Hair and make-up always helps. I did always try to be well-groomed, professional at all times. Take your job seriously - but not yourself.

Some suggestions for you :

Of course, when you're a parent, that's your paramount concern, for your children, and there were some very credible and frightening threats, and the agency declined to provide any security, and it felt like a betrayal all over again. It was really painful.

There is no question that what we are seeing - the horrible advance of ISIS - goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq.

She was very kind to us when Joe and I went through the darkest days of the leak of my name in 2003. And, of course, Joe worked in the Clinton White House.

So many times, genuine health workers and genuine NGO folks are really just trying to help other humans in whatever capacity they can. But they are perceived as being CIA, and therefore, it blocks their effectiveness.

Certainly, if we had not invaded Iraq on intelligence that was clearly manipulated and cherry picked, we would be in a different position today.

I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases to see did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Who did she see?

I think the Bush Administration was bound and determined on regime change, and we will be paying the price of that for some time to come.

My father was an air officer in the Second World War. My brother was a marine in Vietnam. When I was given this opportunity, I leapt at the chance because I thought it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what my friends were doing.

I have always been appalled by the depiction of female CIA operatives.

The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.

The options are war versus peace, and I am delighted that, so far, it appears that peaceful negotiation has won the day.

I think feeling bitter or angry is really useless.

I did a book event with a former colleague, Bob Bauer, and was so relieved that he said I got all the CIA stuff right.

Of course we wish that more people involved in the leak of my true CIA identity had been prosecuted, but the system worked.