MG: You get into a big tiff with Newt, don't you?
RT: My worst fight with him was about the CIA matter in Guatemala. We'd actually gotten along fairly well until then. But there is no having a relationship with Newt Gingrich. If he sees an opportunity to gain a single step by your destruction, he'll take it.
It was a terrible time because I felt I had done the right thing. I had never before had the experience where I knew I had done the right thing but I was paying a negative price for it. People have said to me, "You must have really agonized over this; you got information that a CIA operative had been involved in murder; the CIA continued to pay the person and hid the crime; you must have agonized about revealing the truth." But the fact is, I didn't think about it for a minute. I got this information that this person had been involved in a murder. The woman gave me this compelling case. She had chained herself to a statue in Guatemala City. She was now on a hunger strike outside the White House. And all she wanted to know is whether her husband was dead. This American citizen, suddenly her husband has disappeared, she can't get any help, there are other suspicious cases. I never hesitated. But I felt abandoned and in real jeopardy. The Clinton Administration offered me almost no protection, although I knew they agreed with what I did.
People were cowered by the intelligence community, which was an America I was unfamiliar with. The intelligence community genuinely has intimidated parts of this government. People would prefer to remain apart from it. And I felt a lot of friends in the Congress abandoned me, too.