Valerie Elise Plame (born August 13, 1963) is an American writer, novelist, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. As the subject of the 2003 Plame affair, also known as the CIA leak scandal, Plame's identity as a CIA officer was leaked to and subsequently published by Robert Novak of The Washington Post. She described this period and the media firestorm that ensued as "mortifying, and I think I was in shock for a couple years".Eyewitness to History, "Former CIA Agent Valerie Plame Discusses Bush Administration's Identity Leak and Aftermath, Spying & Espionage"
In the aftermath of the scandal, Richard Armitage in the U.S. Department of State was identified as one source of the information, and Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying to investigators. After a failed appeal, President George W. Bush commuted Libby's sentence and in 2018, President Donald Trump pardoned him. The individual responsible for leaking the information was never charged.
In collaboration with a ghostwriter, Plame wrote a memoir detailing her career and the events leading up to her resignation from the CIA. She has subsequently written and published at least two spy novels. A 2010 biographical feature film, Fair Game, was produced based on memoirs by her and her husband.
Plame was an unsuccessful candidate for New Mexico's 3rd congressional district in 2020, placing second behind Teresa Leger Fernandez in the June 2, 2020, primary.
Early life and education Valerie Elise Plame was born on August 13, 1963, on Elmendorf Air Force Base, in Anchorage, Alaska, to Diane (née McClintock) and Samuel Plame III.Associated Press, "The Real Valerie Plame" (), reposted in Editor and Publisher, May 30, 2005, accessed August 12, 2007. Plame says that her paternal grandfather was Jewish, the son of a rabbi who emigrated from Ukraine; the original family surname was "Plamevotski". The rest of Plame's family was Protestant (the religion in which Plame was raised); she was unaware, until she was an adult, that her grandfather was Jewish.Wilson, pp. 173–174.
She graduated in 1981 from Lower Moreland High School, in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, and in 1985 from Pennsylvania State University, with a B.A. in advertising. While attending Penn State, she joined Pi Beta Phi sorority"Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House". and worked for the business division of the Daily Collegian student newspaper. Alt URLFormer Spy Accused Of Anti-Semitism Eyeing Senate Run March 29, 2019, By Aiden Pink, The Forward Career
After graduating from college and moving to Washington, D.C., Plame worked at a clothing store while awaiting results of her application 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.""Transcript of Special Counsel Fitzgerald's Press Conference", The Washington Post, October 28, 2005, accessed July 15, 2006. Details about Plame's professional career are still classified, but it is documented that she worked for the CIA in a non-official cover (or NOC) capacity relating to counter-proliferation.Patrick Fitzgerald, "August 27, 2004 Affidavit of Patrick J. Fitzgerald Placed in Public File Pursuant to Opinion Released February 3, 2006", online posting, The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2006: 28 n. 15, accessed August 7, 2007. , "Exhibit A" in sentencing memorandum exhibits, United States v. Libby, online posting of public document, The Next Hurrah (blog), May 26, 2007: 2–3.
Plame served the CIA at times as a non-official cover, operating in Athens and Brussels. While using her own name, "Valerie Plame", her assignments required posing in various professional roles in order to gather intelligence more effectively.Larry C. Johnson, "The Big Lie about Valerie Plame" (), tpmcafe.com (Special Guest blog), June 13, 2005, accessed July 15, 2006. (Johnson is "a former CIA analyst who was in Plame's officer training class in 1985–86" and Deputy Director for Special Operations, Transportation Security, and Anti-Terrorism Assistance in the U.S. State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism until October 1993.) Two of her covers include serving as a junior consular officer in the early 1990s in Athens and then later as an energy analyst for the private company (founded in 1994) "Brewster Jennings & Associates," which the CIA later acknowledged was a front company for certain investigations. 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 George H. W. Bush to Greece and Turkey in July 1991. The matter of whether she actually had covert status is disputed."Novak: 'No great crime' with leak" . Wednesday, October 1, 2003, CNN After the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the CIA sent her first to the London School of Economics and then the College of Europe, in Bruges, for master's degrees. After earning the second degree, she stayed on in Brussels, where she began her next assignment under cover 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 work concerned the determination of the use of aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq.David Corn, "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA", The Nation (web only), September 6, 2006. Citing information in the book Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, co-written by Corn and Michael Isikoff. 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.Attachment A: Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, July 1 Through 31 December 200, Office of the Directorate of Central Intelligence (ODCI), CIA, Dec. 2002, accessed October 27, 2006.Unclassified Report to Congress: () on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions, January 1 Through June 30, 2002, Office of the Directorate of Central Intelligence (ODCI), CIA, June 2002, accessed October 27, 2006. David Corn and Michael Isikoff argued that the undercover work being done by Plame and her CIA colleagues in the Directorate of Central Intelligence Nonproliferation Center strongly contradicted such a claim.
"Plamegate"
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. , "Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Hearing on Disclosure of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson's ldentity and White House Procedures for Safeguarding Classified Information", online posting, United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, oversight.house.gov, March 16, 2007: 2, accessed March 19, 2007"Investigations: Disclosure of CIA Agent Identity" and "Disclosure of CIA Agent Identity: Hearing Examines Exposure of Covert CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson's Identity", United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (Oversight Committee), March 16, 2007, accessed July 10, 2007. (Hyperlinks in menu, including streaming video of hearing; box with "Documents and Links", featuring documents chart .)
In his press conference on 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 Administration 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]." , as posted online in The Smoking Gun (blog), April 5, 2006, accessed July 15, 2006. According to his testimony, the information that Libby was authorized to disclose to Miller "was intended to rebut the allegations of an administration 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 try to get into kind of selective declassification" of the NIE, adding, "We're looking at what can be made available."Michael Isikoff, "The Leaker in Chief?" Newsweek, April 4, 2006, accessed July 15, 2006. A "sanitized version" of the NIE in question 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."Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction", fas.org (blog), accessed July 15, 2006. The NIE contains no references to Valerie Plame or her CIA status, but the Special Counsel has suggested that White House actions were part of "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson."David E. Sanger, "Special Prosecutor Links White House to CIA Leak" , San Francisco Gate (blog), April 11, 2006, accessed July 15, 2006. President Bush had previously indicated that he would fire whoever had outed Plame.
A court filing by Libby's defense team argued that Plame was not 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 case for invasion. The filing indicated that Libby's lawyers did not intend to say that he was told to reveal Plame's identity."'Scooter' Won't Play Plame Blame Game", New York Post, April 14, 2006, accessed July 15, 2006. The court filing also stated that "Mr. Libby plans to demonstrate that 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.Don Gonyea, Rove Won't Be Charged in CIA Leak Case, NPR, Morning Edition (June 13, 2006).
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. Libby trial