Unfortunately though, the Plame affair was far from a fictitious paranoia ridden screenplay; and as history trudges on it will forever be a shadow looming over the legacy of the Bush administration and the damaging ramifications it placed on the public perception of the Central Intelligence Agency. Published in 2007, Plame's autobiography, Fair Game, provides insight into events surrounding her outing as an undercover CIA agent, its impact, and the twenty years of service she devoted to the CIA. This review will begin with a brief synopsis of Fair Game, discuss the unfolding of events that led to Plame's outing, and highlight some of the issues within the Central Intelligence Agency as pointed out by Plame throughout her twenty year career.
Published in October 2007, Fair Game is an account of Valerie Plame's twenty year tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency and the events that led up to and followed the leak of her name by Washington Post reporter Robert Novak in July 2003. As an employee of the CIA, before Plame could publish her book, she had to submit all her writings to the CIA Publications Review Board (PRB), to make sure she was not releasing any classified information. There are significant portions of Fair Game blacked out that the CIA redacted but as the reader finds out later on towards the end of the book, much of that information had already been declassified and was in the public sphere. Since, much of the blacked out portions of the book were already declassified, there is an afterword by Laura Rozen that fills in the missing pieces of information.
When Valerie Plame first joined the Agency in 1985, under CIA director William Casey, it 'was in the midst of rapid growth and exciting transformation'. Casey, who, 'to this day many in the Agency consider the best director the Agency has ever had', began the Career Trainee program, an elite program into which Plame was accepted. The program was a rigorous training program that coupled intense academic teachings of the Agency's ways, government and political systems, and vigorous physical training at the "Farm". In the first chapter, Plame begins with her experience at the "Farm", which included paramilitary-style operational training and corps- building. With such exercises as trudging through woods and swamps carrying eighty pound book bags at 4 a.m., jumping out of helicopters, evading potential captors, and simulated situations of being captured and held captive, it is obvious the CIA went to great lengths in training their recruits and sifting out the weaklings. After successfully graduating from the trainee program, Plame got her first assignment as a CIA case officer in Athens, Greece in 1989. Having had official cover while in Greece, she worked by day as a junior political officer at the U.S. Embassy.
It was during the after-hours where Plame carried out her work as a covert operations officer. While in Greece, she was assigned to the internal political developments, and much of her work focused on the Marxist terrorist group 17 November (N17), which had been responsible for over 100 attacks and 23 assassinations, one which included the Athens CIA Station Chief Richard Welch in 1975. As an operations officer, it was Plame's duty to seek out potential recruits, establish connections, maintain relations, and decide whether or not they would be a valuable source of information for the Agency. Essentially, she spent her years in Greece recruiting spies that could provide valuable inside information on N17. By 1992, Plame returned back to Washington after the N17 had been taken down by local Greek authorities. Between the years of 1992 and 1996, Plame worked as a Nonofficial Covered Officer (NOC) in Brussels. Plame spent only a year as a NOC, because the prior years were devoted to academic training to distance herself from the U.S. Government. By 1997, she was called back to headquarters to work in the newly created Couterproliferation Division (CPD) in the Directorate of Operations (DO). It was also that year, that Plame would meet future husband, Former U.S. Ambassador to Gabon, Joseph C. Wilson IV. By 1998, the couple married and settled in Washington, D.C.
The CPD that Plame joined in 1998 was 'devoted to obtaining intelligence and thwarting nuclear acquisitions efforts of rogue nations and nonstate actors'. One of the main objectives and greatest successes of the CPD during this time was the take down of A.Q. Khan in 2003. Khan, a Pakistani, had over the years set up a large nuclear black market network. After giving birth to her twins, Plame took a year off work before returning to the agency full time in April 2001. Upon her return, 'Valerie Wilson was one of two CIA operations officers assigned to work in the Iraq branch of the CPD'. After the events of September 11th occurred, it was not long before the war drums began slowly beating in the distance. It was also during this time that the trickle of politics began to slowly seep into the agency. According to Plame, the Agency began the investigation into the yellowcake uranium from Niger shortly after an officer came to her office saying that she had just gotten off the phone with a staffer from the office of the Vice President. The officer had spoken with the staffer after they had received an intelligence report passed on from the Italian government.
The report "alleged in 1999 Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium. .. from Niger'. The staffer told the officer that the Vice President wanted more information on the claim. When this officer came to Plame, saying that she had just received a phone call from a staffer working in the Vice President's office she was momentarily perplexed. As Plame noted, 'in my experience, I had never known that to happen. There were strict protocols and procedures for funneling intelligence to policy makers or fielding their questions'. Plame brushed it aside and went to work,' unaware of the unprecedented number of visits the vice president had made to Headquarters to meet with analysts and look for an available evidence to support the Iraq WMD claims the administration was beginning to make'. Working with fellow employees on how to best investigate the Niger claims, Plame and her colleagues worked diligently trying to come up with the best options.
It was during this time that Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, was brought up as someone who could assist the agency in investigating the Niger claims. Despite later reports, it was not Plame herself who had recommended Joe for the mission but a midlevel reports officer,' who knew of Joe's history and role in the first Gulf War, his extensive experience in Africa, and also that in 1999 the CIA had sent Joe on a sensitive mission to Africa on uranium issues'. At the time, Plame embraced the idea, unaware of the damaging events and controversy that would ensue. Plame and the reports officer met with their boss to discuss the proposition. Embracing the idea, their boss, 'suggested putting together a meeting with Joe and the appropriate Agency and State officers'. A week later, Wilson met with 'Iraq/Niger experts from CPD, the DI, and State', and three weeks later in early March of 2002, he began his fact finding mission in Niger. Upon his return nine days later, two 'CIA officers, one of whom was the Reports Officer who had suggested [Wilson]', came to the Wilson's household to debrief Wilson on his trip so they could immediately write up an intelligence report. As the public now knows, Wilson found no evidence that supported claims that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from Niger. Yet despite the refuting claims, the administration still seemed convinced that Iraq was in possession of WMD and posed a serious threat to the nation's security.
Furthermore, in his 2003 January State of the Union speech, President Bush stated 'the British government has learned that Sadam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa'. The war drums continued to beat on, getting louder with the passing months, and by March 2003, the invasion of Iraq had begun. Needless to say, the Wilson's were bewildered. Both Plame and Wilson had and knew of evidence that refuted much of what the Bush administration had been feeding to the public, especially the claim that Iraq had been seeking uranium from Niger. These sixteen words that showed up in the President's speech would be a major source of contention in the following months. How that claim made its way into a presidential speech to the public, was not only bewildering to the Wilson's but to many others in the CIA. As the war lingered on, and WMDs continuously failed to show up, Wilson was prompted to write an article about his trip to Niger. The July 6 New York Times op-ed, titled "What I Did Not Find in Africa", set in motion the firestorm that would soon become the Plame Affair. On July 14, weeks after Wilson's article appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post ran an article by journalist Robert Novak that claimed, 'Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.' After Plame's identity as a CIA agent was released, the backlash began. Accusations of nepotism against Plame were copiously thrown around. Wilson was accused of biased and sloppy reporting about his trip to Niger. The toll that the controversy had on the couple was tremendous. The affair would drag on for four tumultuous years, finally ending in the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who had leaked Plame's name to Robert Novak.
Fair Game highlights one of the many issues the Intelligence Community has had to continuously tackle. That issue, politicized intelligence, is one that has been as onerous as it has been persistent; and as revealed throughout Fair Game, how easily politicized intelligence can shape even the direst of policy decisions. Another issue, as pointed out by Plame, which the CIA dealt with during this period, was the deep seated disagreements that existed amongst the CIA and other Intelligence Agencies. Though genuine disagreements amongst the various intelligence agencies are common, in the case of the Iraq War and WMDs, the failure to convey the severity of the disagreements that existed failed to make its way to policy makers. Though Plame cites many of the obstacles the agency faced, she doesn't recommend any remedies to alleviate or fix the cited issues.
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