The Team House - Fair Game: A Spy Exposed | Valerie Plame | Ep. 350

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Valerie Plame is a former covert CIA officer who focused on counterproliferation, working to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Her identity was controversially leaked to the press in 2003 after her husband criticized the Bush administration, a story she recounted in her memoir, Fair Game. Since leaving the CIA, Plame has become an author and public speaker on national security.Find Valerie here:https://www.spiesliesnukes.com/Valerie's books:https://www.amazon.com/Books-Valerie-Plame/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AValerie%2BPlameToday's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 350 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy.

Here today with our guest, Valerie Plame. She is the author of Fair Game, how a top CIA agent was betrayed by her own government. And the book, Fair Game, was also turned into a feature film starring the Always Lovely Naomi Watts, portraying Valerie and Sean Penn playing Valerie's late husband, Joe Wilson, who is a State Department ambassador to West Africa and some other places that will definitely get into. Valerie has an incredible story from her time at the Central Intelligence Agency, crossing over with some previous guests on the team. house, of course. And then eventually how the government outed her name, she was a protected CIA officer under the, I believe it's the National Intelligence Identities Protection Act. It's kind of illegal, especially illegal for someone in the government to out a covered

intelligence officer. And that was done to Valerie because of her husband's activism against the Iraq war. So we'll get into all of that in the interview. Valerie, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure. Yeah, absolutely. So first question is about your origin story. If you can tell us a little bit about how you grew up.

And you grew up in a military family, too. I did. My dad was an Air Force officer. He served in World War II. My brother was a Marine, wounded in Vietnam. And my mother was a public school teacher. So I definitely came from a family of quiet, public service.

And I was given the opportunity to join the agency rather young. And I jumped at it. I thought, you know, what a great way to serve. I came in at a time when it was very clear who was wearing the black hats, the Soviets. We were the white guys wearing the white hats. And it seemed exciting. And the government was going to pay me and let me live and work overseas. So I was all in.

And I imagine you must have had a college degree at this point, at least. I did. Yeah, I did. But I ended up getting a few more degrees later. Well, yeah, that's interesting, too. We'll get into your graduate school down the line. But your brother was a real badass. He was a recon Marine in Vietnam.

Sounds like a hardcore guy. And then, so how did you actually, like, get recruited by the CIA? Was it like a jobs fair at your school or did you go to them? How did that work? They came on campus. I was undergraduate at Penn State University. And they had only recently begun to sort of expand their recruitment efforts beyond the ivies and beyond just white males.

So under Casey, there was a huge buildup in the intelligence budget because he really had President Reagan's ear. And they started looking wider, further afield, because we obviously have a global mission. And the best way to accomplish that is to have a more diverse field to throw at it, even though I know those are not words that are, you know, treasured today. Yeah. But I quite young and I went through, it's a very long, arduous recruitment process. it's psychological tests, it's vignettes, it's medical background checks, lots of psychological

exams and so, you know, fill in the blank, all written exams. And at the end of it, many, many months later, they offered me a job. I'm okay, you know, when you're young, you really, you think, why not give it a try? So I went in and I do my paramilitary training, which as you quickly find out, it's not because they think they will drop you in behind lines in Mother Russia. It's really to build esprit of core and to double check exactly who it is that they have only recently hired. What is your character? What are you trustworthy? Do you have integrity?

are you, can you be counted on? And you find that out under very challenging conditions. It's not quite like basic training in the Marines, but they try to simulate that to ratchet up the stress. You guys did parachute training and sear-type training, detention and being interrogated to, I guess you're saying that's to show your bravery, your resiliency, these sorts of personality traits they're looking for.

Absolutely. And some people do wash out. The agency tends to be kind and say, well, we can offer you a job here, you know, someplace else. But not everyone finishes who started. That's for sure. But I think in part because I was so young and, you know, ignorance is bliss, right? You're like, okay, I'm just going to do my best to keep up with these guys. And I loved it. It was hard. And you're being continuously evaluated, as you might imagine. The instructors at that time were badass former Vietnam vets, and they did not give you any slack. And they are constantly reporting back to headquarters on how you're doing. And most importantly, I think, is your character.

Do you show up? Are you responsible? You know, do you, you know, how do you take on a challenge? How do you respond, as you say, resiliency as well? And after the paramilitary training, did you go right into the farm and tradecraft or do you have like some OJT in between? Some OJT in between and then some months later, I go back. I was hired on to go in Directorate of Operations, which I think that is the core mission. of what the agency does, recruit spies, foreign spies, pass that intelligence to senior U.S. policymakers. And there's the Intelligence Directorate, that it was called at the time, Directorate of Science and Technology. That's where we do our research and then admin.

So I was recruited to go into ops, which, to be fair, I really had no idea what I was doing. The Internet hadn't even been invented yet. It's not like you could do a lot of reading on what the hell have I just said I'm going to do. But you just keep following it along and they were really good people for the most part. And so then you do the ops training, which is very much focused on tradecraft and the classic recruitment cycle, which is spot, assess, develop, and recruit. How do you do you do that? How do you write up reports? How do you take clandestine photographs?

How do you devise and implement SDR? How do you keep yourself safe? How do you keep your asset safe? Many, many different aspects besides the most important one of how do you recruit? And so you took to the training quite well, I think? Yes. I mean, I enjoyed it as grumbled like everyone else, I suppose. But yeah, I did really well.

And what was your first assignment after graduating from the farm? I don't think I can say I have to tread carefully because of everything that happened in 2003 with the outing of my true CIA identity. The agency has taken the stance that I can only talk about certain things with clarity after 2018. Can I say Valerie because it's in your book in the afterward? Yeah, you can. I can. So in Valerie's book is co-written or, you know, there's an afterward. She wrote an afterward by Laura Rosen.

That kind of explores some of the sides of Valerie's career that the CIA Public Review Board would not allow her to publish. And so there's a pretty extensive chapter in there about you being in Athens, Greece. going after 17 November and some of the other stuff that was going on in that country at that time? There was, yes, that whole episode of trying to get this book through the publication review board was very painful for me. I had served the CIA loyally and well. I was very successful in my career. I was outed. I wanted to write about what happened.

course, I would never reveal sources and methods, anything that was classified. Everyone signs a secrecy agreement at the beginning of their employment. That is sacred. But there was clearly some retribution going on, and they wanted to make the book so that it wouldn't even be published. Right. So what the publisher did, Simon & Schuster, they hired this investigative journalists who dug up all this, you know, a lot of things that she'd then pieced together in the afterward. And I would say for the most part, it is correct. There were some, uh, things that she got wrong. But because there was this firewall, I truly did not even read it until after the book had been published. Hey, guys, our show is sponsored by GhostBed. Check them out. Please, they make

awesome mattresses, awesome pillows, awesome bedding. Ghostbred provides high quality, is super comfortable award-winning mattresses crafted in the U.S. and Canada. Did you know that 60% of the U.S. adults report being too hot when they're trying to sleep? That's me. I'm a sweaty little baby. That's why we design all of our products with cooling features so you stay comfortable and asleep all night long. Pair any of our mattresses with GhostBeds award-winning adjustable base and get the ultimate sleep experience. Ghostbred rules the family-owned business, $60,000 plus five-star reviews.

They have sleep experts on staff with 20 plus years of experience. If you have any questions, you can hit them up and ask them, you know, maybe what kind of mattresses work for you. 20 plus year warranty. That's two times the industry standard. Free shipping and returns on mattresses. Most of the products ship out within 24 hours. They have in-house customer support and sleep experts chilling in Plantation, Florida.

It rules. It's the best. They give you 101 nights risk for. to make sure that these beds are right for you. If you don't like it after 100 and one nights, you could send it back full refund. When you purchase a ghost bed mattress, your comfort guaranteed.

I'm reading it right now, and it's capital letters, guaranteed, okay? They do the right thing, and they're a great company. If you're not sure which ghost bed's right for you, like I said before, you could take their mattress quiz online, or you can give a call to one of their sleep experts and they'll help you with exactly what you possibly could need,

what works for you and what doesn't. And the best news about this is Team House listeners and viewers. You get an extra 10% off sitewide for a limited time. You just go to ghostbed.com slash house and use the code house at checkout. One more time, that's ghostbed.com slash house with the code house, H-O-U-S-E at checkout for an extra 10% off site-wide. I want to thank Ghostbbed for their continued support. I want to thank all the fans that listen and watch for their continued support without you guys, we are nothing.

So thank you for supporting the show. And thank you for supporting the companies that help support the show. Ghostbed.com slash house for 10% off made in the U.S., made in Canada. Shout out to our brothers in Canada. They rock. Check them out. I love Ghostbed. Thanks, guys.

Well, as you're able to, to the extent you're able to, can you tell us about that first assignment and what it was like? Well, your first assignment, you're putting into practice the things that they have taught you at the farm in a completely academic, relatively safe environment. And, you know, how does this thing work? And I was going after indigenous terrorist groups. Of course, the Soviets were always the top target at that time. You're really, the saying goes, and it's true, you really, it takes about five years to make a case. case officer. You are just, you're just a baby. You are so green. You don't really get how this works. They hire you. They bring you in based on certain characteristics that you possess,

curiosity, listening ability, interpersonal skills, so forth, so on. You know, they do these in-depth psychological examinations. But there's no way of knowing how that really works in the field until you're out there. And if you're lucky, you have some mentors there. I was just speaking to one of your former guests. He's a friend, Jim Lawler, and we were both reminiscing. And I don't know, maybe you've had him on the show. Have you had Joe Petnelly on your show? No, we haven't. But we did have karaoke on the show, who I think you must have crossed paths with at some point. Not, no, I knew him only when he became, famous. Gotcha. But I didn't work with him. But Petnelli was one of my bosses a couple times and a wonderful mentor and he we, Jim and I, Lola and I both agreed one of the best recruiters in the agency.

He just has a way about him that people, you know, he doesn't recruit so much as people surrender to him. Okay. You know, tell me. How. How can I possibly pass you intelligence? And you can't teach that. You cannot teach that, but you can do your best to emulate some of the tactics. What do you think that quality is that makes someone an exceptionally talented recruiter? Jim has it as well, in spades. It is a couple things.

A deep ability to listen carefully. and then pick up on what you've heard because that's how you find out what someone's motivation potentially could be to cooperate with the United States intelligence. You know, there's the old saw of mice, money, ideology, compromise, ego. It's always, to my experience,

been a bit of each. It's rarely just one. Luck plays a role. as well, but with people like Petnelly and Jim Lawler, not that they're James Bond, but they really possess a heightened sense of sussing out in the other person, what that motivation might be, as well as a deep sense that, and it's true, that they mean what they're, what they say, and that they will keep you safe. and you believe that and therefore go on to commit illegal acts in your own country,

you know, whatever it is. And it is an effable characteristic that I don't think can be bottled and sold. After that assignment ostensibly to Greece, you kind of went into a new role, it sounds like, with non-official cover. what are you allowed to say about that? I can speak in general terms for your audience, who probably already knows this, but there's a wide spectrum of covers.

On one end, you have official cover. That's where you are affiliated with the U.S. government. And that typically you might be saying that you work in the political section at the embassy in so-and-so country. That is your cover, but in fact, your real job is with the agency. At the other end of that spectrum is non-official cover officer.

You have no affiliation whatsoever with United States government. You're working as a consultant for Acme Storm Door or whatever. And then there's a whole bunch of steps and different covers in between, depending on what the circumstances are. Do you need it just for the moment? Do you need it to be quite deep? how far are they going to push? And of course, in this day and age of Google and the Internet,

that is not so easy to create and maintain a legend. Right. And was it a little odd or unique, maybe, I should say, for someone like you to go from serving under official cover in an embassy to non-official cover. It usually seems like it goes the other way around, right? And I think I can say that I advocated strongly. I wanted to go back to school

and get some additional graduate work done. So it provided me a little bit of separation. But that is not typical. So, I mean, I think you went to, was it the London School of Economics? I did. And the College of Europe in Bruges. And so was that to develop your non-official cover or was it the other way around that you wanted to go to graduate school and they're like, oh, maybe we can use this to send you somewhere? I think it's the latter. I can't speak too much to that, but it all worked out.

Yes. Except for the fact that my career ended much sooner than I thought it would but had nothing to do with that. Yeah, so again, Laura talks about in your afterward that you are working as an energy consultant, and that's also in the film too, working for an energy company called Brewster Jennings that probably you're not allowed to say anything about. But from there, it sounds like, is this about the time frame that you start to intersect with Jim Lawler and Paula Doyle doing the counter weapons of mass destruction? construction mission? Correct. In 1996 or seven, the CIA sent up a set up their counterproliferation

division. So that is distinct from the geographical divisions of Africa, Europe, or Latin America. This one was focused on the transnational issues of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, WMD. And I thought that is interesting because that is, if I'm going to remain in the agency, I want to do something that's really meaningful, particularly in the nuclear aspect. So, yes, I started working there in the counterproliferation division. And of course, it's, look, I was a liberal arts major. I'm not like a physics person, but the agency in the government is great at training you. And to be able to marry some knowledge about nuclear weapons with the operational aspect is what we were doing.

And we were going after black marketeers and rogue nation states, terrorists, of course. And just to backtrack one step or two, it all, I think what precipitated setting up that kind of proliferation division was in 1995 on the Tokyo subway, if you recall, there was a staring gas attack by a colt, Aram Shurino. and I think that was really the first time that the U.S. government sat up and said, huh, we really need to pay attention and pull together a lot of different strains in the U.S. government to focus on this new and emergent WMD threat. And to me, I thought, yeah, put me in, Coach.

You know, that's exactly what I want to be working on. Yeah, reading between the redactions, especially in the first third of your book, it sounds like you spent quite a bit of time. It was at Oak Ridge Laboratories. I've spent time at, I can say, all the laboratories. Okay. And to be honest, I can say this. I live in New Mexico.

And the reason I first got out here was to come to Los Alamos National Lab. and I was doing a lot of work out there, working in a liaison capacity between the lab and CIA headquarters. And I really fell in love with northern New Mexico. And so that's where I am now. And so this was to sort of like train you up on the like nuclear physics side of it so that you knew what to look for in your work as an intelligence officer? Yes. And to work closely with them on very sensitive operations. Yeah.

At the afterword of the book that talks about James Risen digging up a few ops that didn't turn out so well from the way it sounds. But as I was mentioned to you before the show, Tim Weiner's new book, which is coming out this summer, The Mission, the CIA in the 21st century, there's a whole chapter in here about Jim Waller and Paula Doyle doing some epic stuff, like some epic counter WMD. stuff. Yeah, Jim headed up what I guess we could call the AQ Khan takedown team. I've heard him call it that, so I guess that's okay, focused on AQ Khan, who was actually not a nuclear physicist, but a metallurgist by training, but certainly a nuclear entrepreneur responsible for the Pakistani nuclear bomb. And really without him and his efforts, we would not be so worried about an Iran nuclear program or a North Korean nuclear program. And thanks to Jim and Paula and so many others who worked with them, they really put a dent in that

network. And so you mentioned Jim Waller calling it the AQ Khan takedown team. You had another term in your book, The Island of Misfit Toys. Yeah. Well, that was the whole CPD. division and the reason I call it that is because nothing quite well we had a what now they call fusion centers the counterterrorist center had been set up some years before where they brought this is unheard of where they put an analyst next to an operative collie that no one ever considered doing that

and that's we amplified that effort with CPD kind of proliferation division bringing people experts biological weapons experts from, you know, some other place in the government. And there were analysts and there were operatives. And we had what we're called, I think they still call them this, targeteers. You know, look at a list of scientists. Who's the one that we should go after? Who is a key there? So it was a brilliant scheme.

And it worked very well in making a dent in what the mission was, WMD. And around this time frame, I also feel like to tell this story, I need to ask you about meeting your late husband, Joe Wilson, how that kind of came about and that relationship came about, I think, somewhere during this time frame? Yeah, correct. We, although we were both living in Europe, we met in Washington, D.C. And it was love at first sight. And it got very serious, very quickly. and even though he wasn't with the agency as an ambassador and having spent his career in missions overseas, he certainly understood my world. So it was, that was just right. You know, I felt he understood,

I didn't have to explain a lot of things to him. He understood when I couldn't tell him everything. And so we got married and he was working right before, the millennium, the turn of the millennium, he was working for the Clinton White House. He was ahead of the NSC for Africa. If you recall, when Clinton went to Africa, he's the one who coordinated that whole trip. And he just, I mean, he loved Africa and had been, I think, to all the countries there, and had worked on war and peace and had quite a career. Although what he was known for when I met him, and I had to like look this up to make sure he wasn't just BSing me,

he was a Sharjah affair in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. April Glasby, the ambassador, had left for leave. And just in that moment, Saddam Hussein decides to invade Kuwait. So he's on the phone every day with George H.W. Bush and getting that all ramped up. And he and the communicator and maybe one other were the last ones out before the bombing started. January 91. And that really obviously elevated his presence. He was holding press conferences every day and dealing with Saddam Hussein's henchman and Tarika Ziz to try to free the hostages. Remember that the guests of Saddam Hussein and dealing with the Americans that were scattered

around Baghdad and giving them safety, safe haven. So it was a you know, a time to grow up really fast. He was quite young, but a hell of a lot of responsibility. And so that pushed his career. And when I first met him, he's telling me this story. And of course, I watched, you know, on CNN, which was all, I was watching the war like everyone else unfold. And I was putting two and two together.

I go, oh, you're that guy. Right. Okay. So yeah, we met and fell in love, got married, and had twins in 2000. One thing I'd like to talk about in regards to Joe that I think comes out in your book is he struck me as being like a real idealist. Like he was somebody that like believes in America. He was.

I think he would be so saddened where we are now at the erosion of our democracy. And despite the Republicans' best efforts, they try to paint them as this, you know, hardcore lefty-combe, dem. And that's not true. Both of us, and I would say this is true of everyone who serves overseas. You serve as an American. You don't serve as a Democrat or a Republican. You have your personal values. But who you vote for is secondary to maintaining the national security of the United States.

and yeah, he was not a typical diplomat, I think it's fair to say. But that's, I think, what also made him successful. So on that note, Joe retires out of the State Department, has his own private consultancy, liaisoning with governments around Africa, utilizing those relationships. Tell us about how his trip to Niger comes about, because that's like pivotal, pivotal to your entire story. Exactly. So I'll start with 9-11.

9-11 happens. We're into Afghanistan. The CIA is in there within 11 days, laying the groundwork. We begin bombing Tora Bora. But even before that happens, and the hunt is on for bin Laden, we know that Secretary Rumsfeld is out at Camp David, and he's opening up the map of Iraq saying,

You know, there's not much left to bomb in Afghanistan, but Iraq, we got something there. And for reasons we can say for another conversation, that it had been a long-held desire of the neocons then in power to invade Iraq. They felt that George W's father, H.W, during the Gulf War, had not gone far enough. Remember, they didn't go to Baghdad. They only, you know, pushed Saddam's troops back into Iraq. And so there's a great deal of consternation around that. So this was an opportunity handed to them after the disaster of 9-11 to really flex American military muscle. So it was clear at the CIA, at the time I was working in Iraq operations or looking at their particular, you know, what was the state?

to their WMD. And it was clear the administration was ramping up, looking to see what was there. And in February 2002, I have someone, colleague, come and say, you won't believe what just happened to me. The office of the vice president just called me, asking me about this intelligence report of 500 tons of yellow cake uranium that had been. trans-shipped from Niger to Iraq. And, you know, what's that all about?

So I take it to my boss, tell him. Joe had served in Niger. He knew all the players. And my boss said, well, Valor, when you go home today, would you please ask Joe to come in to headquarters? We want to sit him down, talk to him about this. I mean, this is totally normal. If you have an American, particularly a trusted one, that you could gather additional intelligence to help feed into the machine of intelligence analysis, yay.

So I did that. And Joe came in. I was not in the meeting. He sat down. There's a scene of this in the movie. And he's like this sounds like nonsense. But yeah, sure. If you want me to go to Niger and check out the origins of this report, I'm happy to do so.

So he did. He went pro bono. He did because he wanted to serve his country. There was a question asked. He wanted to answer it. And he came back and he was debriefed by CIA analysts. And what he told them was, listen, there's nothing to this. This is totally bogus.

Someone would have noticed 500 tons of Yelika uranium. I just don't think this is true. And it actually fit aligned exactly to what our ambassador was saying. There was another four-star general saying the same thing. And we get submitted and he goes, you know, we don't think anything more of it. He goes back to his consulting business and I'm doing my work. But then fast forward to January 2003 and Bush gives his state of the union address. And in it, he talks about how recent reporting has shown that Saddam Hussein has sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

And Joe hears that. And he goes, what the hell? You know, because he knows that that's what it's referring to. And he starts discreetly inquiring his former State Department colleagues up on the hill. How did this get into the president's speech? You know, this has been debunked. This did not happen. I don't know where you're coming up with this.

but everyone's pretty much in a jingoistic fury at this point and certainly I was in Kuwait at that time frame right before the war right before we went in and it was clear I mean the hundreds and thousands of troops and tanks and material that we had on the border was that's not just there for show um Valerie I just want to um point out on like a sort of a semi-personal note, not to make this about myself, but I mean, make it about a larger group of people, you know, Iraq war veterans, that to read your book and books written by people in similar

positions in government is actually very traumatic for me. Yeah. As, you know, I was 19 when the war kicked off. I was still in training. And then I deployed to Iraq twice. Other guys did way more time over there than I did. Served harder than I did. people lost their lives, some people lost limbs.

Terrible. We'll get into it deeper, I'm sure, through the interview. But, I mean, this run up to the Iraq war is like honestly quite traumatic to read about the, you know, not to quote Noam Chomsky, but the manufacturing of consent, even within the intelligence community itself. Oh, absolutely. I think we will view this as the greatest, one of our greatest follies and mistakes ever. There was no question that the administration wanted to go to war.

As I said, we could have a whole conversation on why that was, but they were bound and determined. And this was the piece of it to show that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear program. And Joe was, he was many things, but he was certainly a truth teller. And that's why what led him ultimately to write that. a bed piece for the New York Times that came out in July 2003 that said this is the the intelligence has been cherry picked. You know, we were told that we're going to see the smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud. And that is bullshit.

Before we move on, can you just speak a little bit directly towards the pressure on the CIA that was coming out of Dick Cheney's office? and it's in the film. I don't know if it actually happened, Scooter Libby actually coming down to CIA and like debriefing analysts. Is that kind of... I believe he did.

Is that kind of pressure appropriate? Is it legal? Is it ethical? No. I mean, I think most people in the intelligence world, I'm sure you would agree, would rather chew off their right arm than be accused of somehow twisting intelligence

to fit, political ends. It's like just the facts, ma'am, right? Just the facts. Here you go. But that clearly all went to hell in the run-up to the war. And it's true. Scuder Libby and others came to CIA headquarters. And I suppose I can give them a little bit of latitude. And here's how and why. because after the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan. We got a hold of them for a little bit, a few months. And we found out through the son-in-law that Iraq had much further advanced in their nuclear capabilities than we understood, which scared us deeply. And then the idiot went back, he re-defected back to Saddam Hussein, who promptly shot him.

but that scared a lot of people that we had completely missed this. Since you mentioned Tim Weiner's book, I'm going to mention Archilles Heel and by Stee, oh, I can't remember the author right this minute. Outstanding, it just came out maybe two years ago, talking about the history of America and Iraq and how we were always talking past each other. Everyone's bluffing,

we don't understand. I mean, it's, it's classic, and it leads to tragic, tragic ends. Didn't it come out in the aftermath thought Saddam Hussein had unilaterally destroyed his WMD program, but wanted to trick the Iranians into thinking that he still had it? Exactly. I mean, as it's been pointed out, rough neighborhood. You want to look as big and as scary as you possibly are. But he thought the Americans kind of knew, wink, wink, what the real deal was. was, but we didn't. And it was just so, you know, so many miscommunications and miscues. And there's no doubt, you know, having Saddam Hussein not living anymore is probably a good thing. He was a horrible person and caused the deaths of thousands. But there is a larger question of, did it make a lot of

sense to go in and occupy, invade, occupy, and try to control Iraq. I don't know if it's better off today. So Joe's op-ed comes out. Tell us a little bit about that. It sounds like it went over like a lead balloon with the administration. Oh, yeah. They were not happy. He writes this op-ed piece.

And two days later, if I recall, what's his name? the spokesman Ari Fleischer. Fischer, yes, all these names. He comes out, he's like, yeah, you know, that shouldn't have been in the, it didn't rise to the level of inclusion in the state of the

union address. That should have been it. Go home, move on. But no, I think this is my speculation. I think the White House is feeling particularly vulnerable at that moment in time because although combat operations have

more or less finished, they're doing mop-up, that they are, the insurgency is definitely coming on strong and things are spiling out of control. And they're also looking for the WMDs and they're not fine to know. Oh, there's not there. Oh, yeah. You know, that thing that we told you

were going to war for, it's not here. It's not here. And so you have the minds of Skitter Libby and Carl Rove, like, oh my, this is not good PR at all. And again, my speculation, but I think let's make this story about, excuse me, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plain. And then it was off to the races. We were called traitors and liars. Well, back up. Joe writes his outbed piece one week later, July 14th, Robert Novak, conservative columnist, writes a column and he outs me as working for the CIA and somehow I'm complicit in all of this. and it just became, it was, as I call it, like falling down Alice's rabbit hole or white is black and black as white.

It became a huge deal because I think it hit just at the moment when the American public were, like you say, wait, wait, wait, what? There's no WMD? And here's Joe Wilson, good-looking, reputable, you know, U.S. official. who's saying, yeah, we've been lied to. And so a couple months later, the CIA referred the case to the Department of Justice for Who Leads My Name? Because that's illegal under. That is illegal. Yes. You're not supposed to do that.

Now, there is a cutout. Novak gets a get out of jail free card because he's a journalist. He died some years ago. I think he was really just a piece of grass under the elephants. You know, he'd do whatever his ideological superiors told him to do. But it obviously ended my career abruptly. I could no longer be covert. There was a huge character assassination campaign against Joe Wilson and myself. we were because it it it spoke to the very heart of what the Bush administration had told us why we're going to go to war

it does seem like it's a bit of like a precursor like they were trying to frame you to as being like the deep state that's in you know trying to trying to the United States government and their righteous actions but the way they outed you especially I mean I guess Joe kind of is fair game if he's writing op-eds. Absolutely, and he was very vocal. But the way they came after you and illegally outed you in the newspaper, I mean, was just punitive and kind of depraved, honestly. Yeah, it was no fun. There were years and years, honestly, of chronic stress where you're being relent. Both of us are being relentlessly attacked. Our characters are being torn apart. My career is over. His, you know, Joe's consulting, who wants to touch a consultant who's such a political hot potato. And it was, it was hard.

There's no, the movie depicts that quite accurately. Sean Penn captured Joe Wilson very, very well. And that, at least that chapter ended in March of 2007 when Scooter Libby was convicted of lying, obstruction of justice. He clearly took the fall for Cheney and others. And, you know, but so what? He gets, I think it was disbarred for three minutes and he never, his, he was pardoned. He never served jail time.

And he was pardoned by President Trump during his first term. Just to go back a little bit, I think you call it in your book The Year from Hell. And the, I mean, tell us about how this kind of like unspools and scooters. Libby kind of is at the heart of all of it and how you kind of learned that. Yeah. Well, we learned really through reporting from in the Washington Post and the New York Times, Judith Miller, who basically had the front page real estate of the New York Times and the run up to the war with Iraq writing.

Yeah, she was, as I call her, Chalabi scribe. She just wrote whatever. She's not a real reporter. And Scooter Libby, there was, although Libby was one who took the fall, there was a conspiracy. And by that I mean, there were multiple people who knew where I worked and somehow tried to make the claim that Joe and I were behind these insidious, I don't know. I mean, when you have the power of the government, I mean, I know it doesn't make sense looking back at it. but at the time, they have the whole power of the government behind them to destroy us. And what did that feel like?

I mean, I have to ask, like, for both of you as a couple, I mean, what's that like to have, like, the power structure is coming down on you hard? Horrible. We had small children. Our children were very small at the time. You're trying to shield them, try to be somewhat attentive parents. And there's news trucks outside of your front door. It was just bizarre. And again, I mean, my career was done.

Joe's career was done. And our reputations were shredded. And you're right. It was sort of a pre-lap to what we're seeing today with the deep state paranoia. I think another sample, run to that was what they tried to do to John Kerry during the 2004 election with swift boating. Like how far can we test the system? Like how far can we take this? And we saw. And tell us about the Libby trial. Is that dragged on for quite a while and had you guys

kind of walking on eggshells, I think, for a bit? Yeah. Well, the special prosecutor named by the Justice Department was Patrick Fitzgerald. Excellent prosecutor. Straight Arrow kind of guy. I think, unfortunately, he felt he could not, maybe some prosecutor was like, I only want to go if I have an 85% chance of conviction.

And because Libby took the fall, he didn't get as many as he had hoped to really uncover this. Carl Rove and Dick Cheney and the whole gang. Oh, the whole gang. The whole gang. The whole gang. Yeah, exactly. Where are they now? Some of them are back in the administration. Although I did just see, I don't know if he had a role in my outing or whatnot,

but he was definitely involved in the run up to the war was Michael Ladeen, and he just passed. He was a hardcore neocon and pushed for the war in Iraq as much as anyone else. So Libby gets convicted, President George Dux. Bush commutes his prison sentence. So as you point out, he didn't serve any prison time. You resigned from the CIA in 2006. Then 2007, some things seemed to change too. In addition to the trial, their midterm elections, people are getting really pissed off about the war in Iraq. Can you tell us a little bit about the 2007 pre-war intel assessment that was it one of the intelligence committees did? Yes, I think the SSCI.

Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence? Well, what happened? In the run-up to the war in the year following, the vast majority of Americans were in favor of it. They were told, I mean, their vice president's telling them that Al-Qaeda, the people who brought you 9-11, are responsible for what's going on in Iraq. And if you know anything about geopolitics,

that's a bald-faced lie. And over time, slowly as reality settled in, I think Americans now, it went from in favor 70 to 30 to the reverse, where just a small percentage of people think going into Iraq was a good idea. But here we are. And General Powell had that great line of, you know, the pottery barn rule, if you, if you, if you break it, you own it. And here we are. So you guys both feel that it's time to escape Washington, D.C. around this time frame. Like, enough is enough? Oh, I said to Joe, we have to get out. I mean, one or the other is going to die.

The pressure, the chronic stress was just too much. So as I mentioned, I had fallen in love with northern New Mexico. And so we settled in Santa Fe with our small children and just started to remake our lives. We didn't know anyone out here. We didn't know anything about it. But it is a nice part of the world. So I'd love to hear a little bit about, you know, the movie and then the book and then the movie. When and why you decided to write the book and sort of the trials and tribulations, it sounds like you had getting that out there to the public. book. Oh, horrible. I wanted to write the book because it was frankly selfish, cathars. It was a

catharsis. Everyone had spoken about me, for me, and I wanted to put it down. And as I said earlier, I would never, ever reveal sources and methods, any classified information. But the agency at that time was still filled with Bush administration types or those that were aligned. with them and saw it as a threat and tried very, very hard to make sure that it wasn't published. And they, oh, I ended up suing them on First Amendment grounds, but when you say national security, they always win, which is nonsense. The stuff that's underneath the redactions has nothing to do with national security. But they just wanted to make it practically unreadable. Yeah, I noticed there's parts of it where, like,

like you're talking about your pregnancy and there's like these big redaction like what what's this? I know. I know. Yeah. Postmartum. I don't know. It was really just revenge, retribution. But I did write it. It was very much my story. I just sat down and I wrote, I don't know, thousand words every day, you know, boom, got it out. And you run it through the process, that that became a nightmare in itself. But finally, it was published in 2007. And Joe's book had been published earlier. And then we were approached to make, take those two books and, and make a movie out of it. So that's what happened. Yeah. How'd that come about? Was it like a production company or a that contacted you?

Yeah, the director was Doug Lyman, who has done, among other things, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the Born Identity, very good director. And the project came together and happily, Joe and I were very engaged with it. We met with the writers, excuse me, English brothers, the Butterworth, Jez and John Henry, who actually just wrote Clooney's remake of the Bureau, Oh, okay. Yeah, they're really good. And it was surreal and weird to see a movie being made about when it's not.

And, you know, look, I never wanted to be a public person, ever, ever. And I loved my job. I was so proud to serve my country. I felt, you know, when you do a good job and your boss says, hey, good job, Val. that is satisfying enough. I don't need to be an influencer. I don't need to be on Oprah's couch. But that's not the hand we were dealt.

So you play it the best you can. What did you think of the movie when it came out? I liked it and other weird feelings about it. But I think it's a good movie. I saw it not too long ago again. And my kids are now older, have seen it as adults, young adults. It's not foolish.

Obviously, it's just a slice. It's a composite of, but it's absolutely accurate. I mean, other than what is condensed, if you will, and so forth. But what is portrayed as accurate. So it's a, I'm just glad I'm not ashamed of it. It's, you know, I'm sorry, sorry, Doug Lyman. He did a really good job, but it's, scary as hell to someone say, we're going to buy your life rights. What?

Yeah, but you got Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, so I mean, it's a pretty good deal. It is. They're very good actors, but you just don't know how they're going to portray, you know, yikes, it's out of your control. So, but it has stood this test of time, and I think it's an important story to tell of holding your government to account. Another question before we kind of start to project into the future a bit here. The book comes out in 2007 and up until this point, I mean, I have to believe that you and Joe are both still very much living this story. You're in the moment.

You're having to react to these things that are happening in your lives. Now here we are in, you know, 2025. I'd like to ask you if there have been any new revelation. since the time that you published the book. If there's been anything more you've learned about either what was going on in your own office or what was going on in the vice president's office, anything that, yeah. That's a great question. I wouldn't say there's any aha moments of I didn't know that at all,

but I have read deeply and widely to have a better understanding because you just know your little piece of it, like, you know, the blind men and the elephant. you just feel you just have your little part of that. I still don't have a very clear understanding of how I have my suspicions, but how my name was passed to the White House. How did that happen? I think I know, but I don't want to say because I don't know for sure. And as more and more has come out subsequently to that,

understanding what was going on behind the scenes, I've become friendly with Colonel Larry Wilkerson, if you know that name, is because he was chief of staff to Colin Powell. And I really admire him. And he had a different perch, but at bird's eye view to what was going on. And so I've learned that. But I wouldn't say that there was anything that I was shocked by. people acted without integrity and for their own ideological reasons. And I don't know if we've learned any lessons from it.

Well, on that note, the first Trump administration gave Scooter Libby a pardon for the whole crimes that he was convicted of. Why do you think that pardon? Well, first off, obviously George W. Bush didn't feel comfortable. being, you know, giving him a full pardon. And I think that Laura points out in the afterward, if he had pardoned him, then he wouldn't have immunity or his Fifth Amendment rights wouldn't have applied the same way. There's something like that. They could put him on the stand and compel testimony.

I don't know. My sense is Trump has absolutely no idea who Scooter Libby is. Could care less. But he was told by those around him that, you know, we don't want to leave a soldier on the fields and this is really important and it's it's politics of the work partisan politics of the worst kind and i did hear later that as bush and cheney were in the limousine heading to obama's inaugural in 2008 once again cheney's trying to talk bush into pardoning liby at the you know last moment and i don't know i was trying to talk bush

I wasn't in the limo, but Bush is like, I don't want to hear it. Stop it. I don't, enough already. And I don't think they're particularly close now. But I would love to do. And let's see. So in 2023, 20th anniversary of our invasion, they did a lot of retrospectives then on the war. 20 years later, where are we now? I want to see what I've never. I would be so interested in sort of a rogue's gallery of all the men, and there are mostly men, with a couple of exceptions, Condi Rice, that were so gung-ho on invading and occupying Iraq. How'd that work out for you? Where are they now? Where's Iraq now? What, you know, the tens of, hundreds of thousands of civilians that have been killed or left. And it, yeah, terrible.

The more moderate voices like your husbands at your late husband, they were shouted down. I think a lot of younger people don't really understand what that post-9-11 period was like. But those voices were shouted down and portrayed as pinko liberal commies. Right. How foolish. Yeah. And Joe was none of those things. and but his point was to paraphrase what he probably would say is at least right now Saddam Hussein antebellum you know he's contained we know what we have

what exactly are you going to do with the country if you own it this whole idea of the the pro council we had what was his name you know as they went in it all Bremer there you go Bremer and the debuthification and it was just freaking chaos. Anarchy. Stupid. For what end? To push forward a little bit, you know, you had mentioned, you know, before we started the show that maybe we could talk a little bit about what's going on in the

intelligence community today. Your story is profoundly, in my opinion, about the politicization of intelligence. That's the takeaway I hope people have. about it. How do you see that today? It's worse, unfortunately. Far worse. We are in a very dangerous period.

Very dangerous. I think we're more vulnerable than we ever have been before or at certain times in history. I don't think the intelligence community got the full Doge treatment, but there was certainly people were let go just last week. The NSC got cheered in, if not half, they were given half an hour to clean out their desks.

It is so specialized and we put so much time and money into finding talent and nurturing that talent and retaining that talent. to simply humiliate people and tell them, you know, what are the five things you did last week sort of thing? I mean, it's bad enough across, in any organization, to treat people without such disrespect. But when you're dealing with those in the intelligence community that have access to very sensitive information

and have, you know, a lot of, money resources have been poured into them really dumb really dumb idea that said um i i've long been an advocate of genuine reform of the iC just not done like a banana republic slash and burn you know with it perhaps yeah get a let get out of here with your chainsaw ridiculous uh but it we have got we're we could have a whole conversation on how risk adverse we we are and so forth. But there was just an article in yesterday's Washington Post, I think, about John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA, and realizing, hmm, we really need human sources. That's right. That's what the CIA does best. We are up to, I think, 17 intelligence organizations.

I think it could be argued by well-meaning people on both sides, that that may be too many. and you may need to have to streamline that. Don't get me started on Tulsi Gabbard and the DNI. The DNI was this hairbrained, I think, hairbrained idea that came after 9-11. Oh, we have to, you know, it's just another layer of bureaucracy. So I'm all for reform, except how it's been executed under this administration,

is potentially catastrophic. Yeah, chaotic at best. Yeah. Well, that brings us to where you're at today. Where is Valerie Plame now? I do writing and speaking. I'm still a very strong advocate just overtly about the nuclear threat, something I care about deeply. I think there's two existential threats, climate change and the nuclear threat.

So the latter is something I know a little bit about. I also host a conference called Spies Lice Noops, and it started when I called up some of my former colleagues, Loller being among them, say, hey, you want to come out to Santa Fe and we'll put together this conference on counterintelligence, on disguise, on what the heck is going on in Gaza. obviously there's no classified information, but it is open to the public. And its purpose is to educate as well as entertain. So I've really enjoyed doing that. As always, I have a couple projects simmering with streamers and doing some producing and consulting in the entertainment realm. Espionage seems to be evergreen to a certain extent. Most of the time I roll my eyes.

I cannot watch it because it's so redact. but I have the luxury right now of I just work on things that I want to with people I like. Otherwise, I'm not interested. You mentioned that you, you know, keep your hand in, you know, analyzing the nuclear threat. And I want to ask you about, you know, the preeminent one that we always talk about is Iran. And we've, we've had this talk. It feels like my entire life that something's got to be done about Iran. The counter-argarians. You mean people say that they're like Japan, they want to maintain a capability to create a bomb if they want one at some time in the future, but are not. And it's sort of an implied deterrence, I guess. What's your view about it? Listen, I was a strong advocate for the Iran deal, the JCPOA or whatever. J-C-P-O-A or whatever. ChapoA. Yeah, they came up with that Obama put together. no deal is going to be perfect. Why it's called a deal.

Each side gives something to get something in return. And I thought what we got in return not to develop a nuclear weapon was worthwhile. Trump redlined that, got rid of it. Now they're back in talks. It seemed to be going precisely nowhere. It's hard to, you know, the river has moved on. It's never the same. It was an opportunity that I believe that we have missed completely.

And meanwhile, nuclear proliferation continues a pace around the world. But now we have to contend with absolutely emergent China. We have AI. How does that affect the threat? It's, I mean, we've just been lucky. we've just been lucky that there has not been some horrible nuclear incident we saw just a few weeks ago India and Pakistan or nose to nose that is a that isn't people say what do you worry about that is a night nightmare scenario because millions of people's lives are at risk if something were to be

lobbed over the border um so there's still work to be done uh and it it just I I was forced enough to be in a documentary called Count on to Zero that came out some years ago, but it's just as relevant as ever. It's really, not just because I'm in it, but it's really well done. It talks about the nuclear threat. And it's just, it's still not only relevant, it's in fact even more intense today. I think that we have a couple of viewer questions for you, Valerie, before we get going here today. Okay. What do we got, Dee? So this from Corbyn.

way to catch a Russian potato thief. Is this a joke or is this a reference to in the movie Countdown to Zero? The joke was that potatoes were guarded better in post-Soviet Russia than nuclear weapons. So I don't know what he's. Possibly a joke. Yeah, possibly a joke.

From Jay, we had, did Fair Game give an accurate representation of what you and your family went through and what did it fail to capture? Yes, it gave an accurate representation. It couldn't possibly capture the dread and the many, many sleepless nights when you have the entire power of the U.S. government apparatus determined to destroy you. From Dunkin, Idaho, insofar as you can say anything about it, How does the training for a knock differ from that of a regular CIA officer? Good question. It would be country specific, depending on where that knock would be placed.

There's usually more intensive surveillance detection training that goes into it. And there is some covert communication. tweaks that you have to understand and know about. I have one question. Valerie, when you went in front of the Senate and testified, you went from being, you know, a clandestine person, somebody undercover most of your life to now you're everywhere. What was that like?

Was it nerve-wracking? Was it scary? I practically, I was so nervous. I practically fell out of my shoes. and can I just say for the record, I did that without any chemical help whatsoever. And it was, I was terrified. I'm not a public person.

I'm good running a meeting. I got that. You know, I got my team. I'll tell you what to do, how to do. I'm not, I'm hardly shy. But this is a whole different level. And it was, you know, my mouth was dry. I testified for, I don't know, three or four hours.

It seemed like three or four days. But I did it because it was important at that point for my voice to be heard. And I advocated for, how do you keep classified information classified, which as a tangent, but related, the case against Trump and the classified documents case, myself, all my former colleagues, absolutely horrified. We would have been dead ass fired if we had treated classified documents the way you mean. You mean having 50 boxes of TSSCI and your shitter wouldn't go over so well? Not so well.

Yeah. And I was like not even like nicely stacked, right? It was like, oh, just shoved in the powder room. Unbelievable. How about and his, how that. case ended, being dismissed by a judge he appointed just makes me sick. You know, I never got a security violation, but I made sure I didn't, right? All of us feel that way. You can make the argument that many things are overclassified, but that doesn't matter. You are still responsible.

You took a oath that you would protect that information and those assets that information reveal. Valerie, any questions I failed to ask, anything you'd like to talk about that we didn't bring up? No, you were fantastic. You gave the whole toward the horizon. And I'll tell you, when I do talks like this, it's hard for me to imagine that these events that kicked off all this, the how you even know my name happened over 20 years ago. Personally, I would have to say, just like you admitted to the little PTSD, thinking about the run up to the war with rock, I'm still unpacking it.

It impacted me profoundly, as you might imagine, personally and professionally. And it's taken me, to be honest, when the COVID lockdown happened was the first time that I sort of slowed down. that I was able to go, what the hell just happened? And for me personally to have that quiet and enforced, which I know was terrible for many people, but it allowed me some enforced quiet to come to terms with that crazy story. What you experienced. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And like kind of that out of body experience of asking. yourself what did I experience, right? Yeah. What the hell just happened? Yeah. So. Is there anything you'd like to plug where people can find you online if they're looking to retain your services or anything else? Yeah, thank you. You can find me either at Valerie Plame.com or the one that talks about my conference is spyslicesnukes.com. And you can contact me that way. And I am, I had thought about doing it. a Mediterranean cruise for my spice size of nukes this fall, but I don't, I decided against it

because people can't think about next week right now. There's so much volatility, geopolitical volatility, much less, you know, a couple months from now. But we'll see where I haven't given up on that idea altogether, but maybe I'll just do another land-based conference in Santa Faye before the end of the year. So, okay. We'll see. Great. And we will have links down the description of this podcast for all of you who are interested at checking that stuff out. It'll be right down there in the description. Valerie, thank you so much for your time and spending a little bit of your afternoon with us. What a pleasure. Thank you so much. I just realized that I was put in touch with you through

our mutual friend, Doug Wise. That's right. I definitely want to have Doug at my next Spiesize News conference. He, and he lives down the road from me, well, a little further, but he's great. We did not cross professionally, but thank you for making that, you know, thanks to Doug for making the connection. Doug is a great guy. And you know, this is getting a little bit of insider baseball. I'll just say this about Doug. The reason why I know he's a great guy is because the CIA is not a particularly nice place for the women who work there, I notice. Every woman that worked with Doug Wise says he's a great guy and he was great to work with. I'm so happy to hear that because you're absolutely right.

We could do a whole podcast, as you should maybe, on women and intelligence. I wrote a forward for a book that's coming out, Christina Hillsburg, former agency. We've had her on here. Oh, yeah, so her book is coming out, Agents of Change, right? Agents of Change. And she did a great job of doing the sweep of history. And, yeah, it's not a day at the beach. But I'm so glad to hear that about Doug.

Yeah, Doug's a great guy. And yeah, we had Christina and her husband on on the show together. They were both great. They're awesome. Yeah. Oh, good. All right. Well, come visit us out here in New Mexico and all the best to you and your team.

Thank you. Likewise. If you're coming through Brooklyn, let us know. We'll be around. I will. Okay. I will. And for everyone else out there, we will see you guys next time.

Thanks for tuning in. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. if you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the Teamhouse.

And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free.

and you support the channel and the show and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business, survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link. link to our new merch shop.

So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers, and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff.

So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.