I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

But I will bear true faith and allegiance to the sea that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will will inflate the lead discharge.

The duties of the office on which I am about to enter.

So help me God, so help me God.

Welcome to the oath. I'm Chuck Rosenberg and I am honored to be your host for another compelling conversation with a fascinating guest from the world of public service.

Our guest this week is Matt Olson, a son of North Dakota and a graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School.

Matt held so many important and difficult jobs and federal law enforcement and national security that it is hard to know where to begin.

He worked as a civil rights prosecutor as an assistant United States attorney on the staff of FBI director Bob Mueller as the executive director of the Guantanamo Review Task Force as the General Counsel of the National Security Agency and as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

And though we could dedicate an episode to his work in any one of those posts, we mostly talk about three things.

First, Matt's work as a civil rights prosecutor, fresh out of a judicial clerkship, was both fascinating and vital.

There, he focused on enforcing the Voting Rights Act, a landmark civil rights statute, and his work took him to several southern states to ensure that minority citizens were not disenfranchised.

Second, Matt was appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to lead the Guantanamo Review Task Force, an assignment he found to be among his most challenging and difficult.

In that role, it was Matt's responsibility to try to meet one of President Obama's earliest stated objectives to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay within the president's first year in office.

That, as Matt describes, turned out to be an enormously challenging task, a dilemma given the population there and the difficult decisions that had to be made, that who should be released, who should be tried, either in a civilian court or in a military commission setting, and who couldn't either be tried nor released.

That task was inordinately complex and the headwinds that his task force confronted, political and practical were fierce.

Third, Matt served as the General Counsel of the National Security Agency, the leading signals intelligence agency in the world.

That job required him to strike a balance on uncertain and often shifting legal terrain.

On one hand, of course, Matt was bound to the Constitution and to the laws that govern intelligence collection.

He knew his lawyers and NSA operators should never cross the line, and that it was therefore crucial that they understood where the line was and not to get too close to it.

On the other hand, Matt clearly understood the need to confront dangerous and relentless counterterrorism and counterintelligence adversaries because of the harm they could inflict on us.

He approached this job and this balancing act in a careful, ethical and deliberate manner. Matt Olson was a thoughtful and principled public servant, a gifted leader and a true expert on national security.

He is also humble, kind and deeply thoughtful about the proper role the government should play to secure our nation and protect its citizens and their rights.

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