mean, I'm, you know, halfway up the food chain there, and I was just hopeful that in such a, there is no more important decision that we as Americans take about whether we are going to send our men and women into war to kill and die in our name. And I was deeply worried. So of course we went to war. We went to war in March 2003. Shock and awe, all of that. And I remember feeling that we had failed miserably at the CIA. I thought this was just such a rush that we had failed. We had failed to find WMD, that I thought our troops were in mortal peril, because there was no doubt in my mind that if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he would use them. He'd already demonstrated that on his own people, the Kurds, using gas, poison gas. And I thought, we just screwed up. We didn't have enough time. I mean, I should have been talking to these people over here instead of that one there, and then I should have listened to this person here, and I should have put money there and make, you know, that's all I could, I was sick, I was absolutely sick as the rest of my colleagues, because I thought we went to war just not really knowing what we would find. So as this is going on and unfolding, and the insurgency appears to be picking up some steam, and the Baghdad Museum is looted of priceless antiquities, and we're told what is, what is, and all that. Joe, in the meantime, is trying to get to the bottom of the 16 words in the president's speech. So he's talking to his former colleagues. At this point, he was retired from the State Department. He was talking to his former colleagues in the State Department. He's talking to staffers on Capitol Hill. And he's told, yes, it was Niger, the president was referring to. But, you know, if you want to do anything about it, it's up to you. So a couple things precipitated his op-ed piece. In June 2003, then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice goes on Meet the Press. And about these reports, she says very dismissively, well, you know, maybe someone down on the valves of the agency knew about these reports, but no one in my circle, which we knew to be erroneous. And then Joe is also warned by journalists, listen, this story, which up to this point had sort of been like on the back burner bubbling a little bit about this unnamed former redor retired ambassador who had gone to Niger and he bumped these claims and the administration knew it and the editor appeared in the State of the Union address that this story was about to boil over. And he would be named, and if you wanted to do anything about it, it was up to him. After a great deal of thought and consideration, not so much with me, but on his own, he decided to write an op-ed piece for the New York Times, what I didn't find in Africa. So it's 1500 words and he says, I was sent by the CIA to Niger, I investigated these claims, there's nothing to it. One thing I forgot to add, he didn't put this in the article, but just to tell you, these claims where he said that this is totally bogus, that these 500 tons of yellow cake uranium, that was in other reports by same conclusion from our ambassador there, as well as the four-star Marine General who had also investigated it, same thing, they all said the same thing. So he writes this piece and he did it, he was subsequently portrayed as this crazy partisan democratic figure, but at that time he wasn't thinking at all in partisan terms. He was thinking as a citizen, you hold your government to account for their words and deeds. If he were here, he would tell you that all he wanted to get out of it was his elementary school teacher that would give him a C in civics to say he's improved. He wanted to be a good citizen, truly. So the very next day after this op-ed comes out, the White House acknowledges that the 16 words did not arise to the level of inclusion in the president's address, which was sort of an apology after our fashion. And Joe thought he had done what he wanted to do, hold his government to account for their words and deeds. And we were prepared for pushback, of course. That administration demonstrated a very thin skin-ness, that's the word, in terms of any sort of criticism. So he had like all his, and quite voluminous correspondence with the first President Bush, he had his medals and his honors and his picture with Barbara Bush and the Rose Garden and whatnot to say, look, this is not a political thing, I'm doing this because it's a matter of war and peace. So we were prepared for that, but we were not prepared for what happened on the 14th of July, which is when Joe came into our bedroom very early in the morning, he tossed the paper on the bed and he said, well, the SOB did it. And he was referring to Robert Novak and his column and whereby I was named as the CIA officer. And I don't know if you've ever had a moment in your life where you really do feel that everything changes, but it was one of those. I was in shock. I was thinking of my career, my covert career, everything that I loved is over. I'm thinking about all the assets with whom I worked with over the years are in serious jeopardy because of their any sort of relationship with me. And I'm thinking about the physical security of my three-year-old twins who are sleeping in the room next door. Everything comes crashing down. And the only thing I think I have to do is to write on those yellow sticky notes the things that I needed to do for my assets and the people who had relied upon me and I took responsibility for their safety. And it began a years-long character assassination campaign against my husband and myself. He was called a liar, a traitor, worse. I was accused of nepotism because I had sent him on this trip to Niger, which, as you know, is really a garden spot. Look up what nepotism means. I was called a glorified secretary, which, you know, so it was all to denigrate us and to denigrate the story because, you know, that didn't really met those Wilson's. That it just is nonsense. It's a mountain out of a molehill. Please move along, folks. Please move along. And it was like falling down, as I think of it, as Alice's rabbit hole where white is black and black is white. We would be reading about these people, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame in the newspaper or CMON TV or hear about them on the radio and they had nothing to do with who we were and what our values were and what it was surreal. It was really surreal. And it was, as you might imagine, extremely hard on our marriage. If any of you have seen the movie Fair Game, I think Sean Penn does a really good job of capturing Joe's intensity. And it was desperate days and weeks and months and years because we were under complete siege. I was still working at the agency. I could not speak publicly. Joe had to carry all the water for both of us. And every time he stood up to defend himself or defend me, he was called a showboater. You know, oh, well, you know, they just wanted to, as it says in the movie, you know, roll or roves that, I guess, roll earth movers over Joe Wilson and his family. So I resigned from the agency in 2006 because it was clear to me that chapter was over. I mean, I didn't think my promotion prospects were particularly bright. I could no longer do the job for which I was highly trained, for which I loved. I could not serve in a covert capacity overseas. And there was just so much had happened. It just came to an end. So in that year, 2006, Joe and I decided to file a civil suit. And I can tell you, when he first started, when he brought this idea with me, I didn't like it at all because I just saw it as more. It would ruin us financially. It would just drag this whole thing on so much longer. It was just, the whole thing was so painful to contemplate. And we had some discussions at some pretty high volume over that. But then as time went on and I realized really what was at stake and how badly they had acted and what it meant the repercussions on myself and my family, we came to the conclusion that we needed to file the civil suit. That it was important because it has, you know, much better than I, different barriers or different, you know, information that is allowed into evidence and so forth and that positions that a criminal case could not do. So we filed the civil suit for three reasons. The first one was to get to all the facts of what happened because even though Libby was from a grand jury, he was being prosecuted by Patrick Fitzgerald, named a special prosecutor. When that trial ended, Libby had said, or excuse me, Patrick Fitzgerald had said, it was like throwing sand in the umpire's eyes. He just couldn't get to what really happened. And the other thing he said that I thought was really important was that there is a cloud over the office of the vice president. He just couldn't get to where he needed to be to get all the prosecutions that he probably wanted. So it was to get out all the facts and depositions. I still don't know to this day how my name got to Novak. The second reason is to hold public officials to account. My husband and I happen to believe that if you hold public office, you should not be allowed to use that for your own political agenda. And finally, we wanted to make sure that that never happens again, because it's a covert CIA officer who is betrayed by their own government. I hope this is a one-off. But as Irwin may have spoken to some of you in class, I don't know how much he's talked about this, it went to the Supreme Court who declined to hear it. Okay, so I'm not a lawyer at all, but what I do understand is what is left standing as a precedent is that in fact public officials can use their positions for, you know, you're paying their salary with your tax dollars to pursue their own partisan political agendas. As my husband says, he really would love to be the IRS commissioner one day. And, you know, go for it. So it's very unfortunate. I want Irwin to talk a little bit about some of the legal implications, but that is what is left standing. So in 2007, we looked around. We were still in Washington, D.C. We said, now, why are we still here? We didn't have jobs. We didn't have family there. It's really hot and humid in the summer. So we moved our family to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is where we are now, and we rebuilt our lives personally and professionally. Last year, no, now, 2010, Fair Game came out with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. And we were very much involved in the movie and we thought that they did a pretty good job. It's a pretty accurate portrayal of what happened. Obviously, because it's Hollywood and it's a movie, events are condensed and there's some composite characters in there and so forth, but it essentially tells the truth of what happened. And we would love it if people, after seeing that movie, would think afterwards, huh, if they can do it, so can I, about being engaged in your civic world, being an informed citizen and holding your government to account for their words and deeds. So, whenever I have an opportunity to speak to students and my husband does the same, we always try to say that despite our own experience, we truly believe we live in the greatest democracy in the history of the world. No doubt, we had faith in the legal system, in the justice system, and I always encourage those that, as you leave the Irvine School of Law, that you might consider public service of some sort. It is something worthwhile. You are serving something bigger than yourself. It doesn't have to be in the CIA or the State Department. There's so many ways to contribute and be engaged in our democracy. Because if we're not, then you have, I mean, basically I feel you have no right to complain. If your voice is not heard, don't be surprised if decisions are made that you don't agree with. And that's engagement is whether it's running for your library board or stuffing envelopes or a candidate you believe in, calling your mayor about the potholes down the street, be engaged, be informed, take charge of what you can. So I'll just end with my favorite Churchill quote because it sums up how we feel about it. And particularly in this election year where things get crazier and crazier and crazier, and you can be really discouraged, I think, by the whole political process. But Churchill said it best when he said, you know, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried. So it's incumbent upon you in this classroom today to go out and to make sure that our democracy stays strong and we hold our elected officials to account at every step along the way. I thank you for your time. I really spoke longer than I meant to because I want to have time for Q&A and I want Erwin to help facilitate that. So thank you very much. Questions? Let's take questions, yeah. Yes, sir. Thanks. Thank you very, very much both for your service to our country and please accept my apology for us citizens for what our political system did to you and Ambassador Wilson. I see sort of eerie parallels between the war in Iraq with the rumor of nuclear weapons and the current political situation and the rumor of other nuclear weapons. And Colin, Colin, you're particularly whether you're hearing a lot of rumors of the need to do something, we hear there's one candidate, let's call it the month of Salamander who's very, very worried that we need to bomb people who are the Iranians because their development needs nuclear weapons immediately. And there's a great contrast. It sounds like voices of restraint by intelligence officials and defense officials and yet a strong political pressure. Can you stand that parallel? Or is it the same? It does feel like Dejavu all over again, doesn't it? Those of you that are young in this classroom, again, maybe you're just beginning to read the paper in a more conscious way, if you will. But there was in the run up to the war with Iraq, the media I believe completely abdicated their responsibilities in terms of telling the American people what was at stake. They just were spoon fed by the White House and the administration. Because it would take too much shoe leather to actually go around and talk to people that had real knowledge of what it would mean, how we'd get in and more importantly how we'd get out. And there was this great, rah-rah, jingoistic environment. And Joe was very much engaged in the debate in the run up to the war with Iraq. And he wasn't just saying war is bad. I think it was Obama who said, I'm not against war, I'm against stupid wars. But he and the few other voices that expressed those opinions were shouted down. Oh come on, it's going to be a cakewalk. The Iraqis will greet us as liberators. And in fact the oil will be paying for the whole war in no time, in and out. And then we've got a democracy, solid democracy right there in the Middle East, what a relief. What we're seeing in Iran today, is like appalling as we are, I feel as though we are moving inexorably toward this, and we will find ourselves in the third war within a decade for democracy, like the United States, it would be catastrophic. I do a lot of work now in a more overt fashion obviously, but still on nuclear proliferation. And there's no doubt that Iran is in fact seeking to become part of the big boy nuclear club. No question. Question is, what do you do about it? Well let me start with this, that no one in the government has spoken to Iran in over 30 years on an official. There's some back channel stuff, but what do you think that does to the possibilities that there might be misinterpretation, miscalculation, not really understanding. When you do not have a diplomatic exchange, full channels of communication, we don't give people diplomatic recognition as a cherry on the top. It's not a reward for good behavior. No, we do it because it's in our self-interest. And I find it, particularly when you see the Republican candidates running for president, the rather glib way that they're willing to put, again, our sons and daughters, sisters and brothers into a military conflict that they have no idea. I believe, I'm not a military expert, but I do believe that there are generals in the Pentagon who are firmly against it because they know what is at stake, not just in terms of the horrors and treasure and blood of war, but because how difficult it would be in the unintended consequences that would flow from it. So I am hopeful that everyone who's in a position to do so is all hands on deck to try to reverse this because it does feel like we're starting that slide into, well, Israel's going to attack sometime in March and April and it takes on a certain aura of inevitability. And we can't even imagine where that will go. So that doesn't answer anything, but it just says I'm scared too. Yes, sir. The Obama administration opposed your ability to go forward with your case. The position that they took was virtually identical to the position that the Bush administration took. In contrast to that, they launched a prosecution against the man in the NSA by the name of Thomas Drake with a lot of extraordinary charges, which they basically had to go down to a charge that I say was the equivalent of going to the bathroom without a hall pass. And I was just wondering what you think. It says about the fact that they didn't want to allow your case to go forward and they went after somebody like Drake who was merely in fact a whistleblower about a program that had problems that did not involve national security and the way he was talking about it. I'll just comment and then I want to turn it over to Erwin for further illumination. What can I say? I was deeply disappointed in that. You're right. The Obama administration, if I understand it, gave an unsolicited opinion that, yeah, we agree with them. What? Did you not read? I don't know. Can you talk about it in more thoughtful terms than that? You said it perfectly. Henry, you're right. It was a surprise. Maybe I'll just explain a little bit what the suit was about and why it was so surprising they did. The claims that were brought were First Amendment claims and Fifth Amendment claims. The First Amendment claim was that Joe Wilson's speech was punished because in retaliation for his expression, his wife's career was ruined. There was a Fifth Amendment claim for invasion of privacy by both Joe and Valerie because their privacy was invaded, their lives, the children's lives were placed in danger. That claim by Valerie was in regard to a loss of property because her job was ruined as a result of her career was destroyed. There's no statute that allows federal officers to be sued for money damages. Instead, the Supreme Court since 1971 has said that you can sue a federal officer for money damages directly under the Constitution. For those who have federal courts, they know this is called the so-called Bivensuit. So we brought a suit for money damages against Dick Cheney, Karl Rowe, Louis Livy, Richard Armitage for violating these rights. The district court said it should be dismissed for two reasons. One is that there's a federal statute that exists that could provide a remedy called the Privacy Act. The district court said, well, since you have a statutory remedy, you don't need a constitutional remedy. Now, I questioned that premise why I think existence of a statute didn't apply. First, it doesn't apply to Joe at all because the statute only applies to those for whom the information was disclosed, to information about Valerie. Also, the Privacy Act doesn't create any relief as against the office of the President or Vice President. So it doesn't provide any relief whatsoever against Cheney or Livy or Rowe. So what the district court said was a statute that doesn't precludes there being a constitutional positive action. And second, the court said, well, allowing this lawsuit to go forward might reveal national security information. I liken this in the brief that we wrote to the child who kills parents and then thanks for mercy for being an orphan because after all, if there was any national security information released, it was done by the defendants. Besides that, we pointed out after the trial of Louis Livy and the perjury, everything about this was public, no reason to believe it released more national security information. And besides that, and all the losses were like this, this was at the motion to dismiss stage. We said, if down the road, it turns out there's national security information, the court can decide what to deal with it, but it's not a reason to dismiss the case. The D.C. Circuit, a two-to-one decision, affirmed and then it went to the Supreme Court. And I thought we had a really good argument for the Supreme Court review and the question is, can a statute which doesn't apply preclude a constitutional cause of action in the Obama administration filed a brief identical word for word to what the Bush administration would have filed. My only explanation for that is institutional interest. They were then the executive and they were then defending the executive's interest and that means stop there from being lawsuits against high level executive officials. There was no need for them to... They weren't to defend him either. As Valerie pointed out, Cheney, Rowe, Libby and Armitage all had their own separate lawyers. In fact in the argument in front of John Bates each of those lawyers got to argue as much as he wanted they were all he's and then I got up and I got about 20 minutes to respond to all of them. But this didn't involve the United States. The Obama administration didn't have to file a brief at all in the Supreme Court and yet did urging the Supreme Court to deny review which it did. Other questions? Yes sir. What you found on the WikiLeaks? Julian Assange is really a hard character to like. That said I believe that the preponderance of responsibility for protecting classified information rests upon the government. How is WikiLeaks any different... I found it curious and amusing in a way that a lot of the typical media outlets The New York Times or Washington Post they all sort of got up their righteous back on this. It's like really it's because you're just ticked off to get the scoop, huh? I mean that's what it is. And who's going to make those decisions? It's okay if it appears in this outlet and not okay there. We know Dana Priest has done this great book called Top Secret America based on a series of articles she did in the Post now like two years ago but the growth in top secret security clearances since 9-11 close to a million people now have top secret clearances. So how hard is it to keep track of all that? That's how we have the private who's the one, what's his name? Bradley Manning Some private, some 22 year old kid sorry who has access to diplomatic cables what's going on with Brella Scone when he wasn't being prime minister all this unbelievable stuff that he should have the government is so the explosive growth in what I would now call military industrial intelligence complex since 9-11 has made WikiLeaks possible. They'll prosecute him accordingly and so forth and who knows what happens with the girls in Sweden but as I said it's really not a heroic character but I think it is a red herring to say well the government needs to look at how they are protecting truly classified information and I don't think I was sitting on a panel last year with a former attorney generals talking just on that issue and it was very interesting to see almost everyone with some variations was at that same point that the onus rests on the government to protect classified information and otherwise you just run like a squirrel on a cage trying to make a case that it's okay for this media outlet to provide classified to have a scoop on classified information but not okay for that it's the first amendment and that's in the pilot yes do you balance your professional life and call to serve with first relationships and then being a mother well I'm not allowed this is going to be public so I have to be careful with my choice of words and the reason is in public the agency will not permit me to acknowledge any agency affiliation prior to 2002 so I just appeared but I think what I can say to that is that I had babies late in life so I had by the time babies came along it was how do I I had done already a lot I'm sorry I have to be so strange about that but I'm trying to stick to the rules so the real answer to that is like any working mom really I just had a little more unusual job and there were when my when my children were toddlers and just like every working mom something's happening on Saturday or Sunday and I had to bring them into the office and you throw them graham crackers and some coloring books and hope for the best you know a piece so you can do what you need to do they were young enough that I didn't see that as a they had no idea where they were or what they were doing and in terms of relationships I was really fortunate when all this became very public and really only a handful of people in my family knew where I were like my parents and my brother I had really good friends that didn't say I can't believe you lied to us all these years I mean they understood I was not lying capriciously it was not a whimsy it was not there was a reason I'm protecting them I'm protecting the people that I need to protect and instead when it all came out I mean my friends were like oh is that why you drive the way you do I had one very good friend she said oh thank god I thought you were like some mobs mistress or something because you're always going there some mobs mistress like a mob because I was going around and it explained a lot of things why I didn't really always have a steady job and so forth so it was in fact reassuring to them that there was a reason that I was living the life I was but they were my close circle of friends I guess I got really lucky they were incredibly supportive the reason I could not tell them what I was doing was it made sense to them so but it as I said working mobs are always my heroes because they're always juggling everything I just happen to have a little unusual job just have one more one more comment on the legal stance I look back to what happened with Iraq war I'll start there people always look at how do we get there how do we get here from there how did that happen and I think it was a perfect storm and in that you had a president who was uncertain about his foreign policy credentials you had a vice president that had served in the Nixon White House and was very keen on the whole executive privilege that he thought had been seriously eroded since then and the whole unitary theory and so forth is very strong executive you had neocons and very powerful positions that were if you will trying out an academic theory of how to spread democracy throughout the world so that all came together at a time and that's how we went to war in terms of the executive power I think we've seen enough over and over again that those out of power always want more transparency and more accountability and always ready to beat their breast over it because it's what in a democracy should happen but then when they get in power they go you know really as our own was saying it was a preservation in the case of why they wrote this unsolicited opinion a preservation of power institutionalized and I won't even go off on what citizens united and those decisions have wrought in terms of changes of how it's a perpetuation of power and early on obviously the Obama administration had made a fundamental decision that they were not going to prosecute war crimes or anything of the sort it was its analogous a little bit to what happened after Iran Contra and Clinton made that very clear decision that we're just going to move forward and sweep all that under the rug and what happens you have felons like Elliott Abrams who then go on to serve in later administrations even though they had been deeply involved in some really criminal activity concerning Iran Contra so the Obama administration had made a clear decision in the Justice Department in the White House and I think the American public's appetite for going back over that war crimes and what have was particularly keen because of course as you may recall as soon as Obama took office the entire the bottom had already fallen out of the economy and everyone's just going I've lost my job who cares about war crimes it's unfortunate it was a moment in history there was a window of opportunity where we could have I believe that we are a strong enough country and a great enough country you know sunshine is a disinfectant but events did not go in that way and I don't know if there was an Obama administration official up here they would have very good arguments you might be nodding your head with them too why they should not go in a different direction but that's what they chose to do so it'll be interesting to see if this administration wins another four years if they make some changes in their approach things who knows please join me thank you all