>> up next on booktv, "after words" with guest host dana priest, intelligence reporter for. john rizzo with his book,

"company man: thirty years of controversy and crisis in the cia." the man who represented the cia in the iran-contra scandal and approving rules for waterboarding with an agency evolution from an organization in the shadows to one frequently at the center of political controversy. this program is about an hour. >> john, good to be here with you. >> i wanted to start in the beginning is probably the easiest way to go. can you just tell me why you decided to join the cia? >> well, it was 1975. i have been out of was go for about three years. i had a good job, good entry-level job in the treasury department, as a lawyer in the service, which was part of treasury at that point. it was a good job, but i found

the atmosphere, the viet treasury. in retrospect i was young, ambitious and i was just rest is. about the same time, the church committee hearings for being televised msu now, and these were congressional hearings that it's as cia misadventures, follies from the 50s and 60s by senator frank church. big chunks of that were being televised. i was watching this. no one in the cia. i'm watching not these tales and

adventures. i have no idea whether they did or not. it occurred to me they might need some now. so i just applied with a shot in the dark. >> host: they might need some new ones because there were some wrongdoings. >> guest: that is a phenomenon. i found this actually repeated throughout my career. a call at go out. so i was actually -- i did not time, but i was hired in the first wave of new lawyers. >> so, believe it or not, people will are confused by the cia's different than any other agency of the u.s. government. suggest, if you could summarize, why do we need the cia and whose control is the cia under? >> guest: well, of course the

cia in secret intelligence organizations in existence in 1947. they say it's very present in mystery for its first 20, 25 years. and of course it requires this mystique over the years, james bond novels and all of that. but in a sense, it is unique among federal department and one that operates almost totally in secret. and two, it is an instrument that is always bad to case. the president is always the master. i mention in the book that the president tonight served during my time. each come to view it as sort of the personal pop stand. they been directed to do things

secret. they don't have to worry about the appropriations process. it is a convenient and attract it, sometimes overly said that dave toole and the need arsenal. it's always been and will continue to be times over the years that certain scandals or debacles that the cia is going to be abolished. it will never happen because any person regardless of party or political persuasion is going to want to have the cia has disposal. >> host: it can do a thing with other agencies it can do ag with other agencies are not allowed to do. it can break the laws of countries overseas in order to do what it needs to do. >> guest: the cia can't break u.s. laws. espionage when you get right

down to it is violative of international law and nation intelligence services are keenly aware of that. so everybody does it implicitly understood. the cia can do things that a normal federal agency couldn't do. not to get caught or not to screw something up. >> host: right. what i found surprising about your boat was your role and how much responsibility was given and how many times people really depended on you to do something to make a decision that they couldn't make her didn't want to make. they want to go back to the cold war. you tell a story about him. if you put the story in context, your visit with him at what

mission was. >> uranus thing protest affect it from the soviet union. he was the key beachy apparatchik really. but he defected to the moscow in early february 1964, which was four months after. during the cold war of course, the cia was considered cool. cia long had a defect program to track them. it's a huge, sometimes vaccine, but here it was literally walked in. like a lot of defectives, he had

baggage. he was a heavy drinker, possibly in a flare of funds. so he was no saint. but he came in not only fell into the agency labs, but he among other things had access to the file of lee harvey oswald. of course at the time that was huge. basically what he said was they never had any connection. >> host: which is not exactly what they were hoping to hear. if they were hoping to hear that there was. in a teen 64, i'm old. there were some obviously different schools of thought.

they took the the man is weird. others, most notably of legendary cia character named james jesus singleton who is head of counterintelligence at the time was convinced he was a devilish ploy by the soviet union that he was dispatched to the agency and to the u.s. to basically draw attention away from it angleton was convinced with a key beachy connection. so angleton, who is all-powerful at the time decided not only he was to be disbelieved, but he had to be broken. so he was transported to the state. basically in prison, secret prisons so to speak. for three years, was kept in a small room, endured endless interrogation of provisions and while some of the story fell

apart, he matter. his claims about oswald did finally in 1867 after three years for this come to cia leadership director richard helme decided enough was enough and basically let him go to be in the custody of cia to reset all and try to put together the semblance of a normal life. the path forward and 67 to 1978, which is where i found him. i've been in the agency last two years and i'm still trying to figure out what was going on. i was dispatched to go see the entirely new name, identity, having a wife. not only shed their countries,

that the old country when they come here and get remarried. divorce is a whole another story. anyway, so i was dispatched to go down and see him in the sleepy little southern town. i say in the book, something that is mayberry. not a huge mansion, but in nice bungalow near the water. he led to fish. he was filing papers. i think it was a papers with the local probate judge and was using his identity, a lot of stuff in the paper about biography was simply false. i would go to the judge chambers and at least give judges some sense of who this guy really was.

so that was the kind of job you. a lawyer. post whatever you do, don't talk to about his detention. was reverberating in my head. don't talk about it because the agency was still worried he might do them or something. so my orders were to go fly into this little southern airport, get to my motel on the edge of town. we maybe do a courtesy call briefly on the way out. as soon as i got to the airport, fly in a plane there on the tarmac was none other than the physically imposing guy. i describe in the book he had a mild like earnest borg and this russian draw a son of lake the

old actor. and he was talking. so he is bair, which is a surprise to me. he's not only fair but says the hotel can wait. it was more like a command. you are coming to my house for dinner. so i set, what am i going to do? he drives a million miles an hour in this country roads connected to the south. no sooner did i get here any breaks out his own homemade his own thought might proceed to get as drunk as i ever have. >> host: i have to read this one part. you say more than three decades later i can still taste the stuff. and as dave enjoyed an occasional bite to martini, but this is nothing i ever considered before. after to my feet were numb, after the third i couldn't feel my face.

meanwhile, ms. vanco camp delta them down and started talking even more intimately and he's been really want to talk to you about the thing you're not supposed to talk to them about, his detention. >> guest: at this point i violated my orders. he drives me to his house, starts pouring this vodka a man with no warning starts going on with his detention, none of which are supposed to be doing. but i was trapped and getting increasingly inebriated. not by choice, by the way. i figured i might have to with it. it was fascinating, especially what happened to me 25 years later. he started talking about what it

was like to be imprisoned, incommunicado, to be subject to brutal depredations. all of which, his bottom line was the enders did. he said, you know, i know the cia thinks i'm going to do that. i'm not going to see them because we're professionals. this is what you do to someone like me who comes over. he said tomie i'm not going to see them. i don't have any hard feelings against anybody. go back and tell them i'll never forget what they did. that was my story. >> host: which introduce you to the spiral to make your are

so different than the agencies to work for. let me ask you about the iran-contra because i was another and demand. this was the scandal and was sort of readiness on shop, hoping some cia folks and exchanging arms from iran, selling them to the contras in central america and you have a particularly important role all of a sudden in the hearings taking place on capitol hill in which the legislature was trying to figure out what happened here and how did this happen. >> guest: this was 1997. 10 years since my adventure. so acquired some experience in the interim. so i was put in charge of dealing with the iran-contra

committee, which you recall at the time was this huge washington scandal, theater, televised hearings gavel to gavel. as the guy at the agency had to be the focal point with the iran-contra committees to deal in terms of documents provided to the deal with them in terms of questions they had our witnesses from cia they wanted to have testified. so that was basically consumed all of 1887. >> host: at one point, you are sitting in your office next to the telephone, while the hearing is on ms members want to ask a question, they need to figure out whether they are going to divulge estate classified information or their aides are running behind 15, picking up the phone and calling you, right

there is the philippine televised. you had to make very quick decisions. >> host: >> guest: i decided at the outset that after being down there behind the scenes at the committee that i could be more to a more important and literally sit in my office, closed the door and watch the live proceedings as they transpired. it was the outpost but i would look at the television. the hearings went on for 40 days. i could literally look at the television, see a member as i'm about to ask a question, turn to his aid in the back, slip on a piece of paper or something would go scurrying up the screen and i knew instinctively what would happen. i put my hand on my phone because they knew he would call me and say we are on live tv. my guy wants to be able to talk

about this activity where he wants to use the real name of this officer. >> host: sera to declassify or keep classified information on the spur of the moment? >> guest: literally over the phone. mind you, a lot of these questions i was being asked would normally be beyond my expertise in way beyond ip great. there is no time to talk to anyone about it. i was literally on this high wire. it seem to have been constantly. >> host: top for a minute about the prt 250. it was, for its time, 1987 was a fairly sophisticated telephone communication between cia headquarters, the command center of cia cia station around the

world. >> host: so would be something we could all understand why you'd want to keep it secure and secret. >> guest: yeah, it was certainly secret. a number of people obviously used to. it is fairly well known inside the cia, but never had an alleged as existing outside, not even at the white house. as a matter of fact, this little tempest arose because the witness at the time was john poindexter, the national security adviser to president reagan until the iran-contra broke. it was clear he didn't know this machine existed. so what happened is we told the committees about it and given transcripts of relevant conversation. the conversation question was between william casey and john

poindexter in late 1986 as the contra was unraveling. casey was in one of our overseas station, poindexter was at the white house. and so, during his testimony, was suddenly confronted by a poet arthur wyman, the chief senate investigator for the committee. it was basically reading had the transcript and poindexter was taken aback. they set off tempt us at the hearing at a reputation of being widely devious. they have the smithsonian keep system that no one knew about.

the member could continue at the questions. this is what you write because i think this kind of boils down sort of a lot of things you are asked to do at the time. he said holding the phone i would just take a breath, close my eyes and make a judgment call. i would agree to the disclosure of some sensitive secret tales, having the agency accused of obstruct been the investigation and the public right to know. for the first time in my career i was alone on a high wire without a net. that seems to be a pattern. >> guest: yeah, and i mentioned in the vote to me that was when i was really tempting fate. long story short, the committee, the committee staff implored me to declassify so they could publicly explain that no, this

is what the system was for. the committee was fine with it. >> host: the public did not fall apart? disc out it did not. i sc out it did not. i say go ahead and again reality tv three minutes later creating a text you just ran by me for approval or television. this is late in the afternoon. i'll never forget it. the hearing ended shortly thereafter and i get a phone call with the cia director who at the time was bob gates. he was acting director. and so i'm trudging down the hall from you as to the senate for sabre system had been in place. i told the world about it. it turns out gates is asking some other questions. nothing to do with this. at the hearings today and so

this is quietly as possible as much of that was declassified and he shrugged. so dodged a bullet. >> host: that sort of secrecy and what happens when things are revealed is the theme that i've heard you talk about before. in your book you say secrets don't stay secret for very long. but i guess a good segue into talking about 9/11 in things that happen after 9/11 that were all supposed to be secret and some of them i'm sure still are. although a bunch of them are not. i wanted to talk to you about 9/11 and if you could tell briefly, you know, you were in efly, you know, you were in the building. you couldn't get away from the building. there was a crowd of people trying to flee. so what you did was you started

to give mike a lawyer. what are we going to need after that? particular legal pad and started writing what. >> guest: yeah, this was literally the morning of 9/11, probably an hour or two after -- right after the world towers were hit. as you say, they had a building wide impact he should have been headquarters had huge park in that. people were streaming out. by what about window on the second floor with a view of the sky, by the way, big windows. i thought i can't get out of here. i'm going to be stuck. i just closed my door and started to try to think, basically let by imagination run wild on that imaginable day. anything would be doing in the counterterrorist field up to that point i knew was obsolete

and woefully inadequate. it started to get to know the kinds of things that the directives do we could do. that would capture high-level terrorists, include legal operations, may be terrorists, all massive financial activities begin at the al qaeda money machine. the cia in the years before were so risky and so aggressive that no president would do ever authorize it. this time i knew we were going to be asked to do things we've never done before. >> host: and it turns i agree very much on the mark. the cia was the lead agency way before the defense department going into afghanistan to pick up individual high-value targets and al qaeda and that a certain

point, they captured one of the biggest aghazadeh was the logistics head of al qaeda, helped plan 9/11 and within a couple routes, the fbi don't feel like they're getting anywhere. they are asking for permission to do a whole host of things we come to know as enhanced interrogation. also in that turnaround between 9/11 and late march when debate was captured but became too known as blacks i high-level al qaeda guys so we had construct the secret is an overseas. >> host: can you tell us where? >> guest: that is one of the few remaining secrets of the

interrogation program with precise locations. and so he was first interrogated , first of all when he was captured. he flew doctors from john hopkins over there to patch in a period that he wasn't talking. the agency at that point, i didn't precisely notice at the time, but the fbi interrogators. i learned much later that the fbi interrogators, at least a couple of them thought they were making progress. our guys were convinced he was holding back. he knew what we wanted for the next attack. so that was how -- it was our

people, not the fbi really that were committed to stonewalling and 70 departure was needed in the interrogation regime. >> host: so that's why they can't even say this is what we have used a tone exactly what it is you want to do and don't spare me any details because you can have to make the decision at that point whether it's legal. so they described the tension craft, wally facial hold, cramped confinement, which is a big rocks the you can stand in our small box for fewer hours that you can't stand them stress positions, meant to strain your muscles, sleep deprivation and probably the most controversial, waterboarding. what i found interesting here is your description of how you thought after they explained this to you, which in the book

you say let the largely speechless, the techniques they described sounded like something out of the three stooges. slapstick routine. others found it terrifying, things that you never thought about before our were unthinkable before that and certainly potentially transgress the federal anti-torture statutes. and then there is a scene in which you go outside the agency, locking on the ground, smoking a cigar, trying to take a solid, knowing that you're going to be responsible for making that decision. not only whether it's legal, but if you were to decide otherwise that you would be the person who shoulders would rest. so what were you waiting at the time? >> guest: it's very hard.

i probably didn't succeed entirely in trying to describe what it was like back then. and what i felt like back then been basically smacked with all of these new proposed techniques . i had no idea what waterboarding was before brief. this was a few minutes after 9/11. time is of the essence. you know, the thought and drive around the country and here in washington was not a question of if there was going to be a second attack, it was when. it wasn't time for d for delibe. in my career, wasn't time for d. in my career, i never had to deal with the u.s. torture statute and i've no idea what the legal line was.

i would never and night, but if anything more terrified. i had to process all of this and i didn't have a lot of time. and i could of, right then and there, the chairman of the cia didn't come from the white house or anywhere else. it was inside the building. ..

i thought to myself, experts are saying we have him in custody. if anyone knows about a second attack it's him. and he is basically making no bones about it that he knew what we wanted to know and we couldn't make him tell. so, i was playing out this scenario in my head. i could have stopped it right there. i could have stopped an idea that our experts, our career psychologist, operators, albeit unprecedented but were the only way to get that information out of him, and i would have stopped them and pointed out the scenario further. it was a second massive attack on the homeland. bodies lying everywhere, and in the aftermath i would have known. myself i would have known, that we didn't -- because of me, we didn't take the measures that our professionals thought were

essential, and this is what happened as a result. and keep in mind, we were being accused right after 9/11 by everybody, really, of having been to risk-avers before 9/11, we weren't aggressive enough, were too timid, and here was me, the lawyer, with a basically risk avers. >> host: in a way responsible for the next attack. that's what you're thinking in your head. >> guest: at least partly responsible. it would have been me. i would have known that. and i'm sure the ensuing investigation would have uncovered that. and in the final analysis, i simply couldn't countenance the thought of having to live with that kind of scenario. >> host: so, had you looked up waterboarding, you would have found that the u.s. did hang some japanese soldiers that used

it in world war ii because we considered it waterboarding and that the spanish inquisition used it and considered torture back then. there's a history of waterboards used overseas and we used it in the philippines and some of those people were court-martialed. did you have a legal staff to look at the history of waterboarding? >> guest: we did, and we also did as much research as we could -- i remember them coming back and saying, look, this waterboarding, the word'm has this hoyt -- history you described. and the -- that was one of the reasons why i decided that i was not going to make this final

call. it was too close. i was not going approve waterboarding. so led us to go immediately to the department of justice to get a definitive legal review of the entire program, but especially waterboarding and the way that our people proposed to carry it out. >> host: and they end up going to the office of legal counsel, the white house legal team, and they end up approving it in memos to you and dod and others. looking back now, -- let me just ask one other question. so, if you thought that there was a history in which this was -- your people unearthed a

history where this was considered torture, i can see how you might be worried that your people, even if the white house says okay, that your people might be vulnerable at some point when, again, the pendulum swings and people are starting to rethink. was that also a calculation in your mind? >> guest: yeah. i thought -- the agency, during my time -- there was precedent for us, very important, significant, new legal questions, for us to go to the office of legal counsel, the justice department, ultimately the final binding legal are bitter in the executive branch. the interrogation program was -- made everything else pale by comparison. i thought, and certainly the precedent had been such that i wanted something definitive and

detailed, especially if they're going to approve these techniques. to basically give the agency, i believe, maximum legal protection, and especially mindful, not of people -- my level or the seventh floor executives but the 12th, 13th and 14th who would actually carry out the program in prisons in the middle of nowhere. i thought that would be -- experience taught me that they've opinions are binding, as good as gold and would make our people secure. >> host: immune. we talk about waterboarding a lot, but actually it's sleep deprivation that seems to be -- in your book you said that's one of the methods that some of your interrogators believe broke one of the detainees and you also say that that's what colin

powell, was moats concerned about and that rumsfeld used to walk out of the room, didn't want to hear about this. that must have rung alarm bells for you. >> guest: you're referring to national security council principals meetings held. regularly during the course of the interrogation program. wasn't just cia doing thissen it's own. the was all of the policy-makers who were briefed regularly on the tenth instincts, how they were being implemented, and i would go to some of these meetings, as a back-bencher and a -- with the cia director, and at the table so i would observe reactions, and i -- it was fascinating. >> host: did it make your nervous sometimes? >> guest: yes, certain sense of for boding. i say in the book that

waterboarding was late out in detail on how we were using it at the time. i was struck by colin powells body language and demeanor. he gave off eave vibe of not wanting to be in the room. but when he did speak up, i was struck, and given his extensive military background he would know this. he seemed to view sleep deprivation as the most brutal of all the techniques. i thought that was fascinating. rumsfeld, as you say, would try to avoid all these meetings, and the ones he couldn't avoid, these principals meetings, so he tried to, but couldn't delegate it. but he didn't want -- he just simply didn't want to know about any of this. i don't think he had any moral

objections but he didn't want to be touched with it, especially after abu grain. >> host: you are there representing the agency. so you have been out now for. four years. you heard the debate about whether this constitutes torture. i definitely get the impression by the way you talk about it that you actually -- this is my question -- in these intervening years, that you consider this torture. that it is not something less. especially in combination. and i'm wondering, there are a lot of -- if your people were protected, which they are --

nobody is going to go back and say, the people we said this was okay to use these techniques, we're going to go and cause them trouble now. but is there a reason that you think it's necessary to speak in the most honest way about these now and do you think that these techniques did amount to torture? >> no, i don't. again, maybe because i'm a lawyer, but torture is defined in a u.s. statute. i mean, they were brutal, harsh, some were scary. but i personally didn't see it as torture. i didn't think that back then. i certainly -- once i got the opinions from the department of justice -- a number of them over

the years addressing the program -- that the techniques did not cross the legal line into torture. and i still don't believe that. but it wasn't -- one of the things i tried to do in the book is -- it did get a lot of us in the agency in the kind of trouble that i anticipated at the beginning. so, i wasn't alone on this. no one was deeply involved in this program. it went on for six years. ever, ever enthusiastic boosters of it. if we thought that the program was not working, it wasn't yielding results, as some critics charged, we wouldn't have done it. wouldn't have continued it. i certainly wouldn't have

continued it because it was growing politically toxic by the month. so, i think -- i don't think it was torture, and i also think it yielded benefits. listening to the feedback from the analysts at the cia, i was convinced, because they were convinced, it was providing worthwhile, hugely important intelligence. >> host: there is a certainly body of work that suggests that many people throughout the world believe that this is -- amounts to torture and it has damaged our standing in the world in some important way, and these just aren't what some people might call human right liberals and panel like thomas pickerring who was involved in a study on this, who said we need to address the world on this. do you see any value to that?

even though you might not think it's torture and breaking the law, but it was something that so many other people do believe is, and maybe in the end it's a question of judgment? should we somehow address this chapter in our history? >> guest: absolutely. all of those -- not just the pickerring, but there were a lot of eminent scholars, politicians, experts around the world and here in the u.s., who believed that. they consider it being a moral stain. so, i -- i don't -- i mean, i certainly don't reject that contention, and -- yeah, have it all aired out. >> host: one of the ways that

could happen is if the senate intelligence committee, which has a very large, volumous report on this, that is still all classified , should be aired in its entirety? >> guest: i do. i have no idea what's in it. >> host: you probably know pretty much. you were -- you know what went on. >> guest: but -- read in the media about what it contains. i gather it's going to largely conclude that the program was worthless, largely worthless, and that the information that derived from it, the stuff that was valuable, could have been acquired without resorting to -- so that's apparently the story line, and as you say, it's 6,000

payments -- 6,000 pages, 50,000-footnotes. first of all, the -- i think spent $6 million on it over four years. for whatever reason, they never interviewed anyone at cia about the program. i don't know about others at the cia but i was out. i would have been happy to be interviewed for it. i don't see how one can do a comprehensive review of something based on reviewing the written record. secondly, it's not a bipartisan report. it's done strictly by the democratic members. so i think you have to take that into account. >> host: you can see the republicans defend this if they -- >> guest: yes. the final thing is, i'm told that the cia has drafted a rather lengthy and strong

rebuttal to many of the conclusions. so these -- i think $6 million, american taxpayers footed the bill for this. release it, make the redaction, and release the cia rebuttal and people can read the whole thing. i think, dam mitt, -- if it's not released it will be leaked. >> host: one reason to see it not be released is someone in the government could say it would damage our relationships overseas, because the secret prisons for one thing relied on relationships with other countries who house these prisons and promises that this would remain secret. however, as you know, the european council -- the council of europe, other governments

overseas have been investigating this, several countries whose names or repeated about the fact they probably had these oar did have -- had these or did have these. you have watched these revelations about other countries come out, and isn't it true that over time, these relationships usually repair themselves pretty quickly? because those countries still have a national interest in working with us? >> guest: yes, yes. i think that's right. i think -- i mean, we can see it now in the context of the snowden leaks and revelations, that the foreign governments are up in arms and europeans -- my experience was that whatever tensions, whatever breaks in relations, they get repaired over time. intelligence services need each other, and some of those

protests -- in my experience, when cia programs have been leaked, foreign governments, foreign leaders, get -- behind the scenes, the intelligence services are reaching out to cia, basically to say, look, we have to say these things publicly. this is a huge political issue. but we're going to keep working together. basically, don't take this too hard, and just something we have to do. >> host: why is that? why do they do that? >> guest: well, they know they have to work with cia or with the u.s. intelligence community. if one thing, we're the source of many -- much of the intelligence that these countries have about terrorism, threats to their country. they don't want to shut off the spigot of cia information. it's not because they love the cia but they need us.

and so it's inevitable, and i think the culture of spy organizations -- i won't say cynical but realistic, this, too shall pass. >> host: you know where the prisons are and look at those relationships, were any of them permanently ruptured? >> guest: not that i'm aware of. it's uncomfortable. it's embarrassing. but i don't think any damage is done. >> host: so can you talk for a minute -- it's not in your book but you referred to it -- again, you're in the perfect spot to reflect on it for all the reasons you just stated, but the snowden documents and what that has revealed. there's some people that are saying he should get some kind of deal for telling the government what he released.

first talk about what your feeling about the revelations. were you surprised to learn what the nsa was doing? the extent they were doing it? >> guest: the revelations covered such a wide swath of activity. some of what has come out, i wasn't surprised about it. i knew what nsa was doing at the time. on the electronic surveillance -- >> host: metadata collection. >> guest: yeah. so that wasn't a surprise. surely wasn't a surprise about the activities overseas that we're doing against foreign governments. so none was surprising. what was a surprise was the massive amount of data and information snowden had access to. i mean, some of the revelations, come out every few days, irwould read the latest revelation and

think to myself, i never even enough that was going on. so the thing is, this 29-year-old, sitting out -- a contractor sit naught some remote outpost can somehow get to stuff that eyes the chief legal officers of the cia, couldn't have gotten to that when i was there. >> host: do you think it's created a worthwhile debate as we wrap up here? >> guest: i think the debate is good on the metadata and the issue of u.s. surveillance -- surveillance of u.s. phone records. i think that's valuable, and fruitful. i wish they'd come about it a different way. i don't that would have happened without the snowden disclosures. but he disclosed so much else that had nothing to do with american constitution. i think that it's hugely damaging, and reprehensible.

>> host: do you think it's damaging because at the technology cannot adapt quickly enough to do things differently? what is so damaging about it? you have just said that these -- many of these countries are going to continue working with us. >> guest: inevitably, but it will have a chilling effect for a while. there will be more reluctance on their part to share what they have, and while it's not going to be permanent, what happens if there's some information about a terrorist attack, and for whatever reason, because of the political climate, because of what snowden created, that information is not passed? that's what i worry about. >> host: this is my last question. do you think we're at a time where our government and certainly the cia, too, needs to just assume that things are going to get out and they've been -- in other words, secrets will not remain secret, especially in this environment where we depend on the interit

in or i.t. to keep the secrets and they have to calibrate that and act differently? >> guest: yeah. leaks are inevitable. there were leaks when i joined cia 35 years ago, and there will be leaks 35 years from now, leaks are a fact of life in the intelligence business, and the u.s. community, as you know. so we have to just live with that and reconcile it. leaks have gotten bigger and inexorable seemingly. we have to factor that. in our intelligence leadership has to factor in that and what they're planning what to say today as we're sitting here. >> host: okay. well, thank you so much, john, and enjoy your book. good luck. >> guest: thank you.