Classified Woman (23 page)

T
he announcement came over the speakers, an update of our ETA by the pilot. In less than two hours, my long trip home from Hanoi, Vietnam, was going to end. Well almost, since I had one more flight from Los Angeles to DC, another excruciating five hours. That was nothing compared to the fourteen hours I’d already spent in the air.

I readjusted the baby carrier and pressed my nose on top of my almost five-month-old daughter’s head. Breathing in her scent and listening to her steady breathing, I locked my arms around her tiny sleeping body wrapped tightly against me. I was taking her home for the very first time. Many first times were waiting for her: her first time in the United States, her first real home, first real nursery, first winter … I was excited for her, excited and nervous. I was nervous for me too. This was my coming back home after spending almost eight months abroad in Vietnam, after being away in many ways and going through the changes that accompany first-time motherhood.

I had spent almost all of 2008 abroad, most of it in Vietnam. I spent considerable time exploring the country north to south, visiting orphanages and ethnic minority schools, interviewing and documenting nonprofit organizations with a focus on children there, while waiting impatiently to be matched with my child to be. The amazing second half of my journey started with meeting my daughter, Ela, and from that point my life revolved around her. First I had to go through three months of paperwork and procedures by the Vietnamese government required for international adoption. During this period, I spent every single day at the orphanage feeding, holding and forming my attachment to her and, inevitably, bonding with the rest of the children there and their Vietnamese caregivers. After Ela was officially released to my custody, we went through equally arduous procedures to have the adoption approved by the U.S. government and obtain her entry visa into the States.

This time away from home served as therapy. I badly needed the healing time to detoxify myself from the pessimism and cynicism that had naturally settled in. Body and mind demanded it.

In 2006, following the Supreme Court saga and the PEN/Newman Award, my entire focus had been to seek hearings and legislation on congressional oversight and accountability, excessive secrecy and, of course, meaningful protections for whistleblowers. My days were filled with meetings, alliances with other watchdog groups, networking, rallies; the list goes on.

I wanted something positive—something good—to come out of my case that would benefit others. I was determined to use my network to get Congress to act, to fulfill its role of oversight and accountability. We needed more than words. We needed sound legislation. We were long overdue for laws with teeth that would truly provide protection for those seeking to tell the truth about what their government is up to. We lacked the mechanisms to enforce accountability.

Arousing passion is no easy task. A malaise had settled in, a “you can’t rock the boat” attitude among my coalition members and friends. Who could blame them? I know well what exhaustion will do, and the battles are never-ending. I also knew that I was in a unique position; my experience had armed me, in a way. If anyone could get them to rise from their weariness, from flagging in the midst of a fight, it was me. And together, drawing strength from one another, we did it. We were united in a single cause: Get Congress to act.

As we pounded on the doors of congressional offices, the executive branch was hard at work behind the scenes holding private meetings with congressional leaders on better ways and stronger laws to silence and punish government whistleblowers. As always, their tactic was to use the fear factor and throw a blanket over crimes under the guise of “national security.” The executive branch considered those who exposed such crimes as traitors. How dare they let the public know! The administration wanted tougher laws against government whistleblowers, and they proposed tougher punishment as well: the kind suited for spies and those engaged in sedition. What’s more, they didn’t meet with much resistance or disagreement from their audience in Congress.

We ended up gathering a handful of supporters in the House (no response from either party in the Senate). Our supporters were leaders of the appropriate House committees and subcommittees yet were in the Democratic Minority. The most ambitious and outspoken was Congressman Henry Waxman, who headed the Government Reform Committee.

What we wanted, what we asked for, was to have public hearings on our cases, put these public testimonies and witnesses into congressional records and transcripts, and let Americans see and hear what their government is doing to them on their behalf, with their tax money, and with zero accountability. For that we needed new laws that would be enforced. Our handful of minority supporters seemed to wholeheartedly agree, and promised to back our initiatives.

We set to work. That entailed a blizzard of activity over months. We were facing three fronts in our hearings and legislation campaign: the main players within the congressional majority who opposed the entire thing outright; the midlevel power holders who pushed for a one-sided compromise (thereby watering the whole thing down); and a handful who appeared to be fighting for the entire deal: actual whistleblower protection laws.

In the end, we got absolutely nothing. We were told repeatedly that as long as the Republican majority remained in Congress we had no chance whatsoever. They told us that unless that status changed in the coming congressional elections of 2006, there would be no hearings and, of course, no legislation. Thus, we waited. The elections were two months away.

On the evening of November 7, 2006, I was one of many national security whistleblowers who sat behind her desktop, online, anticipating the results. Many of us stayed up until late in the night counting, anticipating, and hoping. As now we know, the Democrats won, and became the majority in both House and Senate. We thought we had won; we celebrated online—prematurely. Our list of witnesses (that included my name) and our organized case documentations were ready for our long-anticipated January and February 2007 dreams for a hearing. Now, we felt, nothing could stop us. Our day in court had arrived, courtesy of the Democrats.

The month of January came and went without a single notification, e-mail or phone call from our “handful of congressional angels,” one of whom who had become the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In February, we started to call. No one was returning them. I called and e-mailed our formerly fiery and supportive staff members from Henry Waxman’s office many times. I received no response. We tried for another two months, and to our genuine shock, we—the coalition organizations and whistleblowers guaranteed support—went unacknowledged. The new majority Democrats, including our “handful” of backers, didn’t even want to hear about the hearings they had promised us. They would not have anything to do with the proposed legislation that they themselves helped us put together. The new majority had filled up the seats of the old one, and except for that capital D, would continue to a tee the practice of their predecessors.

We had lost—again. We all had learned a lesson, but the lesson didn’t leave us with even one channel left to pursue. This exactly mirrored my own past experience. The system put in place by our founders, the separation of powers among the three branches—the system of checks and balances—had been tampered with and permanently corrupted. We were a constitutional democracy in name only. Where was the rule of law? This was more than about a single issue or problem affecting some activists; this was a cancer metastasizing and decaying the nation at its core, and the people didn’t even know about it.

By June 2007, almost all national security whistleblower activities and campaigns had ended. After all, what was left to pursue? Our members were disillusioned, exhausted and utterly disgusted, and I topped that list.

The federal courts kept on ruling pro-secrecy and pro-government cover-ups, and continued issuing anti-accountability and anti-whistleblower rulings. The federal government, emboldened by these court compliances and congressional inaction, only increased the level of abuse, unwarranted excessive classification, and retaliation against whistleblowers. Without real media scrutiny and true investigative journalism, Congress remained as an extension of the executive branch with one task to perform: stamping its approval of every proposed action-abuse by the federal government and almost all budget increase requests by them.

Many of these whistleblowers, like me, had already fought the long fight within the executive branch agencies and channels and in federal courts. Our pursuit of real congressional action was the last stop. The Congress was driven by two major factors: money (the power of lobbying), and the media (re-elections and PR). We were not lobbyists; neither did we have access to deep pockets to purchase the needed action. Our cause was the public cause—typically free of deep-pockets backing.

The second equally powerful factor depended solely on mainstream media: reporters, networks and major print outlets. That factor too had been long absent in calls for oversight and accountability. They enabled Dennis Hastert to run for another term right after the
Vanity Fair
exposé, which was never denied or contested. They blacked out every report and source on the Hastert case and others. Similarly, it was intentional censorship and hold by the media that kept from the public the NSA illegal eavesdropping until after the presidential election. Volumes and numerous documentaries could be made on this one topic alone.

I had arrived at a point of pause and reflection. After spending six years in the fight—the one based on eternal vigilance—and putting every other aspect of my life on hold, I had hit a dead end, or what seemed to be a stalemate. Who had I become? Where was I going? What did I want from life?

I couldn’t undo the past; nor could I recover the deep financial losses from pursuing fugitive justice. I could not erase the time gap in the course of my career. Most importantly, I could not go back to being who I was before these things happened, my unclassified self. That person no longer existed.

What about the future? Even more, the now that takes me there? Weren’t there paths to be hewn and forged? Didn’t I have those choices? What were they—the choices I truly wanted and actually could take? When would be the right time?

The answers to some of those questions were right here before me, and one I didn’t need to look for too hard. It was in me, and one of my truest, strongest desires in life. It was there in my work and activism history, in the orphanages from Turkey to Russia; in the hundreds of hours in Juvenile court to the subjects I chose for my education. The answer was in every spare room in my house—in every place I’d lived in the last fifteen years: the one set up as a nursery, for the children I wanted to have.

I had always wanted to adopt, and hoped to adopt not just once but several times. That process would have begun in 1999, but my father’s death put that plan on hold. And then came 9/11. All of which had brought me up to now. It was crisp and clear before me; the path to the future I wanted, always: my very own nest and family.

Once that hit me, I didn’t lose a single minute. I started to research international adoption, the countries involved, agencies and requirements, adoption and immigration laws. In less than a month I had decided on the country and had chosen Vietnam for reasons important to me. I had put together a blueprint on exactly how to do this. I was ready.

By October 2007, I had completed everything, received my home study report, and had gotten approval from the Vietnamese government. I was now officially on the waiting list for U.S. families in the queue to be matched with orphan Vietnamese children. Ordinarily, adoptive families wait long months or even years to receive the referral for their child, owing to a byzantine bureaucratic process; well, not me. I was going to do it in a different way, as I had always envisioned doing it.

My plan—which goes against what the experts recommended—was to pack my suitcases and head for Vietnam, and get to know the country and its culture while I waited for my referral. Once I received that referral, I planned to spend every hour that I could with my child, in the orphanage, while the paperwork and procedures were completed. Most people—including some close to me—considered this course a dangerous one, difficult and burdensome and, to a certain degree, foolish.

I had my reasons. First, I had to know my child-to-be’s heritage and culture: that was an important part of who he or she was and would remain. Second, I was well aware of the importance of early bonding in the case of institutionalized children. Spending five or six months or more after the matching (during which that child is considered mine)
away
from that child while he or she resides in an orphanage was out of the question. If allowed, I would spend every minute of that waiting time in the orphanage with her or him. I would do everything within my power to be there with my child.

So, with this plan in hand, I prepared for the journey.

After exploring the country and much of its culture, spending time in exotic and often heartbreaking locales, I arrived at my final destination in Vietnam: the tiny and beautiful, breezy palm-fringed coastal city of Phan Thiet in Bin Thuan province. I had made my reservations at a quaint hotel with suite-like rooms to accommodate long-term living arrangements with a baby. My unit had a small kitchenette and a bit of separation between the sleeping area and living room. It opened up to the beautiful Mui Ne beach, where I could sit on my patio and watch the traditional Vietnamese fishing boats at work. I even had a TV with satellite I intended to ignore (I did).