Quotes from Valerie Plame

I don't care if you are for having Mexico pay for the border wall, or you want to repeal and replace Obamacare, or if you want women to have complete access to reproductive rights - I don't care. The fact is, if you don't get the nuclear issue right, none of the other ones matter.

After I resigned, I could eventually speak for myself, but when it first happened, I was in complete shock, and it took a long time for me to overcome it.

These are issues we've been grappling with since the Constitution was written: how you hold your government to account for its words and deeds. It's all about power and the abuse of power.

There is no question that what we are seeing - the horrible advance of ISIS - goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq.

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

I know having a Jason Bourne all alone in a field firing at bad guys is much more dramatic, but it's not real.

My CIA colleagues were smart, dedicated, funny, and creative. Yes, there was sometimes stifling bureaucracy, boredom, colleagues who never should have been there, and later, deeply disturbing stories of the CIA's involvement in torture. Still, I got to do work I thought was incredibly important and, many times, had fun doing it.

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.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which in 1996 set out to ban nuclear tests, is an important step, but we need to do more - and we can.

We've made some good beginnings with the New START Treaty, but a lot more can be done.

Joe was being called a liar and a traitor; I'm being accused of nepotism, of being a glorified secretary. The stresses that that places on an individual and, of course, a marriage were tremendous. It was - there were some dark days.

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.

We have known Hillary Clinton both professionally and personally for close to 20 years, dating back to before President Bill Clinton's first trip to Africa in 1998 - a trip that they both acknowledge changed their lives and gave considerable meaning to their post-White House years and to the activities of the Clinton Foundation.

My take is, privacy is precious. I think privacy is the last true luxury. To be able to live your life as you choose without having everyone comment on it or know about.

Privatization is more efficient and effective in some cases, but not in intelligence.

I've been working with Global Zero. They are a great organization leading the resistance against nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons.

When you're in the CIA, you anticipate the possibility that you'll be betrayed by a foreign government or a source, but you never anticipate that it would be by your own government.

Of course we wish that more people involved in the leak of my true CIA identity had been prosecuted, but the system worked.

I think, honestly, my largest concern, there are a lot of unbalanced people out there, and all of a sudden, I'm the CIA poster girl, and our home in Washington, the front door was about 20 feet from the street. I went to the agency at a certain point and asked for security on a residence.

Any time you're a poster child for the CIA, there are a lot of people that are - either have ideological or they are mentally unbalanced - that are going to try to find you and perhaps cause you harm.

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.

Looking back at my career, I wish I knew then what I know now... that gender bias is built into the system, and it's unconscious in many ways. I wish I had the maturity and courage to have pushed back more. I was always trying to be a 'good girl' and play by the rules.

I want to shine a spotlight on showing how dangerous Trump and his Twitter button can be.

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