Former Central Intelligence Agency officer and author Valerie Plame highlighted the Welty Gala at Mississippi University for Women Friday night, where she pressed on gala attendees the importance of staying engaged in national conversations and challenging the government.
Plame, who specialized in nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, became a national household name in July 2003 after an editorial in the Washington Post identified her as an operative barely a week after her husband’s own op-ed piece criticizing the invasion of Iraq ran in the New York Times. The ensuing scandal resulted in a grand jury investigation of the leak, during which Scooter Libby, a vice presidential adviser who was accused of leaking Plame’s name to journalists, was indicted for obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements to federal investigators and two counts of perjury. He was later convicted of all but one count of making false statements.
At the gala, Plame described the moment she learned of the Washington Post article. She had been in her bedroom when her husband, Joe Wilson, walked in and tossed a copy of the Post on the bed.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever had those moments in your life where you know that everything that went before is different than everything that comes after,” she said. “That’s what that moment was. It felt like being punched in the gut.”
Plame told her whole story to gala attendees – how Wilson had gone to Niger in 2002 to investigate the possibility that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger’s mines to build weapons of mass destruction, how Wilson reported back to the CIA that he didn’t find any evidence of uranium going to Iraq and how, more than a year later, his editorial in the Times suggested the George W. Bush administration was mishandling intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq.
A new life
At a press conference before the gala, Plame said having her identity and career go from extremely private to extremely public overnight was like “going down Alice’s rabbit hole.”
She was worried about the safety of the assets she’d worked with and of her 3-year-old twins.
“And I knew certainly that my covert career in the CIA was over,” she said. “It began a years long character assassination campaign. We were called liars, traitors. I was called a glorified secretary – because, you know, I’m a girl.”
The longer version of Plame’s story is detailed in her memoir “Fair Game,” published in 2007. It was cathartic to be able to tell the story herself, she said at the gala, since when she still worked for the CIA it was mostly Wilson talking publicly. Or at least it was cathartic until the CIA redacted about 10 percent of the book. Plame said she never wrote anything that was classified and the redactions were another way opponents have tried to silence her.
With “Fair Game,” she wanted readers to understand the importance — and the consequences — of challenging power.
“You have to hold your government to account,” she told The Dispatch before the gala. “And that’s what my husband was attempting to do and I got pulled along for the ride.”
Staying informed
Plame also talked about her foray into fiction writing at the gala. She has co-authored with Sara Lovett the books “Blowback” and “Burned,” both about a female covert operations officer in the CIA. While she misses her career as an operative, Plame said fiction writing has been fun. In particular, she’s glad she got to write her own fictional female spy – most female spies in pop culture are underdeveloped, unrealistic or both, she said.
She finished her talk by reminding attendees of the importance of staying engaged in national conversations and of voting.
“Don’t just stay in your echo chamber,” she said. “Don’t just go to those news sources that will (tell) you the comforting things that you need to hear. It’s really important to be informed citizens.”
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