Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House or
How a Top CIA Agency Was Betrayed by Her Own Government
Valerie Plame Wilson, 2007
Simon & Schuster
412 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451623871
Summary
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 Timeson 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 Houseis 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. (From the publisher.)