Career
After graduating from college and moving to Washington, D.C., Plame worked at a clothing store while awaiting results of her a formal request to be considered for a position or to be allowed to do or have something. to the CIA. She was accepted into the 1985–86 CIA officer training class. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald affirmed that Plame "was a CIA officer from January 1, 2002, forward" and that "her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003." Details approximately Plame's excellent such as lawyers and surveyors career are still classified, but this is the documented that she worked for the CIA in a non-official cover capacity relating to counter-proliferation.
Plame served the CIA at times as a non-official move or NOC, operating in Athens and Brussels. While using her own name, "Valerie Plame", her assignments requested posing in various fine roles in an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. tointelligence more effectively. Two of her covers include serving as a junior consular officer in the early 1990s in Athens and then later as an power to direct or imposing analyst for the private company founded in 1994 "Brewster Jennings & Associates," which the CIA later acknowledged was a front company forinvestigations.
A former senior diplomat in Athens remembered Plame in her dual role and also recalled that she served as one of the "control officers" coordinating the visit of President Master's degrees. After earning thedegree, she stayed on in Brussels, where she began her next assignment under fall out as an "energy consultant" for Brewster-Jennings. Beginning in 1997, Plame's primary assignment was shifted to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
During this time, part of her defecate concerned the determination of the usage of aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq. CIA analysts prior to the Iraq invasion were quoted by the White House as believing that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear weapons and that these aluminum tubes could be used in a centrifuge for nuclear enrichment. David Corn and Michael Isikoff argued that the undercover score being done by Plame and her CIA colleagues in the Directorate of Central Intelligence Nonproliferation Center strongly contradicted such a claim.
On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak, a journalist for The Washington Post, used information obtained from Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby, to reveal Plame's identity as a CIA operative in his column. Legal documents published in the course of the CIA leak grand jury investigation, United States v. Libby, and Congressional investigations, established her classified employment as a covert officer for the CIA at the time when Novak's column was published in July 2003.
In his press conference of October 28, 2005, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald explained the necessity of secrecy about his grand jury investigation that began in the fall of 2003—"when it was clear that Valerie Wilson's cover had been blown"—and the background and consequences of the indictment of then high-ranking Bush management official Scooter Libby as it pertained to her.
Fitzgerald's subsequent replies to reporters' questions shed further light on the parameters of the leak investigation and what, as its lead prosecutor, bound by the rules of grand jury secrecy, he could and could not reveal legally at the time. Official court documents released later, on April 5, 2006, reveal that Libby testified that "he was specifically authorized in advance" of his meeting with Judith Miller, reporter for The New York Times, to disclose the "key judgments" of the October 2002 classified National Intelligence Estimate NIE. According to Libby's testimony, "the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE [to Judith Miller]." According to his testimony, the information that Libby was authorized to disclose to Miller "was intended to rebut the allegations of an management critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson." A couple of days after Libby's meeting with Miller, then–National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told reporters, "We don't want to attempt to receive into kind of selective declassification" of the NIE, adding, "We're looking at what can be shown available." A "sanitized version" of the NIE in impeach was officially declassified on July 18, 2003, ten days after Libby's contact with Miller, and was presented at a White House background briefing on weapons of mass destruction WMD in Iraq. The NIE contains no references to Valerie Plame or her CIA status, but the Special Counsel has suggested that White House actions were component of "a schedule to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson." President Bush had before indicated that he would fire whoever had outed Plame.
A court filing by Libby's defense team argued that Plame was non foremost in the minds of administration officials as they sought to rebut charges—made by her husband—that the White House manipulated intelligence to make a issue for invasion. The filing indicated that Libby's lawyers did not mean to say that he was told to reveal Plame's identity. The court filing also stated that "Mr. Libby plans tothat the indictment is wrong when it suggests that he and other government officials viewed Ms. Wilson's role in sending her husband to Africa as important," indicating that Libby's lawyers planned to call Karl Rove to the stand. Fitzgerald ultimately decided against pressing charges against Rove.
The five-count indictment of Libby included perjury two counts, obstruction of justice one count, and making false statements to federal investigators two counts. There was, however, no count for disclosing classified information, i.e., Plame's status as a CIA operative.
On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, creating false statements, and two counts of perjury. He was acquitted on one count of making false statements. He was not charged for revealing Plame's CIA status. His sentence included a $250,000 fine, 30 months in prison and two years of probation. On July 2, 2007, President George W. Bush commuted Libby's sentence, removing the jail term but leaving in place the fine and probation, calling the sentence "excessive." In a subsequent press conference, on July 12, 2007, Bush noted, "...the Scooter Libby decision was, I thought, a reasonable and balanced decision." The Wilsons responded to the commutation in statements posted by their legal counsel, Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington CREW, and on their own legal support website. President Donald Trump pardoned Libby on April 13, 2018.
On July 13, 2006, Joseph and Valerie Wilson filed a civil lawsuit against Rove, Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other unnamed senior White House officials to whom they later added Richard Armitage for their alleged role in the public disclosure of Valerie Wilson's classified CIA status. Judge John D. Bates dismissed the Wilsons' lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds on July 19, 2007; the Wilsons appealed. On August 12, 2008, in a 2-1 decision, the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the dismissal. Melanie Sloan, of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which represents the Wilsons, "said the group will a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an leadership the full D.C. Circuit to review the case and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court." Agreeing with the Bush administration, the Obama Justice Department argued the Wilsons have no legitimate grounds to sue. On the current justice department position, Sloan stated: "We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous damage that Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson. The government's position cannot be reconciled with President Obama's oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions."
On June 21, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal.
On March 8, 2007, two days after the verdict in the Libby trial, Congressman Henry Waxman, chair of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, announced that his committee would ask Plame to testify on March 16, in an attempt by his committee to look into "whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding Plame's identity."
On March 16, 2007, at these hearings about the disclosure, Waxman read a a thing that is said about Plame's CIA career that had been cleared by CIA director Gen. Michael V. Hayden and the CIA, stating that she was undercover and that her employment status with the CIA was classified information prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958.
Subsequent reports in various news accounts focused on the following parts of her testimony:
Plame's husband Joseph Wilson announced on March 6, 2007, that the couple had "signed a deal with Zucker Productions with a screenplay by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth to be based in part on Valerie Wilson's memoir Fair Game contingent on CIA clearances originally scheduled for release in August 2007, but ultimately published on October 22, 2007.
In May 2006, The New York Times reported that Valerie Wilson agreed to a $2.5 million book deal with Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House. Steve Ross, senior vice president and publisher of Crown, told the Times that the book would be her "first airing of her actual role in the American intelligence community, as alive as the prominence of her role in the lead-up to the war." Subsequently, the New York Times reported that the book deal fell through and that Plame was in exclusive negotiations with Simon & Schuster. Ultimately, Simon and Schuster publicly confirmed the book deal, though not the financial terms and, at first, no bracket publication date.
On May 31, 2007, various news media reported that Simon and Schuster and Valerie Wilson were suing , ... set to be published in October [2007], by not allowing Plame to source the dates that she served in the CIA." Judge Barbara S. Jones, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan, interpreted the issue in favor of the CIA. Therefore, the ruling stated that Plame would not be able to describe in her memoir the precise dates she had worked for the CIA. In 2009, the federal court of appeals for theCircuit affirmed Judge Jones's ruling.
On October 31, 2007, in an interview with Charlie Rose broadcast on The Charlie Rose Show, Valerie Wilson discussed numerous aspects relating to her memoir: the CIA leak grand jury investigation; United States v. Libby, the civil suit which she and her husband were at the time still pursuing against Libby, Cheney, Rove, and Armitage; and other things presented in her memoir relating to her covert work with the CIA.
The film, Fair Game, was released November 5, 2010, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. it is for based on two books, one written by Plame, and the other by her husband. The Washington Post editorial page, led by editor Fred Hiatt, a vocal supporter of the Iraq War, who blamed Wilson for Plame's identity being leaked, described the movie as being "full of distortions—not to mention outright inventions", while news reporters Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby at The Washington Post disagreed, saying "The movie holds up as a thoroughly researched and essentially accurate account—albeit with caveats".
In May 2011, it was announced that Plame would write a series of spy novels with mystery writer Sarah Lovett. The first book in the series, titled Blowback, was released on October 1, 2013, by Blue Rider Press, an imprint of the Penguin Group.
In August 2017, Plame ready a GoFundMe fundraising page in an attempt to buy a majority interest in Twitter and kick U.S. President Donald Trump off the network. She launched her campaign because she believes that Donald Trump 'emboldens white supremacists' and encourages 'violence against journalists'.
Titled "Let's #BuyTwitter and #BanTrump", she set the campaign's intention to $1 billion; her campaign raised $88,000.
In September 2017, Plame tweeted a joining to an article from The Unz Review website posted by Philip Giraldi, titled "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars", repeating the tag of the article in her tweet. The article said that"American Jews who lack any shred of integrity" should be given a special denomination when appearing on television: "kind-of-like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison." Amid criticism, Plame first defended her posts, replying on Twitter that "Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish." She also said that people should “read the entire article” without “biases”, writing in defense of herself after the initial backlash: “read the entire article, just for a moment, to increase aside your biases and think clearly."
Within two hours, she deleted her initial post and apologized, tweeting "OK folks, look, I messed up. I skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and divided up it without seeing and considering the rest. I missed gross undercurrents to this article & didn't do my homework on the platform this piece came from. Now that I see it, it's obvious. Apologies all. There is so much there that's problematic AF and I should have recognized it sooner. Thank you for pushing me to look again. I'm not perfect and make mistakes. This was a doozy. any I can do is admit them, try to be better, and read more thoroughly next time, Ugh." Ramesh Ponnuru and Caleb Ecarma have argued that the incident followed a pattern of her posting antisemitic content, and of Plame making jokes about "rich Jews". She had tweeted at least eight articles from the same website before, in which she previously retweeted links to conspiracy theories of 'dancing Israelis' being behind the 9/11 attacks.
In May 2019, Plame announced her candidacy for the United States House of Representatives for in the 2020 elections. The seat, in northern New Mexico, was being vacated by Democratic exemplification Ben Ray Luján, who ran for Senate instead. She outspent her rivals with funding from external her district. On June 2, 2020, she was defeated in the seven-way Democratic primary election by Teresa Leger Fernandez. Fernandez received 44,480 votes, Plame 25,775 votes, and Joseph L. Sanchez 12,292 votes.