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in working at the cia.

i said, "sure. why not?"

and i went through the process

and found myself at the cia.

-i went to the cia

for a short stint.

and then i became

a government contractor,

systems software engineering,

from mid '89

all the way through until 2001.

february of 2001,

i just happened

to be going through the sunday

edition of the washington post.

and it's like,

"oh. interesting."

nsa was actually looking to hire

people in from the outside.

well, it's the call

to serve your country.

and here was an opportunity

at a very senior level,

so i applied.

i was offered a position.

took the oath to support

and defend the constitution

for the fourth time.

and the first day

that i reported

to the national security agency,

to my duty station,

was 9/11.

-i ended up joining

a newly created ethics unit

called the professional

responsibility advisory office.

we were there

to keep you out of trouble.

rather than opr,

the office of professional

responsibility,

that disciplines you

when you do something bad,

we were there

to render advice prospectively

to help keep you

from doing something unethical.

the first couple of years

were really amazing,

to get to form

and grow this office,

but after 9/11, there was

definitely a sea change.

-there's pre-9/11...

[ people screaming ]

...there's post-9/11.

and what took place

in those weeks and months

just after 9/11

established the basis for

everything else that happened.

everything.

-everything changed

in the intelligence community

on september 11th.

-it took a few years

for it to unwind,

and much of what was going on

inside the country

was done in absolute secrecy

for the first four-plus years.

no one knew.

[ radio chatter ]

-"we're gonna kill all of them."

that was very much the feeling

in the cia after september 11th.

now, for many people, that

wore off after a period of time,

but for others inside the cia,

they never lost that feeling,

that belief that this was

a war to the death,

that there was no gray area

between black and white.

-there was a lot

of cutting corners.

there were a lot

of shortcuts going on.

there were a lot

of creative gymnastics going on.

and that can be seen in,

like, the torture memos

and the reasoning in those

by my law school classmate

john yoo.

-after 9/11, it became

even more important for nsa

just to get all the data it

could, no matter where it was.

"we just need it."

and i was told that.

"we just need it, tom.

we just need the data."

it was crisis.

but it became clear within

the space of a few days

that this was not

a normal crisis.

i was in a meeting with...

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