melvin goodman will talk about his time with the cia. [inaudible discussion] >> welcome to the gaithersburg book festival. i'm audrey and i'm washington independent review of books representative here helping at this festival. it's a city that proudly supports the arts and humanity. we're pleased to gripping you this fabulous event thanks to the generous support of sponsors and volunteers. when you see them, please say thanks. a few announcements. please silence your cell phones. if you're on social media, use the hash tag gbs and i think i see gbs17. your feedback is valuable to us. surveys are able. by submitting a century ray you will be entered into a drawing

for a $100 series to gift card. melvin goodman will be signing books after the presentation. copies of his book right here are on sale the politic and prose tent. this is a free event but helps the book city of if you buy a book. the more books we sell another our events, the more publishers want to send the authors here to speak with us, and purchasing books from our partner, politic and prose. benefiting our local economy. so we hope you'll buy a book today, or several books. melvin goodman was a soviet analyst the cia in the department of state for 24 years and a professor of international relations the national war college for 18 years.

he serve the u.s. army in athens, greece, for three years and was intelligence adviser from 1971 to 72. is the working for the center for international policy in washington, dc and adjunct professor of government at johns hopkins university. his latest bikes "hissing blower the cia: an insider's condition to the politics of intelligence" and co-author edits several books, including" insecurity ,"" gorbachev's retreat ,"" "the war -- america's pursuit of the star wars illusion. bush league diplomacy. how the neocontives are putting the world at risk, and failure

of intelligence, the decline in fall of the cia. his articles and op-ed have mend the "new york times," harpers, foreign policy, the baltimore sun and be "washington post" and the lives in bethesda, maryland. his book is very interesting. i was once recruited for the cia i found this very interesting. so thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. it's nice to be back here gene. especially when it's not raining. i was here three years ago with national insecurity and this is a wonderful festival and just a wonderful event. i'll start with may 8th, 2017, which is a very important date for two reasons. one reason, that's when the book came our and it was important to me because i had to submit it to the cia for review as part of my contract with the cia. it took them 11 months to review this book.

now, i know they're slow reading, but i think that goes beyond the limits. and raises a real right to speak or freedom of speech issue i'll get to maybe the end of the talk. the other reason why may 8th, 2017, is very important to me is because that's the day sally yates testified. i found her testimony riveting. and it was riveting on several levels. but the most important level to me and why i have such incredible respect for that woman is the highest duty of any become servant at any level of government is to expose misconduct. is to tell the truth when it comes to matters of legality or morality or simple transgression or misconduct. and one of the reasons why i wrote the book, this particular book, was basically to tell my story, and the story is a simple one. i spent 42 years with the government.

when you look at my service in the army and the department of defense and the central intelligence agency and the department of state, throughout that entire period, the 42 year period, i had security clearances the highest level. so, i know what security is. i know about the importance of security. but i also learned over a period of time -- and not that it -- you don't enter public service to become a dissident, let alone a whistleblower, but i also learned there's an incredible in universe intelligence and think about the -- misuse of intelligence and in our history there have been four war wes have fought where intelligence was glued a dishonest way to justify in the use of force. the mexican-american war, the spanish-american war, the vietnam war, of course, is obvious, and then one of the worst examples of all, which i

dealt with, was the iraq war, which was a total misuse of intelligence, total fly terms of everything the american public was told. now, another reason why i decided to write the book was the importance of the whistleblower, and i don't like the term "whistleblower." never liked it. it has very bad connotation, the connotation of a snitch or a rat fink or stoolie, and that is not what a whistleblower is all about. i give a certain amount of credit, even though i'm disturbed by ralph nader did in the year 2000 but it was ralph namedder who made the word "whistleblower" respectable from the writing in 1970s, and that's extremely important. when you think about the who isle blower in terms of the great disaster think of the role of the whistleblower in watergate. i know all the credit goes to

bob woodward and carl bernstein. very little credit or fame ever goes to the whistleblower niksch this case, mark felt. and when the nixon white house was first dealing with the problem that there were serious leaks that had to come from the top -- the united states is the ship of state that leaks from the top, not from the bottom. haldeman new it was mark felts. he told richmond nixon, i think it's mark felt the fbi. the deputy the fbi. and nixon's first response was his jewish? and haldeman wants no, i think these catholic. i don't know what either one would have to do with it but the role of mark felt in the case of watergate is extremely significant. when i think of vietnam dish don't know what the first thought that comes to your mind is -- it's the pentagon papers and when i think of the pentagon papers i think of daniel elseburg and the work that

daniel elsberg did in the 1970 and continues to do, including writing a very nice blush for the book that i'm very proud of and in june i'm going to appear with daniel elsburg in berkeley. when you think of the scandals of torture and abuse become that the need nor a whistle-blowers think about abu ghraib. that involved a whistleblower. know edward snowden is extremely controversial and it's clear he broke laws. edward snowden admitted to the fact he has broken certain laws dealing with certain kinds of intelligence, communications intelligence, signals intelligence, but edward snowden told us about unconstitutional -- not just illegal but unconstitutional behavior in the white house that was aimed at all of the american people. this was an important contribution to our

understanding and here is where whistle-blowers play a very important roleey. just read about chelsea manning being released from jail. she received a pardon from president obama. and i know there's a lot of confusion and controversy about chelsea manning but she exposed war crimes in iraq. my point is in trying to understand what a whistleblower is and why a whistleblower act the way he does -- i think i know why these people act the way they did. you see something in public life at some point you know is wrong, and sometimes it becomes so overwhelming that you feel that you have to do something about it. and i think mostly whys blowers -- in my case -- extremely naive about what it means to throw yourself in front of a moving train, which is the american government in my case throwing himself in from of the

nomination of robert gates as the cia director in 1991 when i testified before the senate intelligence commit year, but i think this is what motivates the whistleblower. you reach a point where it's wrong not to say something, wrong not to do something. and i must say in all of the whistleblower examples that i cite in the book and that i've looked at and tried to understand, every whistleblower as far as i'm concerned has been vindicated. daniel elsburg has certainly been vindicated. edward snowden for a lot of us, including myself, clearly has been vindicated. it's controversial that he left the country but he left the country because of the terrible treatment that thomas drake received. he is the national security agency whistleblower who was then accused of violating the espionage act from 1970 by the obama administration. what find interesting about that

is that issue was put before the bush administration, and george w. bush, who is vilified in many quarters, decide he would not good after thomas drake, but barack obama, harvard trained lawyer and two talked constitutional law, did allow the government to good after thomas drake in the worse possible way, threatening him with spending the rest of this life in prison, until a judge lectured the justice department lawyers and threw the cassoulet of court. let me spend -- the case out of court. let me spend a few minutes on my example. not as dramatic another snowden or drake and not elsburg and other case. in the 1980s when ronald reagan came into office and the appointed an ideology to be the cia director, william casey, i first hat to confront the

politicization of intelligence. ronald reagan wanted to increase defense spending in an unprecedented way in peacetime. never seen these kind of increases before a in peacetime. you had to justify it. you had to have an next. you head to have a threat. what casey did and his deputy, robert gates who went on to become the cia director and then secretary of defense under both bush and own, was to distort the intelligence, to make the soviet union look ten feet tall, the soviet union as a threat, the receive wrote union involved in the attempt to as nate the pope in 1981. the soviet union involved in international terrorism. none of this was true. and i say through the early '80s and fought these issues for then 1986 i decided to leave and go to the national war college to teach, and in 1991, when bob gates was nominated by george h.w. bush to be the cia director, that is when i

contacted the senate intelins committee and testified against the gates nomination. that's not the first time he was nominated. he was nominated for the first time in 1987 by ronald reagan. this was after the sudden death of bill casey from a brain tumor. gates went before the senate intelligence committee and got a call at night, senator david bourne. the oklahoma chairman of the senate intelligence committee who had to tell bob, you have a problem. the committee does not believe you in terms of your disavows of nothing anything about being involved in iran-contra, can't get your name out of it inee, and bobgates winds to the white house the next day, thicked president and pulled his name out. four years later he was nominated against. a very controversial nomination because of my accusations of

politicization, and led to more votes against bobgets registered against all cia directors combined, going back to 1947 when harry truman started the cia, and he was confirm. this meant one who has politicized intelligence was sent back to run the agency where the poll littization takes place. you cannot imagine the moral problems and ethical problems created when someone you know who is involved in politicization comes back to run the agency. that's why i have so much sympathy what is going on in every agency in government when you have a president who selected cabinet directors who have sworn essentially to if not destroy the departments they have been sent to certainly to weaken them in every fundamental way.

so, that was essentially my reason for going before the senate intelligence committee, and then being disappointed by the way it was handled by the press, his thought did not rise to the challenge, and i'll give you one anecdote reveals what is wrong with the press, even though they've have gotten the act together in the last 120 day us. white house started to leak very uncomplimentary things about me issue should say. none of them were true, and cia people who were called denied all the stories and i was tipped off by a couple of journalists, one from "time magazine," one from the "washington post," but decided, two can play at this game so i started leaking leakid leaked to ben wiser, with the "washington post," and elaine from "the new york times" two papers with the most cloud in washington, as they do today and

for the first self dives the tim, elaine played it straight in the "new york times." she reported what i was telling her what, the white house was telling her. a certain amount of false eye with lance. her reporting -- eye with lance. mid-we were her propertying shifted to benefiting bobgates and his confirmation, after the hearings were over, called elaine to have lunch, and i had an agenda, and halfway through the lunch i raised my agenda item which is why was so it obvious that halfway through the confirm make hearings you abandoned what was telling you which was pretty good inside information. she said i'll tell you, it was clear he was go to be confirmed and he would become the cia director and a very important source for me. you would go back to teaching the national war college and i'd probably never call you again. and i thought, this told me all i needed to know about what is

wrong with the mainstream media. and when you think a whistleblowers -- i'll pick on the "washington post" since it's our hometown newspaperif you go back to the op-eds of the "washington post" on all of the whistle-blowers, edward snowden, thomas drake, chelsea manning, look up the critical articles that were written about them by people like richard cohn, r ryu th martin and it was always very meaningful to me that journalism, investigative journalism, which relies on whistle-blowers, where would investigative journalism be -- think of dana priest of the "washington post" who won a pulitzer prize, she won a pulitzer prize because the wrote about the cia secret prisons.

she got tom from a whistleblower, but the whistleblower is an anonymous person but yet when you read the op-eds, i remember the one that it found the most offensive was ruth marcus who referred to chelsea manning as a cross-dressing red riding hood. david ignatius, very ugly with his economies about edward snowden. david gregory when he ran "meet the press" had glen green walt on his show would and was extremely critical for him being a conduit for the information from edward snowden. when diane feinstein wrote a report about torture and abuse she was on wolf blitzer's situation room and accused of having blood on her in other words revealing the information about the cia torture and abuse. so the think i would like to leave you with at this point dish do want to leave some time

for questions and comments -- is our democracy right now is in trouble. we're in a very beleaguered state. there was an article in the "new york times" about two weeks ago about-i love this word -- guardrail, the guardrail of democracy and how the system is working. well, two observations. one, the system will only work if people make the system work. the system can't work on its own. and, two, i would argue the system isn't working the with a i would like it to work. look at the intelligence committees created in 1970s because of the crimes during the vietnam era, 30 years after the cia was credited. the senate intelligence committee is not doing the aggressive job it should be doing. it's not bipartisan. republican senator richard burr from north carolina is not doing the work that an intelligence chairman needs to do. and never even have to say anything about none -- nunes,

and the way he was used as a stooge by the white house, being brought into the white house grounds and getting sensitive documents and told to deliver these to president of the united states as if this was new information to the president of the united states. think of the inspectors general of the various agencies, an extremely important post weakened be barack obama. most of the eight years that obama was in office, the cia went without an inspector general. when i think of hillary clinton and the e-mail problem -- frankly the e-mail problem and comey's handling of the e-mail problem is the decisive reason why hillary clinton was defeated, even though there are other factors that need to be addressed -- but hillary clinton never allowed a permanent inspector general to be in the state department the four years she was there what if there had been an inspector general who very early on could have called attention to the fact that the

idea of having your own e-mail account and putting the server in your home is probably not the best idea in the world. the press, which i think has suddenly got its act together and certainly has been very aggressive with the reporting in the last 120 days -- did not do its job during the campaign, the false equivalentes, the free ride that donald trump got from the "washington post" and "new york times" was really an embarrassment and most major editors around the country understand that now. what i look the court system, the federal courts have not been aggressive in matters dealing with national security. where they give a lot of seven bit of the -- benefit of the doubt to the government and the state secret privilege or making people create their own legal standing for bringing a case to a federal court. so, it's important that citizens understand that these so-called

guardrails have to be fortified and that there should be a certain amount of understanding of what a whistleblower is and what a whistleblower does, and going back to warn, that we have gotten from people such as james madison and alexander hamilton about the importance of a free press, the importance of not trading off your liberty for security, and the importance of a public servant who exposes misconduct, i think these are things we have to keep in mind. so we have less than ten minutes -- [applause] >> to take questions. thank you. [applause] yes. >> is it possible that the use of whistleblowers is unique to this country because without our free press, wouldn't we be just no different than the soviet union, china or nye dictatorship? >> i don't think it's unique to

us and, frankly, there are soviet citizens and russian citizens who have taken far more risk with their lives. during the worst of the hearings, tended to look under the hood of my car before i started my engine but i didn't think my life was threatened. but in places such as russia and china, with whistle-blowers take tremendous risk. in britain you had whistle-blowers dealing with tony blair's dishonest iny joining us with george suburb the iraq war. what is unique about the united states -- i worry about the uniqueness -- is the court system and the investigative journalism when it works, see more hershel, agreeing miller from most does a good judge i notice now -- don't known it got through but the masthead in the "washington post --" probably after trump's inauguration -- democracy dies in darkness.

go back and read sinclair lewises' it can happen ear, written never 1930s. it's happening here. >> i think i heard you say earlier that the primary responsibility of asive civil sir van is to expose wrongdoing. is that correct. >> , that. alexander hamilton, by the way, planted that seed in my mind. >> that's anxiouses my question. should that be in the norm or is that an outcome of current times? in other words, shouldn't the primary responsibility be to do good as opposed to looking for wrongdoing? >> well, i take doing good for granted. >> okay. >> i mean, why would you do any task, whether with the got or outside the government, if you warrant harping a beneficial effect it but when you get behind the standard obligations of a public servant or anyone else, think truthfulness in confronting wrong-doing is important. and alexander hamilton -- i

always go back to hamilton first with read the founding fathers -- he talked about impeachment in terms of the number one offense that has to be addressed is compromising the public trust, and certainly we have seen too much of that liberty was nixon, whether it was reagan and iran-contra in the 1980s, whether it was bill clinton, which is controversial but still i think he did compromise the public trust and now look what we're dealing with, day after day. i think there's a mic coming. >> yeah. what's the relationship between resigning in protest and. [whistle] le blowing? i think there's some relationship. >> there's a relationship because by definition, when you

resign in protest, you are -- your made yourself a whistleblower. the problem is there's so few of either v variety. who resigns in protest any think during vietnam there were some brave foreign service officers. i think of my good friend, robert white, the ambassador in el salvador when the children women were raped and murdered and alexander haig, the secretary of state we don't want you investigating it, and bob white being the kind of person he was, did not let it good. i think of cyrus vans, the secretary of state for jimmy carter after the debacle of the iran hostage riecks who told the president i'm opposed to what you're doing, whether it succeeded or fails i'm going to resign because i think you're wrong and i'm not going to call attention it to until the operation takes place. of course it was failure.

how many people like that act on principle or protect morality or honor their moral compass? the sad a thing is -- i'll throw this out as a warning, if anyone things he is going to be a whistleblower -- you know who you are, dent expect when you turn around the end of the day that you'll have a big gathering, some platoon in back of you. you're going to have very little supportment most people run from that kind of controversy. that's just a fact of life. >> yeah. >> there's a mic right there. >> okay. thank you, mr. goodman. do you think that mueller is going to be able to complete -- do a very comprehensive investigation or is that going to be compromised? >> i think mueller was probably the best choice that this current situation could have allowed for.

i think the power of the press is important because rod risenstein, who allot of us had come to respect for his work in maryland, clearly bowed to pressure in write that ridiculous memo he wrote. he was stooge. the was part of the paper trail for a firing that never should have taken place. but my warning that these investigations. one, they take very long time, particularly counterintelligence investigations. two they don't always tell us everything that we need to know, and, three, i don't think they ever really get to the bottom of things. and now i'm not a conspiracy theorists but going week in kennedy assassination and the warren investigation, there's still a lot of loose ends. look the iran-contra investigation, which took six years, and i got into a lot of trouble when i testified because warren rudman, very bombastic senator from new hampshire, who

was cochairman of the iran-contra investigation, i blistered the work of the iran-contra investigation because they didn't get to the bottom of what happened. so i'm hopeful that what the fbi will do now under mueller will lying some fire under the house and the senate. but remember, until the republicans start lose something seats somewhere and this test in georgia next month is very interesting -- i don't think they're going to do the right thing. they've got their man in the white house and they'll hang on to him. don't think great things are going to happen and they're not going to happen in the near term. >> this is more of an observation than a come men addition forkerses. i'm a work for the media and

i'm a whistleblower on the media. thanks to your inspiration, because i do believe that the term how to used, false equivalency, guilty. think the media gave a false equivalency to the candidates in particular donald trump, especially because the beginning he was more of curiosity and he was good for ratings on television, and i think the result is that the media did not do its job, and as a member of that media, i feel very badly about that. it's very hard to just be one person in the mass media and make a difference, but when you talk about whistle blowing you realize maybe that could have happened. and enough this false equivalency has led to us a situation where we have democracy in crisis, and we have special prosecutors, and we have

all 0 these situations we have never seen before. and i just wanted to commend you for using the term "false equivalency" because it's extremely accurate in this situation in particular. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> i don't know if we have time for one more. >> just while we're waiting, member of the president of cbs who said that donald trump is great for business and good for the bottom line. very interesting that edward snowden made sure his information did not get to "the new york times" because of the poor way they handled the iraq war who distorted the news they received. and the feeling that's couldn't trust "the new york times" to handle this material in a sensitive way. >> two quick questions. i know they're all flawed but which news outlet do you think

is most credible in terms of reporting on this kind of intelligence information and what do you see is underlying political motivation office wikileaks? it's unclear me based on what they expose and when. >> in terms of reliability, only really three newspapers in the country, which is a sad reality that are reeling cover thing issues, "the new york times," in the "washington post" and "the wall street journal." greg miller of the "washington post" is very good. james rosen is outstanning and stood down the obama administration which was trying to put him into jail, which is an incredible violation of freedom of the press. charlie savage from "the new york times," is excellent. i also rely havely on the new york review of books, people like david cole, was at george town, now at aclu. as for wikileaks, i'm torn

because i think julian assange is such a strange character and was obsessed, like put defeat of hillary clinton and a definite link between the russian hacking and then the laundering of the material to get it to julian assange in a way he can say i didn't get this from the russians. that's my own personal opinion. so i. a sympathetic when wikileaks was started, it was to challenge the government and i think assange has become an anarchist and his target is the united states he has no other target. so, are we -- we have exhausted the subject? thank you. [applause]

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