Fair Game

Back in 2003 my major news sources were slashdot, the onion, and occasional daily show episodes. Most of what I knew about Valerie Plame Wilson came from what Max would mention to me. Actually not too long before the war started up the one person in the house who read the Wall Street Journal told me that the US was going to go to war with Iraq and I told him he was crazy (well, I was right about that, but wrong about the US not invading Iraq).

Having not followed the story very well at the time it was very interesting to read Fair Game by Valerie Plame Wilson. For everything I'm about to say I realize that this comes from the person on one side of the issue, but I think it has been shown that she is the far more trustworthy party. While others probably followed this better than I did for those that missed some of it, here's my supper quick summary (I'm sure if you head to wikipedia you can get a better and more accurate summary):

Valerie Plame out of college joined the CIA and was trained to be a field operative. She worked in Greece under the identity of an embassy worker and her work as a spy was to go to parties and events to find people who could be convinced to give over information and to become a spy for the US. After that tour she became a NOC - a nonoffical covered officer - the job a lot of spy movies use that I always assumed was false. The CIA gets them a job with a company to use as cover to go find people who might be willing to hand over info, but since they don't have cover as an embassy worker and thus no diplomatic immunity if caught they get no special protection and aren't suppose to claim connections to the government. At some point in there she marries Joe Wilson who was an ambassador to Iraq at the start of the first Iraq war and later worked for the government dealing wth Africa. Valerie then moves into a new division of the CIA that is working on non-proliferation and she specifically works on Iraq. When Italy revealed possible evidence that Iraq was buying Uranium from Niger Valerie was working on it and someone mentioned that her husband would be a perfect person to send to investigate. He agreed and went and found there was no way that the transaction had taken place and gave a report to the CIA. The pressure to look into this came directly from Dick Cheney. Later the president used the evidence of this purchase as a major part of his case that Saddam had WMD. Joe Wilson was displeased with that choice and wrote an article explaining that it was false. Then the white house starting attacking Joe in the media and eventually leaked that Valerie was a spy. Part of the attack was claiming that Valerie recommended Joe for the trip as a way to get him a free trip - which is absurd because the CIA only paid his travel expenses and not many people choose to go to the second poorest country on earth (the attacks ruined Joe's consulting company and main sources of income). A lot of what happened during this time also came from senators being directed by the Vice President. The Wilsons also had two young twins which added a lot of stress to the situation. The attacks got stretched past the 2004 election with the Wilsons looking like the questionable ones, but eventually things turned around. And it kind of wrapped up with Libby getting convicted. Bush commuted his sentence so he was still guilty and had to pay $250,000 but did no jail time (one thing I didn't realize is if Bush had pardoned Libby, Libby could no longer use the 5th amendment to avoid testifying in front of congress about Cheney and Bush's involvement).

Obviously I skipped a lot. But the overall message is the government lied to start a war it wanted, and then used the media to try to discredit those that disagreed and ruined the career of a covert operative working to keep WMD out of Iraq.

I was amazed to find out that after her name was leaked in 2003 Valerie kept working for the CIA in a non-covert role till 2006. I think that if I worked for the government and the white house started attacking my family I wouldn't stick around so long. Another interesting item is that Saddam was trying to maintain the image that he had WMD. The heads of his military all knew that their division did not have them, but was sure that the other divisions did.

I'd really recommend the book - it is a lot like all those movies about the secret spy who the government turns against and tries to discredit (ok, it is a bit less extreme than the Borne series or The Recruit, but it is real!). Also there are a ton of details I left out in the summary. It is a little tough to read since significant portions (especially in the first 100 pages) have large portions that are blocked out. Even the title of one of the chapters is blocked out as well as portions of the chapter where she talks about her postpartum depression. A lot of info the CIA made her block out is actually already known so the last 80 pages are another author running through the details of the story and putting in a lot of what is blocked out. One of the main items the CIA didn't want published is how long she was at the CIA which caused major sections to be blocked and many places where one word in the middle of a sentence was blocked. Particularly funny was the chapter she wrote about the CIA censoring her work and the portions of that which were censored.