VALERIE PLAME

What are we going to do to get the politics out of intelligence? It degrades the product.

We as citizens should hold our government accountable for word and deed.

Hollywood does tend to portray CIA officers as totally the honey trap. Looks matter as they do in any profession. But the most important thing for me when I was working was blending into my environment.

Leaks are always bad news.

The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.

There is definitely a sense that when you, as a CIA ops officer... are handling assets, they are delivering to you their trust and their well-being. And you feel very protective of them, even if they're not very nice people.

If Russia did interfere in our election - and, by most accounts, they did - then it is imperative for the health of our democracy to have a thorough and unbiased investigation into the matter.

In the CIA, they recruit you to be an officer, an ops officer, in part due to how well you cope with stress and how well you adapt to new situations.

North Korea is the errant teenage child, aren't they? Or toddler - they're holding their breath until they get their way.

I was working for the CIA and prohibited from speaking publicly.

We need the best and the brightest to go into public service.

When I was outed on July 14th, 2003, I was, until that moment, covert. That means no one outside of a very small circle knew where I really worked.

I do not subscribe to the 'Trump is crazy like a fox' thing. I think that's being too generous.

Of course, we all watch James Bond with envy - knowing the U.S. government would never pay for the lifestyle he enjoys.

The human and environmental devastation caused by nuclear weapons - whether by testing, mistake or malice - is the very reason we need to eliminate them altogether.

Regarding Wikileaks, I have profound ambivalent feelings about it. I am a firm believer in a strong intelligence service. There's a need for classified information.

I certainly didn't reach out to my old assets and ask 'em how they're doing, although I would have liked to.

I didn't appreciate how special and sometimes strange my CIA world was - until it suddenly and spectacularly ended in a newspaper column.

We in no way are naive to think that just because Russia and the United States agree to reduce their arsenals, that everyone else will fall in line.

The fundamental problem is not that Trump has access to the nuclear launch codes, but that they exist at all.

I did a book event with a former colleague, Bob Bauer, and was so relieved that he said I got all the CIA stuff right.

It's lonely. That's why, in many ways, the CIA is the world's biggest dating agency, I think. I imagine it's much like two actors that get married because they understand that universe. You know, I'm pretty sure the agency's divorce rate is rather high.

Even those that hate Hillary admit she is a work horse and not a show horse. She gets down into the nuts and bolts and figures out, 'What's the policy, what's the substance?'

There's no way you can possibly intellectually justify, 'Well, it's okay for the Western Judeo-Christian countries to have nuclear weapons, but not for a country like Iran.' That logic goes nowhere fast.

I love my career. I thought, if I was lucky, I would retire as a senior intelligence officer, still working on the issues of counterproliferation. But that didn't happen, so - new chapter.