California attorney Brian Leighton and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Richard A. Horn showed incredible persistence in a 15-year-old lawsuit, whose settlement was made final Tuesday night.

Hundreds of court filings in the previously sealed case can still be a treasure trove for anyone with a PACER account and an interest in the states secret issue, not to mention an interest in Judge Royce Lamberth's unhappiness with past and present members of the U.S. intelligence community.

Mr. Horn, now retired from the DEA, contended a CIA officer and State Department diplomat collaborated in an illegal eavesdropping. He said in a July 24 e-mail interview:

"DOJ has engaged in every imaginable tactic to derail this case. The common component to all these strategies is delay, delay, delay. In their view, there's always a chance that my attorney or I will stumble out in front of a Mack truck!"

And...

"Judge Lamberth has no trouble discerning the distinction between an innocent 'difference in recollection' and a damned lie designed to conceal culpability."

And...

"At one point I asked the former head of all of DEA's foreign offices, whom I know very well, to write a declaration. It would have been favorable to me. The Department of Justice attorney...knew that and directed DEA to disallow him from writing the declaration. Fair?"

And, with regard to DEA's relationship with other agencies and the overall anti-drug effort...

"DEA is a little bastard stepchild that was abandoned on the back steps of the Department of Justice...the government gave DEA's primary jurisdiction to a long list of other federal agencies, including the FBI, ATF, Postal Service, Coast Guard, park rangers, etc., all of which developed their own independent intelligence files. There was much duplication of effort, interagency rivalry and wasted money."

And...

"I sit on the porch with a cheap cigar and a vodka tonic (and) wave at passing cars...I am not interested in publicity, fame or even small measures of attention. In fact, I wish it was someone else's name on all those pleadings."