Outed spy: I'm not going away
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. --Outed spy Valerie Plame says she isn't going away, no matter what the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue want.
Touring in support of a new memoir, the former CIA operative said in a speech Sunday that she and husband Joseph Wilson have left Washington behind but have no intention of keeping quiet about the way they say they were retaliated against by the White House and others.
"They would like nothing more for us to than be silent and go away. We are not going to give them the satisfaction," said Plame.
But she also said that neither she nor her husband -- whose 2003 op-ed column in the
Plame, 44, went from an undercover CIA operative to household name after syndicated columnist Robert Novak revealed her identity in a column in a 2003 story about Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium.
The disclosure triggered an investigation that led to the conviction of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the only person charged in the case. He was not convicted of leaking but of lying and obstructing the probe, and President Bush commuted his 2 1/2-year prison sentence.
On Sunday, about 900 people turned out for Plame's $28-a-ticket appearance at a Vermont Woman newspaper lecture series at a Sheraton hotel ballroom, six days after the release of "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House."
Plame got a $1 million advance for the book. Her speaking fee Sunday wasn't disclosed; neither Plame nor Vermont Woman publisher Suzanne Gillis would say what it was.
In a 52-minute speech and a question-and-answer session that followed, Plame recounted some details about her CIA training, her marriage to Wilson -- a veteran diplomat -- and the "wild and woolly" fallout they endured after her name was published.
"I felt like someone sucker punched me in the gut," she said.
The revelation compromised some of her former CIA contacts, put her family at the center of a "media maelstrom" and effectively ended her career as a spy, she said.
The book, which had to be cleared for publication by the CIA as part of a secrecy agreement she signed when she joined, was dramatically redacted for what she said were reasons more related to the White House's political agenda than to national security.
Publisher Simon & Schuster -- which lost a court fight over the deletions -- opted to print the book using gray blackout over the parts the CIA objected to, for effect. Most of the deletions had to do with the dates of her CIA service, according to Plame.
"The vast majority of what's underneath those black lines has nothing to do with national security information," she said.
"Although this is only a piece of the story, I think it's an important piece, because it shows a much broader pattern of activity and behavior by this administration to silence its critics and to use national security and fear as a bludgeon so that they can perpetuate their own political agenda," Plame said.
Plame, who is also suing Vice President Cheney, former White House political strategist Karl Rove, Libby and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, said she hopes the civil suit will lead to more revelations about her case.
Until the book's publication, Plame and her husband had faded from the limelight in recent months. Six months ago, they moved to Santa Fe, N.M.
"We have every desire to move beyond this," she said. "We do not want to be defined by this. This is an important story, it has to be told. But I want to be able to move on."
