Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House » (Bargain)

Valerie Plame Wilson (born Valerie Elise Plame in Anchorage, Alaska), known as Valerie Plame, is a former United States CIA officer who worked as a classified covert intelligence agent for over twenty years. She is married to former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV.

On 14 July 2003 in his syndicated column in The Washington Post, Robert Novak identified "Wilson's wife" publicly as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" named "Valerie Plame". The column was a response to another, published by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," in which Ambassador Wilson stated that the George W. Bush administration exaggerated unreliable claims that Iraq intended to purchase uranium yellowcake to support the administration's arguments that Iraq was proliferating weapons of mass destruction so as to justify its preemptive war in Iraq.

Novak's public disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's classified covert CIA identity led to a CIA leak grand jury investigation, resulting in the indictment and successful prosecution of Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- Assistant to the President of the United States, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs from 2001 to 2005 -- for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators.

Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House is a memoir that covers Mrs. Wilson tenure in the CIA, the leak of her secret identity, and the subsequent scandal. The book provoked a lawsuit even before its launching. In May, the publisher and Valerie Wilson sued J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, and Michael V. Hayden, Director of the CIA, arguing that the CIA was "unconstitutionally interfering with the publication of her memoir, Fair Game, which is set to be published in October, by not allowing Plame to mention the dates she served in the CIA, even though those dates are public information."

The agency insisted that her dates of service remained classified and were not mentioned in the book, in spite of a letter published in the Congressional Record and available on the Library of Congress website from the C.I.A. to Ms. Wilson about her retirement benefits saying that she had worked for the agency since November 1985. The judged decided in favor of the agency. The CIA publication review board explained that the manuscript was "replete with statements" that "become classified when they are linked with a specific time frame", but cleared the way for the memoir to be published.

Publishers Weekly

The government redacted much of the significant information in the first section of Wilson's memoir, which concerns her career in the CIA. In print, a black bar omitted the words and passages; on audio, a tone does the deleting. Once the novelty of the beeps wears off, the incompleteness of Wilson's narrative, at first tantalizing, becomes frustrating. The constant interruptions make it difficult for a listener to assemble a coherent story. Once Wilson's identity is leaked by White House insiders, the memoir's redactions cease for the most part. Unfortunately, her distress over the attempted destruction of her and her husband's professional reputations is considerably less riveting than her spy career. Whiles neither a prose stylist or an actress, Wilson reads clearly, with immediacy and sincerity and a note of barely suppressed anger. Laura Rozen's afterword (occupying the last two CDs) fills in the gaps removed by the CIA. It's intriguing and considerably more polished. The two narratives create an interesting, if not entirely satisfying, account of a disturbing contemporary scandal. Simultaneous release with the Simon & Schuster hardcover (reviewed online). (Nov.)

Publisher's Note     9
Joining the CIA     11
Tour     51
3     87
Love and the Island of Misfit Toys     102
Motherhood     123
Mother and Part-Time Spy     145
Trip to Niger     167
Shock and Awe     184
Exposed     221
The Only Washington Scandal Without Sex     256
The Year from Hell     284
Stay and Fight     320
Indictment     355
Life after the Agency     384
Alice in Wonderland     420
The Libby Trial and Farewell to Washington     448
Epilogue     483
Afterword     486
Appendix     609
Postpartum Depression Resources     623
Acknowledgments     625
Afterword Acknowledgments     631