cia's top lawyer through an anonymous process who then shared it with the white house and justice department officials. joining me is bob bauer, former white house counsel to president obama, and of course you worked with joe biden in the obama/biden white house, we should point that out, you support joe biden's candidacy, just to put that out there, without being part of the campaign. bob, what about the process here? it took so long for the whistle-blower to get his other her complaint through the channels and then obviously the acting dni has been criticized for this, he has a stellar career in special forces and we shouldn't demean that, but that became, some would say, too much the focus of that three-hour-plus hearing yesterday rather than the substance of the complaint itself. but the fact is the white house was alerted, white house lawyers were involved at several levels, as was the attorney general who did not recuse himself. >> correct.