Chatter: CIA, Congress, and the Art of Listening with Abigail Spanberger
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2023
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Abigail Spanberger, who represents Virginia's 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives, is one of the few members of Congress to have served as an operations officer at the Central Intelligence Agency. She also worked in law enforcement as an officer of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Not typical experiences for a thrice-elected politician—but useful for the role she finds herself in now.
On this episode of Chatter, David Priess chatted with Rep. Spanberger about her recent re-election to the House, the nature of "swing districts," working across the aisle, her road to working at CIA, her experiences as a postal inspector and intelligence operations officer, what she sees as important national security issues right now, her advice for former colleagues considering a run for elective office, and how listening skills she learned at CIA have helped her as a representative.
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | or no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:37.6 | I'm Katherine Pompeo, associate editor of LawFair with an episode of chatter for January |
| 0:42.6 | 8th, 2023. |
| 0:44.6 | For today's episode, the team at LawFair decided to cross-post this week's episode of chatter, |
| 0:48.9 | a podcast hosted by David Pries and Shane Harris that features in-depth discussions with |
| 0:53.2 | fascinating people at the creative edges of national security. |
| 0:56.9 | Today's episode is entitled CIA, Congress and the Art of Listening with Abigail Spanberger. |
| 1:02.6 | In the episode, Pri set down with representatives Spanberger to discuss her recent re-election |
| 1:06.5 | to the House of Representatives, the nature of swing districts, her road to working at CIA, |
| 1:11.9 | her experience as a postal inspector and intelligence operations officer, how listening |
| 1:16.3 | skill she learned at CIA have helped her as a representative and more. |
| 1:31.9 | Welcome to chatter. |
| 1:32.9 | I'm David Pries, publisher of LawFair. |
| 1:35.5 | This week, Representative Abigail Spanberger on CIA, Congress and the Art of Listening. |
| 1:42.3 | The first step in running for our office as a former intelligence officer is telling |
| 1:48.3 | people, okay, well, you know, just so you know, I'm running for Congress. |
| 1:51.9 | And you should also know that I actually was a former CIA officer and all the things |
| 1:55.5 | I told you about my employment, brandy, not true. |
... |
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