JR: I'm sorry...the book? In the book?
Rob: Yeah, what you said then...I guess...I'll just keep going. The thing is what you told Bill Maher is "The reason they're after me is that they're embarrassed. They've had a whole history of one screw up after another and they use secrecy to cover it up."
JR: Right, right.
Rob: So, it's not just the CIA though. We've had the secret service prostitute story, the lawn jumper failure episodes, this whole story with Binney and Drake and the NSA spending billions on a bad software program that was doomed to failure, that Roark warned them was doomed to failure and confronted Hayden on and said this is not going to work. And...
JR: Right. Yeah, and that was what was so amazing was, you know...that's really why Roark was already, kind of had a bulls eye on her back with the NSA because she'd been raising questions about them for years and then, you know, after 9/11 she started...she went right to Hayden after 9/11 and said 'I know about this domestic spying program and it's illegal and unconstitutional,' and she had a very dramatic showdown with Hayden, in which Hayden told her 'well we have the power and we have a majority of nine if it ever comes out,' which she realized meant that if it ever is leaked and there's a constitutional showdown over it, we can have a majority of the supreme court members-- the justices on our side. And so she took that to mean that Hayden had some kind of inside ability to pressure the supreme court, and so she tried to get a message to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Renquist, to warn him about the NSA program, and she never heard back from him, so...
Rob: Yes you really go into great detail about her efforts to try to show the unconstitutionality of what was going on and Hayden's arrogant attitude that he could get away with it basically.
JR: Yeah, yeah. And she realized after a while that the only real reason Hayden had agreed to meet with her was to tell her he didn't want her to leak. And she said 'well I'm not going to alert the press,' and he said 'no, by leaking I meant telling anybody else in congress.' And so he considered telling congress about this a leak.
Rob: Which gets back to him feeling that congress is the enemy.
JR: Yeah, yeah.
Rob: It's a horrible thought that the body that represents the people is considered the enemy by this security agency.
JR: Yeah. Well I think that's one of the stories of the post 9/11 world is we've allowed the intelligence community to grow to the point where it's its own political constituency -- it's big enough now that it has abused-- the abuse of its leaders have a real impact on our political conversation. You know, all you have to do is look at the daily.-- the press coverage of terrorism or intelligence and people...you know, like on this whole senate torture report -- the CIA is blocking the senate from releasing their own report and they spied on the senate staff to find out what they were writing.
Rob: It makes you really concerned that these agencies are no longer accountable.
JR: Yeah.
Rob: Now I had a note I wanted to ask you so I'll just read it to you. You've been covering the homeland security complex over the span of a number of liars and fools -- and that's part of the reason they're after you. Can you walk us through some of the worst of them? You've talked a bit about Hayden...I'm sure the list will also include Tennet, Alexander and Clapper.
JR: Yeah, well in my...in the new book, Pay Any Price, I talk a lot about the bizarre operations that they've allowed to happen with every kind of hustler and con man who called himself a counterterrorism expert was able to come to Washington and make millions of dollars because...
Rob: Or billions.
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