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my secret life

in the cia's war on terror."

why would you

keep doing the torture

if you got information

that you thought was --

-'cause i think people

were panicked at the time

and they just couldn't

bring themselves to stop

in case that information

came out.

in the case

of khalid sheikh mohammed

and the third prisoner

who was waterboarded, nashiri,

it turned out that

the information they provided

was not true.

they simply provided

what they thought

the interrogator wanted to hear

to stop

the waterboarding.

i have applied for every job

i can think of,

everything from grocery stores

to toys r us to starbucks.

you name it,

i've applied there.

haven't gotten

even an e-mail or a call back.

i'll be honest with you --

i really miss working,

and so, regardless

of what the job is,

i'm gonna be happy, i think,

just passing eight hours a day.

[ insects chirping ]

[ dog barking in distance ]

there were things

i said in that book

that really bothered them.

and i used a lot

of true names in the book, too,

people who weren't undercover.

[ engine turns over ]

i wanted to be

on the record

as saying that i thought

they were wrong.

this was

the wrong thing to do.

this is something that

the u.s. government and the cia

should not be involved in.

and a lot of people

at the cia disagree with me,

and i don't care.

not anymore.

i don't care.

[ air brake hisses ]

[ birds chirping ]

[ toy playing

"brahms' lullaby" ]

-when he's awake

inside the house,

you know,

it's almost an obsession.

[ music continues ]

-"ruby puts..."

-you know, he's always

on the computer,

he's always on the phone.

there's really no moment

of normalcy inside the house.

the kids know nothing

about what's going on.

and i try

and just protect them

and give john the space

to do what he needs to do.

he does put on, i think,

a really good, optimistic face,

but i know

it bothers him deep down.

-we're in the middle of what

are called cipa hearings,

stands for the classified

information procedures act.

we have identifies 100, maybe,

documents that are classified

that we believe are critical

to my ability to defend myself.

-ultimately, in this case,

judge brinkema

makes a determination

as to what will actually

be admissible and relevant

at trial

before a jury of his peers.

so, it's a critical phase.

-the judge is gonna come down

on one side or the other

or maybe

somewhere in the middle.

so, i'm serious when i say

i've read every one of these

documents

and i can't defend myself

without them.

in the very beginning,

it would not be untruthful

to say that i felt suicidal.

i gave serious thought one day

to jumping in front

of a subway train.

that's how --

that's how...

how depressed i was

and how hopeless i felt.

-hello!

-in my very first meeting

with my attorneys,

they told me that

if i took a plea,

my bill would probably be

somewhere in the $50,000

to $100,000 range.

but they said,

"if you elect to go to trial,

we're talking about a bill

that's gonna be

closer to $500,000."

so, here we are,

my bill is already $1 million,

and if we go

all the way through trial,

they told me to expect it now

to be as much as $2 million.

i can't pay

that kind of money.

yeah, we don't

need that anymore.

i don't know how i'll ever

have that kind of money

to pay that bill.

[ baby giggles ]

what?

-i knew that the white house

and hayden

had placed themselves

above the law,

and instead of choosing

to follow the constitution,

they had chosen

to not follow the constitution,

that they were now in violation

of the oath that they took

to support and defend

and, for the president,

to also protect.

i blew every whistle

there was internally.

early 2002,

i am a witness for this 9/11

congressional investigation.

i gave them incredibly

classified information

that was given to me.

and what's important

to understand is,

not only did i share everything

i knew about thinthread,

i also was given information

during this time period,

information that nsa had,

information that if it

had been shared

with the proper authorities,

what is called

national command authorities,

could have stopped 9/11.

i shared all that

with the committee.

prima facie, al qaeda and

associative movement information

that would have gone a long ways

to rolling up the plot.

it was in the database.

it was there.

no one knew it was there

because the systems

they had in place were abysmal.

nsa had abysmally failed

the nation.

now, i was charged

with putting together

the statement for the record

to find out

everything we could

about what nsa knew,

should have known,

or could have known

prior to 9/11.

and i was given

some extraordinary information

as a result of that --

the team.

[ inhales deeply ]

that information was put into

the statement for the record --

the draft.

and then, while i was in england

on another assignment,

got this frantic

phone call saying,

"tom, we've been taken

off the effort."

i said, "why?"

"when you come back,

you'll have to find out."

[ big ben tolls ]

they did not want to tell

the truth to congress.

so, as soon as i got back,

i was pulled aside,

and in no uncertain terms,

i was told, "be careful.

they're looking for leakers."

this was not leakers

to the press.

they were looking

for leakers

to the congressional

9/11 investigations.

-they're coming down.

-they're in violation

of fisa.

they're in violation

of the fourth amendment.

they're now engaged

in an active coverup

at the highest levels.

i knew that i had been tagged

as someone who was a threat

to their ability

to keep from congress

what they knew

about 9/11.

and, in fact, there was

an edict that went out

from the highest levels of nsa,

through the deputy director,

to bury all the critical truth

about what nsa

actually knew about 9/11

and never let any investigator

ever get their hands on it,

period.

so, you know,

here i am, seeing all this,

the massive fraud,

waste, and abuse.

i had blown all the whistles

i knew per statute,

followed that all to the t.

nothing had happened.

it was clearly,

congress, institutionally,

had become complicit.

the primacy

of national security

was now trumping

the constitution.

and so, i made a fateful

decision in february of 2006

to make contact anonymously

with a reporter,

detailing with her

over a series of mailings --

and i was doing so

in an encrypted fashion --

for a period of a year.

an article

was written by her

in which, for the first time

as public reveal,

the existence

of a legal alternative

to the secret program

called thinthread.

the set of people that knew

about the secret program,

whether they were read into

or not, was very, very small.

they began to target anybody

associated with the program,

even if they were

peripheral.

i had been told

by very well-placed sources

that cheney personally said

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