Report from Santa Fe; Valerie Plame

The National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. We have a special guest today, Valerie Plain Wilson. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me, Lorraine. It's always a pleasure to be here. Well, we've been, you, we did your first TV interview here, you know, a little meager studio in report from Santa Fe. And you've really, you know, they always say the best revenge is living well. And I think you've, you've, you've, you've landed on it. But to refresh our audience a little bit, tell us a little about your background and, and oh, how you, well, let's see. I was a CIA covert operations officer. My expertise was

in nuclear counter-proliferation, which essentially meant making sure the bad guys, whether they're terrorists or rogue states, do not get a nuclear capability. In 2003, my covert CIA identity was betrayed by senior officials in the Bush administration. My belief is it was political payback for my husband, Joe Wilson, who took exception to how the Bush administration teed up and, and nurtured the public to go to war in Iraq. And he himself was an ambassador. He was given honors by George Bush senior. I mean, he really had the credibility. He did indeed. He did indeed. But it quickly became excruciatingly partisan of what happened. And it was a political scandal that actually went on for a couple years. In 2007, I retired from the CIA. I should resign. Didn't, wasn't able to retire. I resigned from the CIA. And we moved to Santa Fe and have

been very happy here and rebuilding our professional lives and personal lives. Well, you had said you had gone from a job where secrecy covert undercover was so important to being on the cover of magazines, everything you did. What whiplash? It took me honestly a few years to come to terms with it. I never, ever wanted to be a public person. I derived great satisfaction in doing the covert work that I was doing on nuclear weapons. And it just honestly for, it felt for a few years, I was just mortifying the whole time. And I liken it to falling down Alice's rabbit hole where white is black and black is white. All the newspaper, the media accounts on TV or newspaper, we're talking about these people, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, that actually had nothing to do with who we were or our characters.

But then it took me some time, but I realized that I could use my voice if I was going to be a public person. I could use my voice to talk about things that I care about deeply, whether it is nuclear proliferation, whether it's what's the appropriate balance between security and privacy and a democracy, whether it's women's reproductive rights. So, okay, that's the trade off. And speaking of black being white and white being black, you wrote all about this experience. This is a wonderful book. It's called Fair Game. It's made into a movie, Naomi Watts played you, Sean Penn played your husband, but speaking of black and white, this CIA redacted. Yes. A whole lot of this. The whole book is full of these black doubts. Yes, it had to do with the fact that the CIA made the determination that I'm not permitted to acknowledge any agency affiliation prior to 2002. That's making a memoir difficult. Have some holes in it. But my opinion is that that was really political retaliation.

It has nothing to do with really protecting national security. Now, part of your bouncing back and your new life is you are a writer, a fiction. Now, you're a co-author with Sarah Love It. Of two really wonderful books. The first one was Blowback. And I find them a wonderful read, but your brand new one, which is riveting, ripped out of the headlines, is called Burned. So, talk to me about that. So, the CIA isn't redacting these because you're safe. It's fiction. It is fiction, but I am still obligated to run it through their review board, but they understand that there's no classified information, but I tried as well. Sarah and I both did to make it as realistic as possible. I really wanted to develop a strong female CIA character because usually the girls are portrayed in such a, oh, flimsy or silly fashion. So, this is, this burned is the second. And hopefully, along series, the protagonist is Vanessa

Pearson. And all of your information there, there's so much about what's happening in the world now, nuclear proliferation, which is your life work, and ISIS and ISIL. And it's just, how could you've written a more timely book? These are the issues of the day. Well, I'll tell you, Sarah and I took a nice long hike up Atalaya Mountain for any one of your viewers it knows. It's actually a pretty steep hike. And at the end, we were barely able to talk, but we mapped out act one, two, and three, and we started talking about how it would weave together, picking up from blowback, and what we wanted to introduce more, richer characters and so forth. And as you note, the theme of nuclear proliferation. But it was very clear even then, even the last summer, no one had even talked about this group called ISIS or ISIL. But the trajectory of extreme radicalism was already there in the cards.

So we put that in the story as well. And lo and behold, of course, now we're at the point where ISIS holds significant territory in Syria and Iraq. And has grabbed the nation's attention like nothing else. Those beheading videos are just so compelling. But there's religious extremism in two sides because you also incorporate the work of Mikey Weinstein, who's the founder or something called the military religious freedom foundation. He wrote a book called With God on our side, one man's war against an evangelical coup in the American military. So there's extremism indeed here, and there it's like the battle. I think that they are two sides of the same coin, two different sides. You have, of course, what we all recognize here in America, the Islamic extremism. And I hate to put even Islamic. It has nothing to do with the tenants of Islam.

On the other side of that coin are the dominionists. Again, I hesitate to put Christian around it because I'm pretty sure Jesus, as we understand him, would not recognize what they're trying to do. And these are folks that have deeply infiltrated the officer corps of our military, particularly in the Air Force. And frankly, their allegiance is to the Book of Revelation rather than the Constitution. No one's trying to take Christianity or Judaism or Islam away from any of their religious liberties to practice as they please. However, when you are in a hierarchical organization like the military, any one of those religions being given precedence over the other is completely against what this country was founded on, which was, in fact, freedom from religion as well as embrace whichever one

you want. And there was a scandal at the Air Force Academy. A ongoing. Yeah, yeah, still. And so you were able to incorporate that because one does wonder because there are so many public service and people patriots that swear to protect our country. What higher allegiance could sway them from that? And one is, you know, that kind of spiritual materialism. I'm going to be one of those 144,000 that is saved in the end times. The apocalypse and so forth. They can believe whatever they want. It simply has no place in our military command structure. And so you weave those two threads in there. Yeah. Also, you have so much experience with the issue of nuclear proliferation and non-proliferation. And we're all living in terrifour when they get a portable bomb. And you work out some possibilities. It was really riveting. As I say, what you know, and this is what my

my CIA career focused on, I believe that it continues to be one of our top national security threats, particularly this nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons. That along, frankly, with global warming and the potential what we're already seeing for instability around the world. These are the things we really need to pay attention to. Yeah. Is there a relationship in the intelligence community with issues of climate change? I might. Yes. I understand this is not my area of expertise whatsoever. But I do know that the Pentagon and the White House are looking at this because when you have these drastic shifts in weather, whether it's desert, desert, vacation in Africa, extreme snowstorms or whatever. Of course, we all hear about water levels rising. I was recently in Miami, which is as flat a place as you can be and they will certainly be affected. So they understand the Pentagon understands the potential for truly worldwide

instability, huge population shifts. And what are we going to do about it? Yeah. And what are we going to do? Well, we have food and water. Well, we have so many. It's astonishing to me that we have so many elected officials in our Congress that degrade it and denigrate the whole notion. I don't care. I don't care how you think it came about. It's happening. Yeah. And we need to figure out the way ahead. And and that's. Yes. Not happening to the extent that we need. But it that way. Well, I thank you for your efforts in in in fiction because people can sometimes understand a fictional situation better than they can if it's happening in their own world. So and you just hit the bullseye with so many issues that need to be looked at. I really have to compliment you on that. Now, it's a page turner, but you're I hope you're writing this equal soon because it doesn't

all the illusions you're not right. Right. It leaves one on a bit of a cliff hanging over and that was done intentionally. I want there's a lot of stories to tell and informed by my CIA career. I got to pull upon so many different characters that I met along the way and different operations. Of course, without revealing sources or methods, but there are a lot of good stories to tell. Well, you give a lot of the drama and the details of undercover work and the paranoia, but there was one section at this one point, your character, Vanessa, goes to meet with one of her teachers when she was at the farm, which was a training place. His name is Charles Jannick in the book, but he tells her ordinary life would bore you to death in a matter of minutes. Now, you got catapulted from that dramatic undercover world to ordinary life, although having two teenagers is invite strama into one's life. Indeed. It's never a dull moment when you have two

teenagers in the house, but I will tell you the character Charles is based on a mentor of mine who I his life, his true life, you could not make up. Amazing. And I'd like to see more of Charles going forward. He makes an appearance for the first time in burned and he is the one who really gets Vanessa and is able to offer some sage advice and wisdom that is so important to your judgment on the ground when you're doing quick turning operations. Well, we're speaking today with Valerie Plame, author of the new book burned. And so I'm going to take advantage of your sage advice because there's a lot of contemporary issues that I would love based on your experience, your feelings about the issue of torture right now is big in Washington. How do you feel about what was done under the Bush administration and what should our sands be now? I'm only

asking you your personal opinion. This is my personal opinion. Incredibly sad that torture is now seen worldwide really is one of the options that the foreign policy of the United States can turn to. I've been watching very closely this whole issue of will or will they not release the so-called torture report put together by the Senate Intelligence Committee. There is a big fight between the intelligence community and the White House and the Senate Committee on what of the executive summary can be released. It's apparently come down to pseudonyms, which is you know are the false names. Again, note false names. It's like saying John Smith so and so. There's no identifying information. But for reasons that are not clear publicly, the White House is continuing to drag its feet. There is a whole lot of shenanigans going on. A few months ago, there was a lot of bad blood that boiled over into the public domain between John Brennan, head of the CIA, and Diane

Feinstein, head of the... Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm watching that very closely. I believe that really we are a great enough country that we can withstand holding up a mirror and even things that are ugly in the mirror and go what went wrong. How do we prevent this from happening ever again? Is it any wonder that you see these truly horrific acts by these barbarians of ISIS be headings and so forth? And we know that the tortures in some cases, some of the torture that these journalists and other aid workers are being held captive by ISIS have endured. We're at the United States is not exactly on the moral high ground to say how dare you. And okay, put all the moral stuff aside for the moment, does torture work? No. Now there's been stuff in the news too about upgrading

and stabilizing our own arsenal of nuclear weapons. I would like to speak with you about that, but I want to honor you for the work you've done with a group called Global Zero. Tell us what Global Zero is and why it's so important. I'm an advocate for Global Zero. They are an international nonpartisan group dedicated to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons through extremely intrusive, verifiable, very, very finely orchestrated inspection regimes. It's not just, let's hold hands and hope, you know, because I believe that since the dawn of the nuclear age here in the New Mexican desert, next year will be 70 years of the Trinity test. Since that time, we've really just gotten extraordinarily lucky. The number of times that we've come so close to a nuclear accident either through miscalculation and accident is in the dozens. Eric

Schlosser wrote a book last year, Command and Control, which is outstanding, and it details many of those very close calls. So we've just gotten lucky. And I know personally President Obama, this is something he feels deeply about. Every day he wakes up, he's got another crisis to do it. But if he could, and this is what Global Zero does, apply continued pressure on elected officials to say those in the nuclear club must come together in an international sense. And figure out how can we begin to decelerate our nuclear arsenals? How do you keep other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons? How do we safely put a lock up, highly enriched uranium, and other fissile material? I'm watching those talks in Vienna very closely.

You once said to me, Lorraine, you said, if we don't get this one right, really nothing else matters. And it's that important and people just go, I know. Well, it's overwhelming. Yeah, yeah. And the individual fights against feeling, I think, as I do, well, what can I do? You know, what can we do? Well, I would encourage your viewers to take a look at globalzero.org, become informed. Certainly, we are in a state that has so much to do with the very history of this. We rely heavily on the labs, the national labs that are here in the state for jobs and so forth. But what is it, what do we want our future to look like? Well, in this appearance, we know, we just don't want this danger, but it's not only the military use of nukes. There's Chernobyl, there's still, they're building, they're trying to seal it off.

They're building the biggest movable structure on the planet to try to seal it off, and it still is dangerous. And then there's Fukushima. Yeah, I saw the same program you did on Chernobyl. And it just struck me. It's so incredibly sad. The city that's nearby that is completely deserted. Trees or everything, you know, the grasses have overtaken everything and the vines very creepy. But what is even worse, of course, is what you can't see, is that it's the radiation, which is pretty much forever. And, right, what I think Fukushima pointed out was the much too close ties between the nuclear industry and those who regulate them. It's a little too cozy. Yes. And to this very minute, spewing radioactivity into the ocean, they have tested tuna fish off of San Diego, and they have cheesy markers that are the identical

to the meltdown in Fukushima. Really? And we're not testing any of our imports or any, it's just anyway. That's another big issue. But let's get a little more everyday life. The NSA and surveillance and Glenn Greenwald, who followed your story. He was very engaged. He was very, very good when you were first outed. And he's hooked up with Snowden and Wood Snowden. And the whole issue that you know so well, the balance, as you said before, between security and privacy, Ben Franklin said, those that would give up essential liberty to purchase safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben had so many good. Yes, she did. So you've been worked as for the intelligence industrial complex. And here's this whole Snowden and his revelations about wiretapping. Where are we going with all that now? As enough, some people have called him a hero.

Some people call him a traitor. I don't like to go down that rabbit hole because I think it really deflects from the real issue. We need as a democracy, sometimes healthy, sometimes not, to have a robust conversation on what is the appropriate balance. We just saw recently where the House, or excuse me, the Senate, defeated an extensive NSA reform bill. I don't know the particulars of it. But I know that we haven't had nearly the conversation that we need to. Senator Mark Udall, who was just defeated in Colorado in the midterm elections, he was a very vocal senator who said, wait a minute, we really need to talk about this. And now that voice, he's not the only one, but that voice is taken away. I find it, this is in reaction, the whole

military industrial intelligence complex. I believe where we are now is a huge overreaction to what happened on 9-11. And there's a great book that outlines how far we've come. It's called Top Secret America by Dana Priest. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. And she had photographs of incredible research of the billions of dollars that had been poured into Top Secret America. We have five million Americans now with a top secret security clearance. Is it any wonder that a Mr. Snowden that came full? I mean, I'm surprised there haven't been more. When you classify and make everything secret, then nothing is secret for starters. But you, I'm, as a citizen, am deeply disturbed by the intrusiveness and what I believe to be,

in many cases, the riding roughshod over constitutional protections of privacy, the fourth amendment, and so forth. I'm hopeful that that pendulum, which is so far over here, will begin to swing back more to the middle. I think most Americans really are moderate in their outlook. And that fourth amendment really is the tension between the security and privacy. Yeah. And it would be wonderful if it came back more to privacy. But everyone says, the citizen says, well, I'm not doing anything. It doesn't matter to me. Well, the problem is it's the potential for abuse. When you have the state has all that information available to them. As we know, history has shown us time again. Just think of former head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, and how he used and misused his power of inquiry. That's just one of many, many, many. It always is minorities, those that have a lesser voice,

those that don't have the strongest protections that are the most vulnerable on society. And those are where the government, the overzealous ones tend to go after those, those weak links. I don't want to live in a society where there's absolutely a guarantee that it will always be safe because that is North Korea. Yeah. Yeah. Right. There's no guarantees. It's called life. And so we have gone too far in one direction and we need to pull it back. Well, I applaud you because you swim in shark infestancies. But I live in Santa Fe. I am dry. But the issues that you have embraced are, I think, the most crucial issues of our time. And that you are able in these books to help people explore aspects of them. They're thrillers.

This is not a propaganda thing. They're very exciting reading. But some of the issues that you deal with allow people to explore, well, what would happen if this, particularly with your especially nuclear, we hope non-proferation. And then the heroism and the challenge that working undercover represents. Well, that was the idea. Yes. Of course, it has to be entertaining, but I also wanted to put in themes that I care about and maybe get people to think a little bit beyond their typical whatever they're ingesting for their media consumption. And in terms of theatrical value, I hope that someone is looking at making films, movies, because I mean at the end, the climax is in Venice and Carnival. Yeah. The beginning is a terrorist art gallery explosion.

In the Louvre. Yes, in the Louvre. And so I'm imagining all this, I think, oh, this would be so cool as movie. Well, I'm so grateful for you for taking the time. Let me show these two books. The most recent one is called Burnd. And what does Burnd mean? Burnd is CIA jargon for an operation that's gone south. Ooh. Ooh. And another B. Yeah. This was the first one. Blowback, co-authored with Sarah. That's right. With Sarah, she's lovely, a thriller author here in New Mexico as well. And I didn't intend to be a liturative, but I think the next one will have to be betrayal. Yes, it will. Yes, it will. Well, our guest today is Valerie Plame, also known as Valerie Plame Wilson. I really appreciate you're taking the time to be with us today. Thank you. It's always a pleasure. Yes, it is. And I'm Levine Mills. I'd like to thank your audience for being with us today on report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Past archival programs of report from Santa Fe are available at the website report from Santa Fe dot com. If you have questions or comments,

please email info at report from Santa Fe dot com. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Taos, New Mexico. You