Jacobson assumption until i decided to work on the book. It was a strange gift for the works. Coming to it with no background and completely clean, meant that i could mime mine own memories and layer in this information that i was learning. It wasnt like one of the things i often said about this work as i was doing it is i didnt come with a story to tell. I didnt come saying i have this whole story i need to impart to you. The look is the attempt to put together the pieces. One of the most important things about the work is when i realized i was reading about it film and with it in mind i might want to write something about it after my father died, i realized that no one really talked about it as a whole movie. It is interesting that you brought that up. People talk about it as evidence, as an artifact that ended up being worth a lot of money, people talk about it as a culture touch stone. People look at it as a lens in which you can look at media, ethics and changing waz. But for our family, and the home movie quality of it, the fact they have been making home movies for 35 years, and that it was his sam raw and his point of view and his responsibility shaped everything that followed and knowing that and not putting the movie back at the center of the story, it just meant there were so many distortions in the way the story was told in the other public records. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Back with more live coverage of the 8th annual gaithersburg book festival. Melvin goodman will talk about his time with the cia. [inaudible conversations] welcome to the book festival. I am a washington independent review book representative helping at the festival. Gaithersburg proudly supports the arts and humanities. We are pleased to bring you this eve event thanks in part to our sponsors and volunteers. When you see them, please say that cans. A few announcements. Please silence your cell phones. If you are on social media please youz the gbf and gbf17 i have seen. Your feedback is valuable. Surveys are available at the tent and on the website. By entering a survey, you will be entered into a drawing for a 100 visa gift card. Melson go svin is signing books events and books are available at the politics and pros event. This is a free event but it does help the book festival if you buy a book. The more books we sell at our events the more publishers will want to send their authors here to speak with us. Purchasing books from our partners, politics and pros, helps support one of the worlds greatest bookstores. If you are enjoying the program, we hope you will buy a book or several books. Melvin goodman was a soviet analyst. He served in the us army for two years. Currently goodman is the director of the National Security project at the center for International Policy in washington d. C. And an adjunct. He has coauthored 30 books. The wars of edward shebnard, the phantom defense, americas pursuit of the star wars illusion, bush league diplomacy, and failure of intelligence; decline and fall of the cia. His articles and opeds appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, harpers, the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post. He lives in maryland. I have been reading the book and it is very interesting. I was once recruited for the cia and found this very interesting so thank you very much. Thank y thank you. It is nice to be here again especially when it isnt raining. I was here three years ago and this is a wonderful festival. I start with may 8th, 2017 which is very important. That is when the book came out. It was important because i submitted it to the cia for review as part of the contract. It took 11 months for them to review the book. I know they are slow reading but i think that goes beyond the limit and raises a real right to speak or freedom of speech issue i will get to maybe at the end of the talk. The other reason may may 8th, 2017 was important is because that is the day sally yates testified. Why i have incredible respect for that woman is the highest duty of any Public Service at any level of government is to expose misconduct, is to tell the truth when it comes to matters of legality or simple transgression and misconduct. One of the reasons why i wrote the book, this particular book, was to basically tell my story. And the story is a simple one in a sense. I spent 42 years with the government. When you look at my service in the army, and the department of defense, and Central Intelligence agency and department state. I had security clearances at the highest level throughout that time. I know what security is and i know about the importance of security. But i also learned over a period of time, and not that you dont enter Public Service to become a whistleblower, but i also learned that credible misuse of intelligence. Just on one level, think about the fact that in our history there have been four wars we have fought where intelligence was used in a dishonest way to justify the use of force. The Mexican American war, the spanish war, the vietnam war, and one of the worst examples of all which i dealt with in my earlier books was the iraq war which was a total misuse of intelligence. A total lie in terms of everything the American Public was told. Another reason why i decided to write the book was the importance of the whistleblower. And i dont like the term whistleblower. I never liked it. It has a very bad connotation. It has the connotation of a snitch or stule. That is not what a whistleblower is all about. I give a certain amount of credit even though i am disturbed by what ralph nadir did in the year 2000. But i think he made the word respectable from his writings in the 1970s and that is important. When you think about a whistleblower in terms of some of the great disasters we have had to deal with in the last 3040 years think of the role of the whistleblower in watergate. I know all the credit goes to bob woodward and carl burnstein, and they deserve it but very little credit goes tho the whistleblower and in this case that is mark felt. One interesting thing about him was when the Nixon White House was first dealing with the problem that there were serious leaks that had to come from the top and the United States leads from the top, not the bottom, he knew it was mark veldt, the deputy of the fbi. This was his First Response is he jewish . And holdman responded no, i think he is catholic. I dont know what either one has to do with it but the role of mark veldt in the case of watergate is significant. When i think of vietnam, i dont know what the first thought that comes to your mind is but it is the pentagon papers. When i think of the pentagon papers i think of Daniel Elsburg and the work he did and continues to do including writing a blurb for the book i am very proud of. In june, i am going to appear with him at berkeley to talk about whistleblowers in this particular book. When you think of the scandals of torture and abuse, think of the need for the whistleblower. When you think about the torture and abuse that took place at a military facility that involves a whistleblower. I know Edward Snowden is controversial. He has admitted to the fact he broke laws dealing with certain kinds of intelligence, communication intelligence and signal intelligence. But ed snowden told us about unconstitutional, not just illegal, but constitutional behavior in the white house that was aimed at all the american people. This is an important contribution to our understanding. Here is where whistleblowers, i think, play a very important role. We just read about Chelsea Manning being released from jail. She received a pardoned from president obama. And i know there is a lot of confusion about Chelsea Manning but the fact of the matter is she exposed war crimes taking place in iraq. My point is in trying to understand what a whistleblower is and why a whistleblower acts the way he does, and i can only think for myself, but i know why they acted the way he did. You see something in public life that you know is wrong at some point. Sometimes it becomes so overwhelming that you feel you have to do something about it. I think mostly whistleblowers, and i know in my case, are naive about what it means to three yourself in front of a train which is the government. And in my case it was throwing myself before robert gates and testifying in front of the Intelligence Committee. You reach a point where it is wrong not to say something. It is wrong not to do something. In all of the whistleblower examples i cite in the book and looked at and tried to understand, every whistleblower as far as i am concerned, has been vindicated. Snowden, for a lot of us, including myself, clearly has been vindicated. I know it is controversial he left the country but i think he did because of the terrible treatment of thomas dread. He is the National SecurityAgency Whistleblower who was then acocused of violating the espionage act by the Obama Administration. And that issue was put before the Bush Administration and george w. Bush who is vilified decided he would not go after thomas. But barack obama, a harvard trained lawyer, and someone who taught constitutional law, did allow the government to go after thomas in the worst possible way threatening him with spending the rest of his life in prison until a judge lectured the Justice Department lawyers and through the case out of court especially. Let me spend a few minutes on my particular example. It is not as dramatic as the other whistleblower cases i looked at. But in the 1980s when reagan came into the office and appointed a cia director this is when i first had to con front the politicalization of politics. He casey and robert gates, who then went on to become a cia director and secretary of defense under bush and obama, went on to distort the intelligence to make the soviet union look ten feet tall, the soviet union as a threat and involved in the attempt to assassinate the pope in 1981, the soviet union involved in international terrorism. None of this was true. And i say throughout the early 80s and fought the issues but in 1986 i decided to leave and go to National War College to teach. In 1991, when bob gates was nomina nominated to be the cia director by bush that is when i contacted the Senate Intelligence committee and testified against the gates nomination. What was interesting about the nomination is that is not the first time he was nominated. The first time was 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 from senator boren from oklahoma, the democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee, who had to tell bob, you have a problem. The committee doesnt believe you in terms of your disavow of knowing anything and i cannot get your name of the committee and bob gates went into the white house, talked to frank the next day and then the president and pulled his name out. Four years later he was nominated again. It was a controversial nomination because of my accusatio accusations. It led to more votes again gates than had been registered against all cia directors combined going back to 1947 when truman created the cia. But he was eventually confirmed. What this meant is someone who had politicized intelligence was sent back to the run the agency where the politicalization takes place. Unless you have been involved in this, in one of the government agencies, you cannot imagine the morale problems and the ethical problems created when someone you know who is involved with politization comes back to run the agency. That is why i have so much sympathy for what is going on in every department and agency in government when you have a president who is selected cabinet directors woo have swore essentially to, if not destroy the departments they have been sent to, certainly to weaken them at every fundamental way. That was essentially my reasoning for going before the Senate Intelligence committee and then being disappointed by the way it was handled by the press which i thought did not rise to the challenge and i will give you one antidote which i think reveals what is wrong with the press even though they have gotten their act together in the last 120 days. The white house started leaking uncomplimentary things about me. None were true. I decided two can play this game and i started leaking and leaked to ben wise of the Washington Post and the two papers with the most clout in washington as they do today. Elaine played it straight in the New York Times and reported what i was telling her and what the white house was telling her. M midway during the conformation hearings her reporting filtered to benefit bob gates and nomination and conformation. After the hearings were over and confirmed, i called elaine to have lunch and halfway through the lunch, i raised my agenda item which was why was it so obvious halfway through the conformation hearings you abandoned what i was telling you, which was good inside information of what was happening in the senate Intelligence Agency and she said it was clear he was going to be confirmed and become the cia director and a very important source and you would go back to teaching at the National War College and i would probably never call you again. I thought this told me all i needed to know about what what is wrong with the mainstream media. When you think of whistleblower, and i will pick on the Washington Post, if you go back to the opteds with the whistleblower, snowden, Chelsea Manning, look up the critical articles written about them by people like ruth marcus, David Horowitz david ignations. And Investigative Journalism, that relies on whistleblower, where it would be, think of priest of the Washington Post who won a Pulitzer Prize. She won it about secret printings at the cia was operating in europe and southeast asia. She got that information from a whistleblower. We know she won a Pulitzer Prize for her work but it is an anonymous person. When you read the opeds, i remember the most offensive one was marcus who referred to Chelsea Manning as a cross dressing red riding hood. Ignation was not nice about the comments with snowden. Glen feed well was on the show and they were critical with him. When senator Dianne Feinstein wrote a report on cia torture and abuse she was on situation room and accused of having blood on her hands for revealing the information about cia torture and abuse. The thing i would like to leave you with, because i want to leave time for questions and comments, is our democracy sin trouble. We are in a very belittled state. There was an article in the New York Times about, i love this word, guard rails. The guardrails 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 cant work on its own. And two, i would argue the system isnt working the way i would like it to work. Look at the Intelligence Committees that were created in the 1970s because of the crimes during the vietnam era 30 years after the cia was created. The Senate Intelligence committee is not doing the aggressive job it should be doing. It is not bipartisan. Republican senator from North Carolina is not doing the work that an intelligence chairman needs to do. And i dont have to say anything about nunez, the house Intelligence Committee chairman and the way he was used as a stooge and told to deliver the document do is the president of the United States as if this is new information to the president of the United States. I think of the Inspector General of the various agencies, an important post, that was weakened by barack obama. Most of the eight years obama was in office, the cia went without an Inspector General. When i think of Hillary Clinton and the email problem and the comey handling of the email problem is probably the precise reason health care was defeated Hillary Clinton but she never allowed a permanent Inspector General to be in the four years she was there. What if there was an Inspector General who could have called attention to the fact your own email account and putting the server in your home is probably not the best idea in the world. The press, which has suddenly got its act together and been aggressive with reporting in the last 120 days didnt do job during the campaign. The false equivalence, the free ride donald trump got from the Washington Post and New York Times was an embarrassment and most major editors around the country understand that. When i look at the court system, the federal courts have not been aggressive on matters dealing with National Security where they give a lot of benefit of the doubt to the government and the state privilege. Ubt to the government and te state secret privilege or making people create their own legal standing for bringing a case to a federal court. So, its important that citizens understand that these socalled 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, wouldnt we be just no different than the soviet union, china or nye dictatorship . I dont think its 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 didnt think my life was threatened. But in places such as russia and china, with whistleblowers take tremendous risk. In britain you had whistleblowers dealing with tony blairs 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 dont known it got through but the masthead in the Washington Post probably after trumps inauguration democracy dies in darkness. Go back and read Sinclair Lewises it can happen ear, written never 1930s. Its 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. Thats anxiouses my question. Should that be in the norm or is that an outcome of current times . In other words, shouldnt 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 wrongdoing 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 irancontra 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 were dealing with, day after day. I think theres a mic coming. Yeah. Whats the relationship between resigning in protest and. [whistle] le blowing . I think theres some relationship. Theres a relationship because by definition, when you resign in protest, you are your made yourself a whistleblower. The problem is theres 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 dont 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 im opposed to what youre doing, whether it succeeded or fails im going to resign because i think youre wrong and im 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 ill 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 youll have a big gathering, some platoon in back of you. Youre going to have very little supportment most people run from that kind of controversy. Thats just a fact of life. Yeah. Theres 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 dont always tell us everything that we need to know, and, three, i dont think they ever really get to the bottom of things. And now im not a conspiracy theorists but going week in kennedy assassination and the warren investigation, theres still a lot of loose ends. Look the irancontra 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 irancontra investigation, i blistered the work of the irancontra investigation because they didnt get to the bottom of what happened. So im 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 dont think theyre going to do the right thing. Theyve got their man in the white house and theyll hang on to him. Dont think great things are going to happen and theyre not going to happen in the near term. This is more of an observation than a come men addition forkerses. Im a work for the media and im 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. Its 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 its extremely accurate in this situation in particular. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] i dont know if we have time for one more. Just while were 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 thats couldnt trust the New York Times to handle this material in a sensitive way. Two quick questions. I know theyre 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 . Its 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, im 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 didnt get this from the russians. Thats 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] [inaudible conversations] you just heard from Melvin Goodman on the cia. In about ten minutes live from the gaithersburg book city of, e Meredith Wadman provides a history of vaccinations. Heres a look at authors recently features on book tvs after words, the weekly Author Interview program. Dr. And editor in cheech of keising helves news reported on the current state of health care. The New York Times reporter Helene Cooper exploder the life of liberian president , ellen johnson, the first democratically elected fee enemy gov. And history gov john kashich reflecting on this 2016 president ial campaign. In the coming weeks chris hayes will look at racial inequality in the United States. Rachel snyder will report on our low and moderate income families manage money. Nebraska senator ben sass will argue that americas youth are not prepared for adulthood and this weekend on after words, Stewart Taylor will explore Sexual Assault on college campuses. They have sewn, the universes have sewn and the Obama Administration has shown, i think, resoundingly that they are incompetent at doing this, and that they are terribly biased. The incompetence is they dont know how to investigate. Dont have subpoena power. Dont do good scientific evidence. Dont dig up evidence. They train their socalled adjudicators by telling them, almost all guys who do this are guilty. If the guy is persuasive and logical when he says he is innocent thats a sign of guilt. If he is not persuasive, that is a sign of guilt. Thats it stanfords process. The question is, is there any way this system can be reformed . So that its not so guilt presuming . Theoretically there is and i hope the Trump Administration will take steps to do it. In practice i have grave doubts knowing what the campuses are like today, knowing how skewed to the left and skewed to the extreme feminist side the attitudes are. The people who make the noise, the people who leadership is afraid of, dont trust any campus in america to do a decent job of this. After words airs on booktv every saturday at 10 00 p. M. , and sunday at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. You can watch all previous after words programs on our web site. Booktv. Org. One reason i wanted to write this book is because theyre so much attention paid to the opioid emdem nick in rural middle class and upper class white community. They get a lot of attention. Almost all the attention. When the facts we can go to baltimore and east new york