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• Mr. Marcinkowski on 60 Minutes
• Mr. Marcinkowski on CNN

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Tavis: It's very rare when a current or former member of the CIA speaks to the media. But the outing of Valerie Plame as a covert agent has led one of her former colleagues to break that long standing silence. Jim Marcinkowski is a former covert operative who trained with Valerie Plame at the CIA facility known as 'The Farm.' He is now deputy city attorney in Royal Oak, Michigan, and joins us tonight from the Motor City in Detroit. Mr. Marcinkowski, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Jim Marcinkowski: Glad to be with you.

Tavis: Let me ask the obvious question. What was it about this particular case regarding Valerie Plame that got you outraged enough, as I said a moment ago, to really break with CIA tradition, or former CIA tradition, which is for you to speak out?

Marcinkowski: Well, having been in the CIA, the first egregious act that I saw was the exposure of one of our agents. It then became personal when I found out in fact I had trained with Valerie. This was the person that was exposed. At that point it enraged not only myself, but members of my entire CIA training class.

Tavis: I don't mean to be naive in asking you this question, but what makes you so upset about the outing of a former colleague?

Marcinkowski: Well, the damage that has been done, not only to national security, but we can look at this thing on a personal level. She has been undercover for 18 years, like many of us in the CIA. She was in the operations directorate. She was training, she was undercover. The fact of the matter is, by her being exposed by the White House, she not only put her own personal security at risk, but she then risked the security - of all the agents that she happened to be working with. So her own personal security was threatened, and that of all the assets that she had run on behalf of the United States overseas.

Tavis: On the personal security front, I absolutely understand what you're saying, and I think anyone watching has to clearly understand what it means when you out someone who's worked undercover on a variety of very difficult cases. We understand that part. For those who think though, it might be a bit of hyperbole to suggest that whatever Karl Rove might have done, whatever Scooter Libby might have done, threatened national security. Explain to the audience from your perspective how the outing of one particular, one specific CIA undercover officer threatens national security.

Marcinkowski: It threatened the national security because it was a breach of trust by this government. When you go overseas and you recruit foreign nationals to spy in their country on behalf of the United States, what typically happens is, the very first question is, "Can you protect my identity? Can you protect my personal security?' And the first thing a case officer has to do is ensure that person that we, the United States government, will hold that trust without breaching it.

And what happens when the CIA officer gets exposed, that sends the signal that, you know what? We don't care, or we don't put the security issue as the number one issue with the asset on the ground. So, not only the CIA officer's security is threatened, but the asset's threatened. Now, that sends a signal all across the world to every foreign intelligence operative acting on behalf of the United States. That's what it does.

And they're all wondering, 'Is my - is my personal protection being protected by the United States government? Am I gonna be safe? Is my family gonna be safe?' And when the United States government cannot protect its own home team, that being a CIA officer, then that sends the tremor around the world that perhaps the foreign asset's protection is not gonna be high on the list of endeavors by the White House.

Tavis: So what's your sense, then, of how folk around the world who might be engaging with the CIA on some level, view an outing like this? How does this - challenge the work of the CIA operative in various places around the world?

Marcinkowski: Well, obviously what that does is sends the signal that the United States government no longer holds the trust relationship in high regard. Therefore, their own personal security is threatened. If they're gonna expose, the White House is gonna expose the CIA officer, then hey, if I'm a little foreign asset operating in some little country, and I look at this situation, I'd have to say to myself, 'If they're not gonna protect their own CIA officers, how are they gonna protect me? Or do they really even care about me?' And that's the damage and the ripple effect that, in effect, has gone all over the world.

Tavis: I wonder whether or not, let me shift gears somewhat slightly. I wonder whether or not, given some of the travail that the CIA has had of late, and I say "of late" over the past few years. Certainly people are still concerned, and upset is a better word, I guess, about what did or did not happen with regard to 911. What they knew and what they didn't know, and how that intelligence was handled or mishandled, as it were.

I wonder whether or not you think that the American public, beyond the politics in this, really cares about an issue like this. And if they don't, how do we get them to care, given the feelings that many people have, perhaps, about the CIA these days, and the work they do?

Marcinkowski: Well, first of all, they need to care, but they first have to understand what the issue really is. The outing of this CIA officer is nothing more than a police chief in any police department across the country exposing one of their undercover officers. That's what happened in this case. It's not hard to understand, and I think everyone understands what the ramifications of that kind of exposure is.

It not only would threaten the police officer's life, but, you know, it would probably end up threatening the police chief's life once the person's exposed. So that's on one level. I think it's easy to understand and people gotta understand that, in fact, it is just like any other police department operation.

Tavis: Many people saw you on '60 Minutes' this past Sunday addressing this very issue. I wonder whether or not you gave any pause, any thought to any consideration of what it might mean for you to come out and to speak out as a former CIA officer, given the politics that are clearly all around this particular issue.

Marcinkowski: Well, obviously, there's risk in anything we do. I don't - my own personal security I don't believe is at risk. Obviously, there's politics being played here, and I'm - not concerned about that. But, you know, the real issue here is the politics being played between the White House and the CIA, and the information that was provided by the CIA after 9/11, on whether it was provided without influence by the Vice President or was influenced by the Vice President, when he visited the CIA.

Those kinds of issues are going back and forth as far as what information we can trust. You know, are we gonna believe the CIA? Are we gonna believe the White House? So there's politics going back between the agency and the White House, and that kind of politics has never taken place before, not on this level.

Tavis: Before I let you go, what did you remember, what did you recall, if anything, when you learned that you had in fact trained at 'The Farm' with Miss Plame? We started our conversation by you suggesting that it really got to you when you realized that you had trained with her. What do you recall about those days?

Marcinkowski: Well, the agency screens its people incredibly well. You're - the best, the brightest. Valerie Plame's a very intelligent, capable, and now experienced CIA officer. And the thing that I remember most is, from our CIA training, is they built a cohesive team in our class. I'm sure they're having second thoughts about how effective that team is, because we held each other in trust for 18 years until exposed by this White House.

Now, there is - some of our classmates are still in the CIA, some are out. Whether we were inside or whether we were outside, we held each other's identity a secret for 18 years until it was exposed by this White House.

Tavis: Let me offer this then as an exit question. Since you are an attorney, deputy city attorney, in fact, in Royal Oak, Michigan, outside of Detroit, let me ask you, given your experience with the law, whether or not you think that there are things that we ought to do vis-à-vis the law, vis-à-vis legislation, to make sure this doesn't happen again. There ought to be stiffer penalties; ought the law be more clear?

We don't know whether Rove is going to be charged. Clearly, Scooter Libby was. Some think that Rove may not be, but certainly if he didn't step across the line, he has chalk on his shoes. What do you think about what we ought to do going forward and to make sure this doesn't happen again?

Marcinkowski: Well, number one, ifthe government wasn't controlled all by one political party, we'd probably see hearings on Capitol Hill looking into what exactly happened, but I don't think - the law obviously has to be fixed up. It has to be tightened up. There are some provisions in the law that make it hard to prosecute. You look at intent or negligence or reckless disregard, those kinds of things, all kinds of standards as far as the criminal law is concerned.

But the real issue here is a moral issue. We should be operating on a high moral standard, and that's where trust, you can't legislate trust, you can't legalize it or make it illegal not to uphold the trust, so the bigger issue here is a moral issue of trust. And, yes, I think we do have to look at the law, perhaps tighten that up, but the law will only go so far. There are other people that are responsible for this outing that have still not been identified.

Tavis: Jim Marcinkowski, now deputy city attorney in Royal Oak, Michigan, former CIA classmate of Valerie Plame, of course, outed by somebody in the White House. Lewis Libby, of course,indicted now by the grand jury for at least obstruction of justice. Mr. Marcinkowski, nice to have you on the program. All the best to you, sir.

Marcinkowski: Thank you very much.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. Up next on this program, Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker. Her book 'The Color Purple' now a Broadway play. Stay with us.