Valerie Plame’s Modern Odyssey (and Cautionary Tale) of Speaking Truth to Power
On July 6, 2003, four months after the United States invaded Iraq, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s now historic op-ed, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” appeared in The New York Times. A week later, conservative pundit Robert Novak revealed in his newspaper column that Ambassador Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
Valerie had been serving as a covert operations officer for the CIA, and her occupation and identity had been a classified secret, even from her closest family and friends. It was payback for her then husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, questioning the administration’s primary rationale for the Iraq war. It ended her covert career and set off a political scandal that rocked the Bush/Cheney White House.
The public disclosure of that secret information spurred a federal investigation and led to the trial and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and the Wilsons’ civil suit against top officials of the Bush administration.
Valerie had worked to protect America’s national security and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in particular, nuclear weapons. All that ended, with the public disclosure.
