"washington journal" continues. host: patrick eddington at our table, gulf war whistleblower and currently a research fellow institute. thank you for being here, let's talk about your story. why did you become a whistleblower? guest: those of us who have been through this experience, when you look at whistleblower cases, a lot of commonalities come out and there is a new book, crisis

of conscience: whistleblowing in an age of fraud. he takes you through these cases . what you find with most whistleblowers is they tend to be very inter-directed. you tend to have a loyalty essentially to a higher purpose or calling. i have spent 26 years in government either full or part-time service between the national guard, the cia, 10 plus .ears on capitol hill and so on i take it deadly seriously, i will until the day i die and that is what drove me in that circumstance because it was very clear during the war there was an amount of intelligence flowing out of the theater in the early days of the conflict potentialated chemical agent attacks had taken place or alarms had been going

off. i was working at the equivalent imagery headline news operation at the time, very .uick turnaround reporting every time during that war, that six week period these reports , we would call the headquarters in riyadh and asked the question is this real? every time, we would be called false alarm, don't worry about it. in the rush of the conflict, you don't have a chance to go back and look at these things and the war ended relatively quickly seemingly without a lot of american casualties and i went on with my career and my life and it wasn't until my wife wound up doing a rotation to the senate banking committee and they were investigating iraqi dual use exports and their

illnesses to these reported heavily in 1992 and basically telling the banking committee our alarms went off. i am left with a circumstance where after my wife's first day on the job, she brings home the preliminary staff level report issued 1933 and she hands it to me and says read this, i think .e got gassed i read the report, about 50 pages and it was anecdotal, but there were an awful lot of anecdotes. , do wet me to thinking have a cover-up here? did something actually happened? and no one else was going to take a look at this because the agency had issued assessments saying no chemical agents ever deployed to theater, no one exposed. if anyone was going to take a

look at this, it would be between me and my wife. me going into classified databases to essentially re-create the classified record hurried my investigation was totally unauthorized, completely off the books. it was something i did because i was a desert storm era veteran and i felt these men and women were probably not getting the truth about what happened and as it happened, they were not getting the truth. host: when you say you did your own investigation, why were you doing your own investigation? what did you think or how did you know what to do with the information you were going to find? great the cia gave me training as an analyst, so i was able to utilize that to my benefit. i have always been a scholar by bent and predisposition anyway, but i understood the agency, i

understood where i needed to go to get access to information. i also used tradecraft along the way. i made sure the door to my office was closed. when i went to sources, i did it utilizing means that would ensure the likelihood of me being detected doing that were minimal. host: how long did it take you? guest: i started this the day after my wife handed me that staff level report and by july of 1994, i had put together a 55 page powerpoint. i had hundreds, maybe thousands of documents on my computer. intelligence.of i was utilizing available public information including what the banking committee had been finding. by the time i got done assembling all this data, it was

clear to me that veterans probably had been exposed to chemical agents possibly through attacks, but more than likely through a lot of the bombing that took place in that 6 week period that essentially released a lot of agents and other debris that formed a large downwind hazard plume over american forces in saudi arabia and again, when i finally did surfaced this with my frontline manager, he completely freaked out, was extremely concerned. host: what do you mean by frontline manager? guest: within the agency, you wind up having different levels of management. the frontline would be someone known as a branch chief, in charge of anywhere from 62 a dozen people and from there, the division level and beyond that, group and directorate level, that is a rough estimate of how the structure worked 23 years ago when i was there.

my branch chief was mortified i had done this, but he was terrified i had a pretty decent case something had gone awry. i was promised this would be .nvestigated by experts the problem i knew was those same people were the ones who put their names on a report that none of this had happened to begin with. by november, we learned from a source that essentially they had picked somebody to debunk what forward. that put me in a foul mood, i was not happy with that, so i did something outside of agency culture, i forward. that wrote a letter to the editor in which i accuse the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of covering this stuff up. i did not identify myself as an employee and i get -- and i did not lose -- use classified

information. from the agency cultural standpoint, i violated every taboo you could think of. it took a few months before the lightning bolt came down, but my manager brought into ash brought me into his office and said did you write this? i was in a flippant mood. i said yeah, i wrote it. i know you all did not take it seriously. that changed the dynamic at that moment. host: when did you become a whistleblower? 1995, i hadpril of gone through a series of what i would call dog and pony show internal briefings at cia with differing levels of managers and folks where it was clear despite my ability to take material out of the library that showed potential health effects from low-level exposure to chemical

agents, they were not going to go and review all the available data and revisit this issue in a serious way. due to bedeutsch was nominated to be the next director of central intelligence, i smuggled 100 classified documents and took them up to the senate intelligence committee and i laid all this stuff out on the table. it was a bipartisan meeting with staff, probably a little bit different than what we are seeing with the ukrainegate episode today. i had taken post-it notes and labeled the key documents and my basic pitch was i don't believe folks at the pentagon are playing straight with the american people and veterans about this, please quiz him on the basis of this material. make a real effort. within days i learned instead of ciag that, they had called to say do you know one of your

people came up here with 100 documents and try to pitch this on us? i got the sense i was being subjected to a counterintelligence investigation and that told us it was time to go and we needed to think about and exit strategy . that is basically between april, may of 1995 and execute that strategy. host: what was the exit strategy? guest: my concern was that we would not be on the street. do this,tleblowers they wind up losing their jobs, their homes, things of that nature, so we structured it in a way that my wife wound up leaving in 1996, went to a defense contractor that was still privately held so you did not have shareholder pressure and the public buys that would

result -- buzz that would result. i began writing my first book about this entire episode. i was approached and did work with staff on a presidential presidentprejudice -- sherry advisory committee. he absolutely believed we were correct and was subsequently fired because he was raising these issues. we neededcame clear to do something more dramatic, phil sheen in managed to get in touch with us. tell you will everything but i want to drive , so that wasto cia how it happened. a restaurant in fairfax county, virginia, and spent the better part of four

hours going over our story. officialyou have the -- did you have the official whistleblower status and protection? guest: from the time that army intain christopher pyle went 1971 to reveal surveillance, which is kind of the beginning 1998e modern era, up until there were nor statutory protections so we were two years after my wife and i did what we did that the first legislation in the intelligence community, whistleblower protection act was passed. in that legislation, there was no real protection. it gave you a pathway to report things but there was no statutory bar to retaliation. marginally,improved but as my friends at the

government accountability say, we need vastly stronger protections. we need a deterrent in protection to discourage people, whether it is the president of the united states for a manager --cia, that the panda tour penalties should be 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. host: you became a whistleblower the day you set down with "the new york times." questions and comments about his story, being a whistleblower, republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. .ndependents, (202) 748-8002 we are also getting his perspective on the impeachment inquiry.

rodney and madison, iowa. caller: if whistleblowers are so important, barack obama prosecuted a different whistleblowers and slapped gag orders on about four of them. can you explain that? guest: a great question, you are correct. his administration did more to persecute whistleblowers prior to any other administration. things abouty president obama that have pointed us -- and i voted with him because i bought the line about change, and i forgot the key lessons i learned in my over 30 years in washington -- mr. obama campaigned against the surveillance state and the patriot act, the section 502 act. he ended up embracing both of those, and the same thing with whistleblowers.

in 2012, the obama administration implemented what 19, a mores ppd formal process for whistleblowers to bring things forward. even that process, i think my friends would agree, has been anything but ideal and effective. what we have seen from president trump on this issue looking to out this individual or group of individuals, that is contrary to the law and what the act says. i get the president's frustration. he is not happy, but we need to have these provisions in place so that folks can come forward without fear of being fired. host: what are the formal procedures that were put in place? has been a while since i reviewed the details, but in essence it creates a stance in

which whistleblowers can bring these issues up, and if an inspector general is involved in this and there are concerns about whether that inspector general has been taking the allegations seriously, it is possible to take it to a next level with an external review panel. this happened in the case of nsa ig george- ellard. the allegations were found to be credible and he was reprimanded. there was subsequently an appeal to the pentagon and an official overturned the ruling, which is one of the reasons why a lot of us have problems with the system as it is. host: you mentioned one change, but what others would you like to see? johnson is one of the senior staff members and when i

worked on capitol hill, he was in the house intelligence. it was a brownbag lunch where we were picking his brain about things that would be good to do, and i had some ideas, but he said, it doesn't matter how much you tinker with the law. there is no substitute for number engagement. that has stuck to me. host: what does that mean? guest: members have to care about whistleblowers and be engaged. chuck grassley is a good example. it has been almost a year ago that senator grassley revealed the central intelligence agency had been monitoring the --tinued acacia and communications of whistleblowers , and i have been shocked that neither the house or senate intelligence committee have gone to battle stations over that,

because it is that kind of illegal domestic surveillance that laws were created over 40 years ago to prevent. this has not been a conversation for senator schiff or chairman burr. host: president trump, let me show the viewers what he had to say -- the so-called whistleblower, the call was crazy, frightening, completely lacking in substance, this is a big lie. read the transcript. guest: i don't recall the whistleblower using that phraseology. basise know so far on the of testimony that has so far been given, and the snippets that we have so far from state department and other officials, is that the substance of the allegations were valid. founds what mr. maguire

when he evaluated the complaint several months ago. i understand the president's frustration. he feels like this is supposed to be a generalized court proceeding. impeachments do not fall into that category. of concerns about how house democrats have been handling this. host: samuel is in up or mar bro, maryland, independent -- upper marlboro, maryland, independent. caller: i just want to make a comment to your guest. 1981 to 1985.rea they were giving out shots for soldiers to take and they didn't give any reason. i would just like to say to your guest, i appreciate everything you are talking about because it just shows that the corruption in our government is so far gone

that you can't even trust anyone in the government. oute i served and then came and retired from a transit company behind you, i have noticed a lot about veterans who in turn are always sick. v.a., youto the local see a lot of veterans in these programs, and some of the programs that are in the v.a. doesn't really help. i appreciate what you are saying. a friend of mine served in the gulf war and she lost her hair, and the v.a. could not determine why, but when she found out they were gassed, that is the reason why, she had two miscarriages behind that. i appreciate you coming out and

telling the people, the american people how corrupt our government is. guest: i appreciate your sentiments, and thank you to your service, and to your friend as well. longtunately, there is a history of federal government experimentation on military personnel. i ran across a thing called x-files112, and sounding name. it was a chemical and biological warfare experimentation program carried out basically on a global basis, approved by president kennedy. when you look at the other instances this has happened, western gas experiments on western personnel, in the gulf war they were giving folks shots of the anthrax vaccine which had never been approved, and they were passing out a drug used to

that is andition excess of an enzyme in the brain that controls motor skill coordination. when you give it to someone who does not have that, you are playing with their life. this was done ostensibly to protect veterans against potential threats, but they were guessing and did not have good science to back up what they were doing. you had veterans exposed to this cocktail of stuff. that has made trying to get a single diagnosis for these folks very difficult. host: mark in lexington, kentucky wants to know -- do you have reason to believe our intelligence agencies have substantial political factions, leadership,olitical beholden to parties? guest: i think everybody who

works anywhere as an adult has political opinions of some stripe or another. orn people go to work at cia the office of the director of national intelligence or the state department, i don't think people stop being what they are politically. serveou take the oath to the american people as a whole, your responsibility is to set aside your predilections and political beliefs and withhold the constitution of the united states, and present information in a fact-based way. i have seen a lot of what i would call conspiracy theory mongering. there is a deep state coup against the president, so on and so forth. saying, we had democrats the fbi was the antichrist and

they were handling bob mueller as the second coming and so on and so forth. when we get into this environment where we have police did pull -- heated political dynamics, it is difficult to obtain political objectivity. mr. comey made some mistakes along the way. mr. mccabe did the same. to idea that either was out get hillary clinton or donald trump is a little bit of a reach based on the evidence. host: what is your view of the whistleblower in this impeachment inquiry, and his complaint, of his his cross-references? what did you make of it when you read it? guest: when i went over the nine page memo, it was clear to me that this was someone who was probably a subject matter expert

and knew theraine dynamics and history. it was also clear it was someone that had a great memory, was meticulous at note keeping and keeping track of interactions with individuals, so while the account was largely secondhand, it struck me as being credible. now that we have literally multiple witnesses coming forward not in the open session that i would like to see, but we have had multiple witnesses come forward and validate everything the original whistleblower was saying, it is troubling and it is a real problem for the president. i don't just mean in a political context, i mean in a substantive context. host: greenville, texas, robert. caller: good morning. see thefreshing to whistleblower process working the way it should. in this age of where everybody

claims one news outlet or ,nother is presenting fake news the whistleblower process is refreshing, because we are actually sing the truth behind a lot of what goes on -- seeing the truth behind a lot of what goes on. it is factual and would never be brought forward if it did not -- if it failed the smell test and approve test, and it is refreshing. one thing i have learned about this whole complaint he brought forward, about two and a half years ago i called in to c-span to say you need to start looking at following the money with paul manafort and his affiliations in eastern europe, and how it was affecting the contributions going into the trunk campaign. he has been -- trump campaign.

, but ineen convicted the whistleblower complaint his name came up again about helping defend him. i think he will come back around on this thing in a big way, and the money, if you follow the money, this whistleblower, you start with pretty quote quote -- quid pro quo. there is more quid pro quo than meets cia. it is -- meets the eye. it is not just about military aid. guest: the biggest problem i have with this process the democrats have engaged in is it fundamentally veers away from the watergate model. when that process began february 1973, it was after a number of convictions related to the watergate scandal itself. the idea was we were going to have an open, upfront process.

it was passed unanimously. leadingsome of the senate appointed to that panel. the late howard baker, republican of tennessee. they wound up staring this process in such a way that it guaranteed that when they got done with it, there was not any doubt about what had actually gone on in the course of watergate, any of the individuals involved. i think the mistake the democrats are making now is not following that model. i get the idea that you want to do potentially depositions to get information and you need to .et documents, all of that need an overarching

resolution passed in the house to make this thing rise above the partisan character it has now. we need a clear commitment from folks on both sides of the aisle that they will appoint responsible people to do an overall inquiry. the way the democrats are doing it now, it could come back to bite them. with do you have concerns adam schiff leading this investigation? guest: i have massive concerns. the only time he has shown any issue in whistleblower issues was last month when he offered the resolution with respect to mr. maguire's report. i have fundamental concerns about the house committee have any kind of lead role in an impeachment proceeding because it can feed into this idea, some of our callers have alluded to, about political factions within the intelligence community

conspiring with like-minded democrats, at cetera. i don't think that is necessarily what is going on, but as drew weston has noted so perfectly, politics usually is not about facts and reason but about perception and emotion. we need to get away from this perception that this process is not legitimate. that is my big concern. host: concerned that the whistleblower first met with staff on the intelligence committee? guest: that is not my concern. my concern is larger and that normally the way it works now, the whistleblower is supposed to go to the icig or their parent ig and make those concerns known, put them in writing. once that happens, the ig is supposed to notify the committee that that has happened, that there is an urgent concern of real moment.

mr. maguire did not do that initially, so i do not blame mr. schiff and the committee for being aggressive on the front end of trying to shake that complaint loose. for the most part, within the entire whistleblowing community, you do not get a lot of guidance about how you are supposed to go about this. there was a specific office attached to the office of director of national intelligence, whistleblower advocate office, the office was shut down and the guy who ran it was run out of government because he was doing too good of a job. there is not a lot out there, as a general rule, to tell somebody who wants to bring things forward, this is how to go about it. i don't blame the whistleblower for trying to reach out to the committee. and pelosi committee

for allowing this process to get this far without an authorizing resolution. host: rose, new jersey, independent. caller: i wanted to commend this gentleman and i would like him to comment on the fact that we biglooking at there is a dragon in the cave called the pentagon. 23 -- ind c-spine that 23rd on c-span that unaudited accounts they are refusing to submit for inspection, and the retiring ig for afghanistan could not get accounts he ordered. who is responsible for going in and breaking this wall and seeing what is going on with corruption? guest: thank you for the question in your concern.

this entire issue of runaway pentagon spending has been with us literally for decades. folks in washington have wanted to have a comprehensive audit of pentagon accounts for a long time, and some of the audits have revealed tens of billions of dollars that never should have been spent. i will go back to wet log what logaid, -- johnson said, you have to have members who are willing to get in and do this. nowhe cold war era and even in the so-called war on terror, taking on the national security establishment, for a member to do that it is risky. erahe cold era -- cold war you would be soft on communism. now if you question that you are soft on terrorism. we have to have members that are willing to do that.

there are a few who have shown a willingness to do that, but unless you have ranking members and are willing to get in turn over rocks and find out what is wrong, you will not go anywhere. host: john in marion, new york, democrat. caller: i am a vader -- vietnam veteran and i started volunteering at a v.a. facility since i was diagnosed with parkinson's. guys and iow other like to help them, especially with parkinson's because if you got it, you know it. it is that kind of thing. years, i seele deteriorating pretty bad a lot of the units i was going to and

i had to speak up about it. what happened was i got blackballed. nothing really much came out of it. didn't really address what happened. that was beside the point. the biggest thing was there was no improvement in the complaint about the care. , do you have a recommendation? , myt: i think clearly initial recommendation would be to reach out to veteran service organizations, whether it is the american legion, veterans of foreign wars, talk to them. get involved with their officers who work with the v.a., raise those issues. when i worked for vietnam veterans of america, we would have quarterly meetings to get issues resolved.

for those of us of a more libertarian persuasion who have concerns about government control of health care, the v.a. is the poster child for being careful what you ask for. it is a dicey situation when veterans go in and there is no control over the staff. overw those scandals take where veterans died waiting for treatment. in a market-based kind of system, it would be less likely that would happen because folks would be able to choose where they go. tohoo -- they try to go to oneans to place. you need much more authority and capability of the v.a. to improve the quality of health care for veterans and their

access. host: raymond, michigan, democratic caller. caller: i am curious. what are your viewpoints on snowden as a whistleblower? guest: i will just simply repeat what i said before, all charges against edward snowden should be dismissed with prejudice. his travel documents should be returned to him and he should be able to return to the united states unmolested. thes responsible for passage of legislation in 2015, past and direct response to the revelations snowden made about illegal, warrantless government surveillance. we got another dose of reality this last week when they released a court opinion they had been holding onto for a year

but showed under the phis amendments act, the fbi had been conducting backdoor searches against the stored data of americans that as far as i am concerned, should not even be stored on government servers. snowden did all of us an enormous service by bringing this to light to begin with. he looked at the whistleblowing mechanisms in place at that time and understood the imperfections and problems in them. one of the documents he leaked was from the nsa ig in which they openly talked about president george w. bush's illegal program. reporte ig is issuing a on an illegal program and has taken no steps to shut it down, it makes it easier to understand why snowden chose not to go to the nsa ig.

host: were you concerned with your safety when you brought this information to light, and where their circumstances where you felt threatened? guest: i knew my job was at risk. when they found out they had the counterintelligence investigation underway -- friends would call us saying security is coming around asking about you -- when patrick conscienceet his override his secrecy agreement. what the cia was saying keeping this secret is more important than your personal values, moral or religious valleys. obviously, i was not content to fully abide by my secrecy agreement because i took those documents to capitol hill, but that is a real problem. i was worried about that aspect and worried about my wife and how she was looking at this.

in every way that matters, she was the braver one. whos the crazy, angry guy was not going to put up with his fellow veterans getting the shaft. herife, even though i asked at least three times, do you want to quit, she said if we do, we are no better than they are. host: florida, republican. caller: thank you for your service. andlieve in whistleblowers it is sad we have a whistleblower community. i have two questions. how do you square the box toward the constitution of being able to confront your accuser with a whistleblower system that we have? the second one, you frowned on the deep state conspiracy stuff when you yourself was confronting the deep state

covering up stuff from the public. we have the intelligence community, which usually is the judicial community, doing the impeachment in secret and not in front of the american people. we had mr. klapper in front of congress lying about communications, and he got promoted. there is just a lot of stuff going on in the government that shouldn't be going on that doesn't conform to the constitution. i think there is a deep state because bureaucracy has gotten big, and good at covering up their own butts, you have the text messages from page and stuff that was revealed on the policy toward miss tromp, i trump, the way

the whistleblower system is set up, there might not even be a real person if the ig and mr. schiff and his staff is just working together to bring a whistleblower complaint because he is never exposed. host: let's take that point. , one of know the lawyer the lawyers representing this individual. when we did our whistleblowing, and although we have gone our separate ways with respect to edward snowden, if there is one thing i will tell you, if mark zane says he is representing somebody and that is a living person, that is a fact. a second person has come forward on the basis of what we have. i agree with the caller that the lack of a truly transparent process is problematic.

it is not like what you get in an article three court. it is an inherently political process. that is why you need to have more safeguards and a reliance on the watergate example, that that special select committee and everything they did should be serving as a roadmap and a model for what they are doing now, and unfortunately it is not. host: should the whistleblower testify publicly? should we know who he or she is? guest: i don't believe it is necessary in this circumstance given the fact that that person ultimately is not the one with the maximum direct knowledge about what the president was or was not doing. we have a whole other cast of characters involved, whether it is the former ambassador to the ukraine or the former ambassador

to the eu, and further down the line. one of secretary pompeo's senior aides is scheduled to testify. more people are coming out of the woodwork. i amnitial whistleblower sure was able to point staff and committees to that individual. have come forward now who have direct knowledge. originals the whistleblower still have her or his job? guest: that is a good one. so far, i am aware that is the case. i would like to think of something that radical happened, the lawyers would've said something to that effect. theiring is for sure, life will never be exactly the same. the day may come where their identities are revealed.

given the extremely vengeful nature this president has demonstrated, for their personal safety it is important for these individuals to remain anonymous and they will fade into the background as we get more to the people who had direct knowledge or direct interaction with the >> c-span's "washington journal," live every day. coming up wednesday morning, we take your calls and get reaction to the fourth democratic debate. and debbie lesko will be on to lk about the impeachment inquiry. democratic ut representative jim hines shares the late thoennes impeachment

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but the next 20 years of my life is going to be affected by the fact that i industrial to pay off student loans. >> voices from the campaign trail part of c-span's attleground states tour. >> during an event welcoming the stanley cup champions the president brought up turkey. this is the president's first time discussing turkey on camera since he requested a cease fire and sanctions. [applause] president trump: mike is getting ready to make a big trip, they're leaving tomorrow, mike is heading it up with secretary pompeo. we're having very strong talks