'Fair Game' Tells Plame Saga from Her Viewpoint

DATE October 23, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Valerie Plame Wilson discusses new book "Fair
Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

When she was an undercover operative in the CIA, Valerie Plame Wilson's best
friends didn't know the real story of how she made her living. But when she
was outed in a column by Robert Novak, the world knew. She and her husband,
Ambassador Joe Wilson, believe her cover was blown by officials in the White
House as payback. A year before, Joe Wilson had been sent by the CIA to Niger
to investigate the claim that Iraq had tried to purchase yellow cake uranium
there for its nuclear weapons program. Wilson found no evidence of such a
transaction. Then, in the 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush
said these now famous 16 words: "The British government has learned that
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

On July 6th, 2003, Joe Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times
titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," where he asked the question, `Did the
Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons
programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?' On July 14th, Robert Novak revealed
in his column that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed as special prosecutor to investigate the leak
of her identity. Vice President Cheney's then-chief of staff Lewis "Scooter"
Libby was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice, but no one has been
convicted of the actual leak.

Valerie Plame Wilson has a new memoir called "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My
Betrayal by the White House."

Valerie Plame Wilson, welcome to FRESH AIR. You know, this story of the leak
of your name might strike a lot of people as being over. Is it over for you?

Ms. VALERIE PLAME WILSON: Certainly not. Because, for the first time in
nearly four and a half years, finally I get to tell my story. And everyone
else has been--literally in the world--has been talking about it, so it feels
very good to be able to speak finally, find my own voice and be able to
tell--I guess it's a cautionary tale of the consequences of speaking truth to
power and the importance of holding our government to account for its words
and deeds.

GROSS: What parts of the story are not over for you?

Ms. WILSON: Well, there's still two open cases. One is our civil suit,
which was dismissed primarily, as I understand it, on procedural grounds, not
really on the merits of the case. So we are appealing and it will go further
up. And then there's also the case against the CIA on First Amendment grounds
that, as you may know, the agency has taken the position that I am not
permitted to acknowledge my agency affiliation prior to January 2002. So we
felt that that went well beyond their purview of safeguarding national
security and we have filed an appeal in that case, as well.

GROSS: Your book has large portions that have been redacted by the CIA.

Ms. WILSON: That's right.

GROSS: Any CIA employee has to submit any manuscript to the CIA before
publication, and they have the right to insist that parts of it be omitted
because it might violate national security.

Ms. WILSON: Indeed.

GROSS: So I'll give you an example of how your book is redacted. On page 132
you write: "Back again at headquarters, I threw myself once more into the
business of finding and getting intelligence on Iraq." That sentence is
followed by five redacted pages, five pages of just blanked out words.

Ms. WILSON: Yes. How incredibly frustrating. I would say the vast majority
of the redactions are due, in fact, to this bright line position taken by the
agency that I cannot acknowledge my number of years of service to my country.
There are some that were redacted on national security grounds, that it's, you
know, too detailed or reveals sources and methods. I, like every other agency
officer when you come on board, I signed a secrecy agreement, which I fully
expect to uphold, that I will not reveal classified information. I take
exception, though, to this notion that my years of service is somehow
classified and thus the case.

GROSS: Now, are you not allowed to speak about the things that you're not
allowed to write about? In other words, if you can't write about it, does
that mean you can't speak about it, either?

Ms. WILSON: That's what I take away from it, yes.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. OK.

Now, you refer to a civil suit that you are appealing. This is the suit
against Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Vice President Cheney and Richard Armitage?

Ms. WILSON: Yes, that's correct. And we filed this suit last July for three
main reasons. And I--back up just a little bit. When Joe and I were
discussing whether or not we should do this--and believe me, some of those
discussions were very high volume--initially I had no desire to go down that
road, because the episode was already so painful and I didn't want more. But
as time went on and I saw what some of the fallout was from this really--what
I would call treasonous act of betraying my covert identity, there was threats
to my family, the loss of my career, sustained campaign of character
assassination. You know, as the losses mounted, I thought that maybe this was
a way to go. So when we finally did decide to file--and we had some very
long, deep discussions about this--we did it for three reasons.

One, get to the truth of the matter. We were promised in Mr. Libby's trial
that both Mr. Libby as well as the vice president himself would testify, and
they did not do that. So we really want to get to the truth of what exactly
happened. How did this come about?

Secondly, we want to make sure that government officials, the senior
administration officials responsible, are held to account for their actions.

And finally, it's a preventive measure so that future administration officials
do not believe that they can disregard the public trust placed in their office
by using it to unfold a political vendetta. And that's what we believed
happened.

GROSS: My guest is Valerie Plame Wilson, and her new memoir is called "Fair
Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House."

How did you first learn that your identity as a CIA agent had been outed?

Ms. WILSON: Mm. Joe came into our bedroom very early the morning of July
14th, 2003, and he threw the paper on the bed, and he said, `Well, he did it.'
And I knew what he was talking about, and opened up the paper and read it.
And it just felt like I got a sucker punch to the gut. And it just took my
breath away.

GROSS: What you'd read was Robert Novak's column?

Ms. WILSON: That's correct.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Ms. WILSON: And so, you know, in an instant I'm thinking of the network of
assets that I had worked with, how are they placed in jeopardy. I'm thinking
of my family security. At the time we had three-and-a-half-year-old twins.
And I knew, of course, my career as I knew it was over.

GROSS: Now, you told the House committee hearing on oversight and government
reform last March that the leak, quote, "jeopardized and even destroyed entire
networks of foreign agents, who in turn risked their own lives and those of
their families to provide the US with needed intelligence. Lives are
literally at stake."

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Do you know for sure that entire networks of foreign agents were
jeopardized and destroyed?

Ms. WILSON: There was a damage report done. I did not see it, nor do I
believe any members of Congress. But I have to assume that there was
certainly negative fallout from this. But what's, I think, even more
insidious in what happened--take my case aside--is that for potential future
human sources of intelligence who might want to cooperate with the United
States government, they've taken a look at this case and go, `Huh, why should
I jeopardize my safety and that of my family? They can't even protect one of
their own. So maybe I'll just go talk to the Russians up the street.'

GROSS: Well, speaking of protection, you think that the CIA should have done
more to protect you. What could they have done either before or after you
were outed to protect you?

Ms. WILSON: Hm. Well, I will tell you that in the spring and summer of
2004, it was a crazy period in the run-up to the presidential election. We
were receiving many threats, but one was particularly of concern, and it also
targeted not only me but Mr. Tenet, the then CIA director, Mr. Ashcroft,
then attorney general, as well as Mr. Rove. And that was sort of the final
straw for me because it seemed to be quite serious, and I went to the head of
CIA security and I requested, for a limited period of time, to have some
security on my residence, where I felt most vulnerable. And Joe and I always
said, `Well, you know, whatever happens to us happens to us, but we are
responsible for small children and their safety.' And so I felt that deeply.
And I recognized what the resources would be to do that, but it wasn't for an
indefinite period of time. You know, I thought maybe just through the
elections. And they declined to do so, and I was crushed, absolutely crushed,
because the agency makes a big deal out of, `Oh, we're all one big family.'
And, in fact, they hadn't come through when I really needed them most. And I
thought, as I write about in the book, actually, quite bitterly that the other
potential targets--Tenet, Ashcroft, Rove--they already had 24/7 security, and
I was--I didn't.

GROSS: Why do you think the CIA declined to provide you with that security?

Ms. WILSON: I have no understanding of why they made that decision. It was
a poor one.

GROSS: You know, when you were outed, a lot of people were saying, `Well, you
know, big deal. She hasn't been undercover for a few years. So, you know,
and she wasn't that deep undercover even when she was undercover. So what's
the big deal?' How would you respond to that?

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm. Well, you don't have to take my word for it. The
director of the CIA, General Hayden, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald,
the judge in the Libby trial, all of them confirmed that I, in fact, was
covert, undercover. Fitzgerald made a filing where he said I had traveled
under a variety of covers and aliases, traveling overseas, doing operational
work quite a few times in the run-up to the war with Iraq. So there was no
question this notion that somehow everyone on the Georgetown cocktail circuit
knew where I worked is absolute nonsense.

GROSS: My guest is Valerie Plame Wilson. Her new memoir is called "Fair
Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House." We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Valerie Plame Wilson. Her new
memoir is called "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White
House."

What can you tell us? I know there's a lot you cannot tell us because the CIA
doesn't want you to.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: But what can you tell us about some of the undercover work that you
did before you were outed?

Ms. WILSON: Mm. Well, I'll speak now about the work I was doing on the task
force, which was convened in the aftermath of 9/11 when, as we now all know,
that there was increased focus and energy directed toward Iraq and its alleged
WMD programs. And I eventually served as their chief of operations in
directing worldwide cases and operations against the Iraqi scientists in these
programs. What we were trying to do was gather human intelligence, good
intelligence, that we could then provide to the policymakers so they could
make wise decisions.

And we did that in a variety of ways. And that was, frankly, part of the job
I loved. Operations could be very creative. How do you get to your targets?
Obviously getting inside Iraq was extremely difficult, so you had to find
clever ways to still find and talk to these scientists, who presumably would
know something about the state of their nuclear, chemical or biological
programs.

GROSS: So did you work with the agents inside Iraq who were trying to do
that?

Ms. WILSON: Yes. We didn't always do it there, though. Sometimes we had to
wait for them to come out, international conferences, and that's always a
knife's edge trying to find them and keep them away from their security
watchdogs and so forth. Or, in other cases, they had relatives in other
foreign countries that we would speak to and then try to get messages or
information out that way.

GROSS: One of your jobs at the CIA was getting information on Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction program. And it was your job to get the information but
not to analyze the information and figure out what the significance what it
was.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: You know, you weren't suppose to interpret it, just get it.

Ms. WILSON: Right. Just get the facts.

GROSS: One of the subjects that you had to get information about was the
aluminium tubes that Iraq had imported.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And the Bush administration was saying these aluminum tubes were going
to be used as centrifuges for nuclear reactors, and these aluminum tubes were
evidence that Iraq had an active nuclear program.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Now, from your perspective, was the information that you were getting
on the aluminum tubes evidence that Iraq had an active nuclear program?

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm. As I write about in the book, it's perfectly normal for
there to be professional debates about intelligence that comes in. But this
particular case on the aluminum tubes sort of bubbled up above the regular
volume because it really became a full-throated battle between the different
intelligence agencies or different parts of the community that were looking at
the same evidence and reaching different conclusions. And it really--it raged
over quite a long period of time. There was an analyst in the CIA who felt
very strongly that these were, as you say, going to be used as centrifuges,
that they were finely-milled cylinders that could only be used for that. And
there were other dissenting views just as strongly placed that, in fact, these
were replicas of an Italian-made rocket, so for more conventional artillery.

And what I condemn in my book is how this debate--and it's a perfectly valid
debate, and I can't speak to, you know, any of the actual analysis of it, but
the debate is healthy and it should be there--but it was completely regulated
to really small font footnotes in the national intelligence estimate and other
important pieces of paper that the president and other policymakers were
looking at.

GROSS: You mean, the fact that it was a debate was regulated to a footnote.

Ms. WILSON: Exactly. And the argument that carried the day was the CIA
argument that these were, in fact, for centrifuges. And we found out later
that is not the case. In our task force, that was not our job, frankly, to
analyze the intelligence. Our's was operational, you know: Get to them,
where are they coming from, where are they going to, can we get a look at them
in between? That sort of thing. So at the time I did not take any
position--I don't have the expertise to be able to do so--on what these could
ultimately be used for. But as has since come out, a lot of papers and
discussions about this very strong debate within the intelligence community,
and it appears that, I believe, that the CIA was negligent in not putting that
in a very straightforward way to the policymakers so they could understand
that there was serious doubt within the community. You know, it was a
contentious subject on what these would be used for.

GROSS: Did you ever feel, while you were at the CIA, that the intelligence
that you were gathering was being cherry picked or spun inaccurately by the
Bush administration or by the CIA?

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm. Well, I have to say, up until Secretary Colin Powell's
speech before the UN in February 2003, making the case for war, my head was
deep in the operational weeds. I was very concerned about running secure
operations, good operations, getting to the right people, you know, very much
involved in the detail of it all. And a lot of the rhetoric was going right
over my head. But when I watched Colin Powell's speech--and I knew what
intelligence he was referring to in several of his cases of his examples--I,
as I call it in the book, I was experiencing cognitive dissonance because I
knew what he was claiming to be sort of true and factual and robust was
nothing of the sort. In particular, the whole case of "Curve Ball," that that
was far from credible intelligence and certainly not good enough to base a war
upon. So that was, for me, the turning point, was when I started stepping
back and going, `What is going on here?'

GROSS: Now, what you're referring to here is when Colin Powell said that Iraq
had a mobile weapons labs.

Ms. WILSON: Biological weapons labs. Yes.

GROSS: Yeah. And what you're referring to is that Colin Powell said that
Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons labs.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: That information came from a source nicknamed Curve Ball--nicknamed
such, I think, because he was so unreliable. You say he was drunk and that he
was famous for being unreliable. He was discredited.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And yet he was used here, you say, as the one and only source.

Ms. WILSON: On that particular...

GROSS: On that particular story.

Ms. WILSON: Yeah. I was shocked. And I just kept thinking to myself, `I
hope someone way above my pay grade is getting intelligence and information
that is underpinning this, because what I know'--and I was privy; I did have a
position of responsibility--what I was privy to was not matching up to what I
was hearing on the TV, and I was horrified.

GROSS: So what do you do in a situation like that? You're hoping that
there's somebody higher up who has corroborating evidence.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: But you don't know whether they do or they don't. Is there
someone--like, what do you do? Do you ask around? Do you express your
concerns to your superiors? Like, `Wait a minute. There's nothing I know of
that supports this.'

Ms. WILSON: Well, during, actually, you know, during the broadcast, I turned
to the woman that had followed the Curve Ball case much more closely than I.
I said, `What? What's going on here?' And she was just looking at the TV
screen with sort of her jaw open, going, `I have no idea.' But don't forget,
in the CIA there's the cardinal rule of need to know. So you just can't
believe that the government would distort or twist or cherry pick things.
That was really hard to take in. So I had to believe that there was credible
intelligence of an imminent threat because that's what the administration was
saying. And we know now that was not the case.

GROSS: Valerie Plame Wilson's new memoir is called "Fair Game: My Life as a
Spy, My Betrayal by the White House." We'll talk more in the second half of
the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Valerie Plame Wilson.
She's written a new memoir called "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal
by the White House." The book is about her life before and after she was outed
as a CIA operative in a column by Robert Novak. The investigation into the
leak of her identity concluded with Lewis Libby's conviction for lying and
obstruction of justice, but no one was convicted for the actual leak.

Now, you've described you and your husband as being the victims of a smear
campaign. The major part of this is that you were outed, you believe, in
retaliation for the fact that your husband, Joe Wilson...

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times challenging the Bush
administration's assertions that, you know...

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...that Saddam Hussein had gone to Niger to buy yellow cake uranium to
be used in the process of making nuclear weapons.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And your husband had been sent to Niger to just see if that was true
and he came back and said, `No, it's not true.' But the president went with
that information anyways in his State of the Union address.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So, OK, if you were the victims of a smear, smear number one, you were
outed, you think in retaliation against your husband. What are the other
things that would come under the category of smear as far as you're concerned?
Because in your mind it doesn't end there.

Ms. WILSON: Well, it really reached a fever pitch during the Republican
National Convention in July of 2004, when Republican operatives would
literally send out blast faxes to media outlets calling my husband--the
talking points for the day--calling Joe Wilson a liar, a traitor and worse.
And we do believe that that was sort of the precursor of the Swift boating of
John Kerry. It really was McCarthyite tactics. And it's been four years of a
smear campaign that has, you know, denigrated our character, accused me of
nepotism and so on.

You know, what they never seem to acknowledge is that George H.W. Bush, the
first President Bush, called my husband a true American hero for his work in
the run-up to the first Gulf War. He was the last American official to meet
with Saddam Hussein. He arranged for the safe release of hundreds of American
hostages. And he was brought back and in front of the whole war Cabinet he
called Joe a true American hero. But they never seem to remember that.

GROSS: Now, as you mentioned, you were accused of nepotism. You were accused
of choosing your husband, Joe Wilson, to go on the trip to Niger to check out
these claims that Saddam had tried to buy yellow cake uranium there.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Tell us the story the way you remember it of how your husband was
chosen to go to Niger.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm. In February of 2002, a young officer who worked for me
received a phone call at her desk, which in itself is highly unusual, but from
someone in the vice president's office--I don't know who--asking about more
information. There is interest on behalf of the vice president about this
allegation that Niger was sending yellow cake uranium. There had been a
transaction to Iraq. Which, if proved true, would be very serious and would
show indications that Iraq was seeking to restart its nuclear program.

So she came to me very flustered, and I, too, was nonplussed because we have
in the intelligence community established protocols, standard operating
procedures for policymakers to reach back down into the intelligence apparatus
and, you know, get more information. You don't ring up someone at their desk.

But just as we were sort of mulling this over, a reports officers walked by
and he heard this, and he said, `Well, what about sending Joe? What about
Joe?' And the reason he suggested Joe is because he was fully aware of Joe's
credentials. Joe had lived and worked in Africa all over the continent for
over 20 years. He had served as the charge d'affair at our embassy in Iraq in
the run-up to the war, the first Gulf War. And, in fact, he had--just a few
years previously, he had done similar missions for the CIA on these sorts of
issues.

So, you know, I just kind of looked at him and I said, `Let's go talk to our
boss about this.' So we brought our boss up to date, and he said, `Well, Val,
when you go home tonight, can you please ask Joe to come into headquarters
next week? We'll bring together the people we need to bring, talk about this
and see what we're going to do. Oh, and by the way, send an e-mail to the
division chief. Let him know what's going on.' And it was excerpts from that
e-mail that were pulled out later and bandaged about as proof positive that I
had, you know, sent or recommended or suggested Joe, when that's not the case.
And anyone who knows anything about west Africa would not conclude that a trip
to Niger free--Joe's--only his travel expenses were paid--could be considered
boondoggle or a junket.

GROSS: So your e-mail to the division chief telling him about your husband's
credentials for this trip to Niger...

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: This e-mail was quoted in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
during their investigation into the leak of your name and pre-war intelligence
on Iraq. And this was used as evidence that you initiated the idea.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And you say it was taken completely out of context and also that, as
you just told us, the whole idea of sending your husband, you say, was not
your idea.

When your husband found out about this e-mail that you'd written to the
division chief, he was furious with you. Why was he so angry with you?

Ms. WILSON: Well, honestly, I had totally forgotten about this e-mail. I,
like everyone else in the world, probably send hundreds of e-mails in a day.
This was totally standard. I was simply alerting my division chief to, and
reminding him who Joe was and why my boss, lower down, had suggested that we
bring Joe in to talk to him about this. You know, does it make sense for him
to go to Niger? So Joe was so furious, I mean, by, of course, the content of
the SSCI, but this caught him unaware. And I didn't remember--I didn't tell
him because it didn't seem important at the time.

And it really was--don't forget, this is the same time period just attacks are
raining down on us, Joe taking the worse of them by far. But it was such a,
frankly, such a terrible time. He felt that he had been out there publicly
defending me. He was very, very gallant about it. And I was not permitted to
say anything. I was still, of course, an employee of the CIA. And even
though he knew that intellectually, it hurt him terribly that I wasn't able to
come to his defense in any way. And, as I write about in the book, at a
certain point he says, `Well, are you putting your loyalty to the agency above
our marriage?' Which just killed me, because that wasn't the case at all. But
it was such a dark time when you're just being attacked. You know, we're not
perfect, but we try to live good lives, and reading this stuff about us in the
paper just seemed so surreal.

GROSS: You know, I'm wondering, isn't it--since you forgot this incident that
became a very significant story after the fact...

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...did you relate in any way during the special prosecutor's
investigation of the leak of your name, did you relate to any of the witnesses
who were your opponents but said, `Gee, I don't remember. I can't answer that
because I don't remember.'

Ms. WILSON: Well, my response to that would be that it wasn't a one-time
incident. All the--so many of the witnesses, and certainly Mr. Libby
himself, there were multiple occurrences. You know, his defense at one time
seemed to rest on that he had a faulty memory, but it wasn't a one-time thing.
He had, as we now know from the trial, apparently he had put together a
three-ring binder on Joe Wilson in May and June of 2003, tracking him,
watching him, you know, and that sort of idea that he doesn't remember is--you
know, it kind of falls apart. And there was a moment in the trial when there
was one witness John Hannah, I think an aide to Mr. Libby, had said, `Well,
you know, he does have a really bad memory, but, you know, he's got so much
going on. He has so much going on.' So Mr. Fitzgerald gets up and talks to
the witness and says, `Well, Mr. Hannah, would you say that if Mr. Libby
took two hours out of the day to meet with someone on this issue that that
would be important?' And, of course, what he was referring to was Mr. Libby
meeting with Judith Miller, I think, over breakfast for two hours at, you
know, a downtown Washington hotel. And it was just such a Perry--I call it in
the book a Perry Mason moment.

Of course it was important. He's got a lot of things going on, but for him to
take two times out--excuse me, two hours out of his day to speak to a reporter
about this, yeah, it's just not believable that his memory failed him on all
these occasions, all of these points.

GROSS: You know, we were talking about how your--there was a lot of tension
between you and your husband when you had to testify before the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence. And he thought that you handled the whole thing
about the memo badly. You say in your book that you and your husband almost
separated during that period. What kept you together? And I guess I'm
wondering if part of what kept you together was this thought that if you
separated it would have been a victory for the other side?

Ms. WILSON: Absolutely. Sometimes that's the only thing that works. It was
a very dark period. Again, it wasn't something internal to our relationship.
These were all these external forces coming from all directions. You felt
like you were an outfielder and you didn't know where that ball was going to
come next. And it was just such a difficult period. And the tension, you
know, between us, there was just way too much to absorb and to take in. But
you're right, we did come to that decision that, you know, we weren't going to
give anyone the satisfaction of parting ways. I mean, and what I--when we met
it was love at first sight, absolutely, and that sustained us through some of
the really darkest hours. And I would say, for sure, now we're in a much
stronger and better place.

Joe and I were kidding the other day that, in fact, we're ready to celebrate
our 35th wedding anniversary because we've packed a lot in. You know, it's
been an action-packed marriage. We've covered the waterfront.

GROSS: My guest is Valerie Plame Wilson. Her new memoir is called "Fair
Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House." We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Valerie Plame Wilson, and her new memoir is called "Fair
Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House."

Now, no one was actually charged with the crime of intentionally disclosing
your identity. Scooter Libby was just charged with lying to the grand jury.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Is there someone you think should have been charged?

Ms. WILSON: Well, I want to clarify one point. Mr. Libby was also charged
and convicted of obstruction of justice. And what that means is, of course,
that you can't get to the bottom of things. As the special prosecutor said,
`It's like throwing sand in the umpire's eyes.' So he wasn't able to get to
what exactly happened. And the law, as written, it's called the Intelligence
Identities Protection Act, IIPA, clearly there's loopholes in it that did not
allow the special prosecutor to apply perhaps the full force of what he knew
to the law as it's written. And I'm hopeful when all is said and done,
perhaps Congress will re-visit that to make sure that this sort of thing never
happens again in the future.

GROSS: It appears that the first person to give your name and out you to the
press was Richard Armitage, who was at the time deputy secretary of state and
he mentioned your name and that you were undercover to Bob Woodward in June of
2003.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So for some people that's kind of, `Well, game over.'

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: `It was Dick Armitage, that settles that story.' Does it settle
anything for you?

Ms. WILSON: Well, but that totally misses the other facts in the case. Name
one--let me start with Armitage. What a foolish thing to do. He had been
around Washington literally for decades. How reckless and how careless to
toss around my name when he knew it was associated with the CIA to reporters.
And he apologized for that, but, you know, that's not good enough. He should
have known better.

Now, the fact that there was a parallel conspiracy within senior
administration officials in the White House is not precluded by the fact that
Armitage spoke separately to, I think, both Mr. Woodward and Mr. Novak. And
the special prosecutor said in his filings, I think, of April 2005 or '6, I
guess--that he doesn't know what evidence would exist to disprove a conspiracy
among a multitude of people in the White House to undermine and discredit Joe
Wilson. So I think you have to look at all the facts, not just some of the
facts.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Valerie Plame Wilson. Her new
memoir is called "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White
House."

When your husband, Joe Wilson, wrote the now-famous op-ed in The New York
Times saying that the Bush administration had misrepresented what he found on
his trip to Niger...

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: and that he found on his trip to Niger that Saddam had not been there
looking for yellow cake uranium.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: But President Bush in his State of the Union Address said that he had.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: When your husband wrote this op-ed piece in The New York Times, did
you have any reservations about it? Did you think that this could lead to
exactly the kind of situation that it led to?

Ms. WILSON: No, absolutely not. Call me naive, but I never expected that
one of the reactions would be the outing of my covert identity. We were
prepared, of course, for pushback from the administration. And Joe was
prepared with his many letters, personal letters from George H.W. Bush and
the pictures showing him in the Rose Garden and so forth, and the cable that
calls him a true American hero. He was all prepared for that. And let's not
forget, he had more than the credentials and bona fides necessary to have made
this trip, and he had ever right to speak out on this debate.

And so he had heft, he had something to say. There were very few voices out
then and, you know, with the drumbeats to war, but he was in the public debate
and it nothing whatsoever to do with what I was doing professionally. I was
living my cover and it had been very secure until then, and I had no reason to
believe that, in fact, their retaliation would include such a devious act.

GROSS: The mission that he was sent on to Niger was a CIA mission. By
writing the op-ed in The New York Times, was he revealing any classified
information?

Ms. WILSON: He did no such thing. He performed a service for his country by
going to Niger and checking this out at the behest of the CIA. He was asked a
serious question by the office of the vice president and it deserved a serious
answer.

Don't forget...

GROSS: But was the information classified?

Ms. WILSON: No, it wasn't. Don't forget, it was--there was no there there.
The title of his article was, "What I Didn't Find in Africa." There was
nothing classified whatsoever in that op-ed piece.

GROSS: My guest is Valerie Plame Wilson. Her new memoir is called "Fair
Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House." We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Valerie Plame Wilson. Her new
memoir is called "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White
House."

For years before you were outed you were using the name Valerie Wilson.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: But when you were outed, it was under the name Valerie Plame. Have
you gotten to the bottom of that story, why Plame was used and not Wilson?

Ms. WILSON: No. That's a good question. When I first read Mr. Novak's
article in July 2003, that struck me as well. Why did he use my maiden name,
particularly since I had used my married name, Wilson, which I took because it
was so easy to say and so easy to spell? And I was really puzzled by that.
And, no, I have never--I think there is still a mystery of how exactly my name
was transmitted from the CIA to Vice President Cheney.

GROSS: You say to Vice President Cheney, and you're mentioning Cheney
because?

Ms. WILSON: Because in the trial, I think the prosecutor showed pretty
conclusively that it was Mr. Cheney who gave my name to Mr. Libby.

GROSS: What questions would you most like to ask the vice president?

Ms. WILSON: What were you thinking? What did you know, and when did you
know it? But I doubt I will have any opportunity to say anything to the vice
president, so that's all just hypothetical.

GROSS: But in the meantime, you're suing him.

Ms. WILSON: Yes, we are. Yes, still.

GROSS: You're appealing the suit that was...

Ms. WILSON: Correct. It was, as I say, dismissed on procedural grounds.
The judge understood very clearly that a wrong had been done, but he was
grappling with how to get his arms around it in a legal sense because there is
some innovative legal thinking here, that is primarily that executive
privilege bestowed to the president, we believe, does not also cover the vice
president. So I believe that the judge probably thought that this would be
decided by a much higher court than his and sort of punted.

GROSS: What the judge said was the alleged means by which defendants chose to
rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly
unsavory, but there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public
criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush
administration's handling of pre-war foreign intelligence, is within the scope
of the defendant's duties as high level executive branch officials. In other
words, it was like their job to fight back.

Ms. WILSON: Right. Well, I'm not a lawyer, but I think I can say in
colloquial terms that our legal team would argue that no, in fact, it's
outside of the scope of your office, the public trust, to pursue political
propaganda, to go after someone using your office. And, yeah, unsavory,
indeed.

GROSS: One of the thing you write about in your book is becoming a mother.
And after years of working for the CIA, and after years of having to be, you
know, pretty tough and not work in such a way that people could accuse you of
being less professional or less strong because you're a female, then you
became the mother of twins.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And suddenly you were very--you felt very vulnerable...

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...and underwent pretty serious postpartum depression, as well.

Ms. WILSON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And, you know, that must have been such a...

Ms. WILSON: Shock?

GROSS: Shock. Yes, right. Thank you.

Ms. WILSON: Yeah. No, I thought that I had demonstrated a fairly high
ability to cope and adapt to new situations up to that point in time, and here
I was completely undone by two tiny little babies. And I'm so glad I got to
write about that in the book because, as I say, I had a happy marriage. These
babies were very much wanted. We had financial resources. I was educated.
And yet I had never heard the word postpartum depression until a friend, you
know, mentioned, `Well, maybe this is what's going on.' I had no idea. I was
just completely undone, and it was really scary because I had always been in
control. I was a very independent woman. I couldn't wait to have these
babies. I was 36 when I had them. And it was just a whole new world, where I
was clearly not on top of my game. And it was frightening.

It wasn't until I went back to my doctor, and it was like a light bulb went on
over my head. First time I had heard that word and that's exactly what was
going on. In my case it was 100 percent chemical, exacerbated by serious
sleep deprivation, as every new parent understands. But when I finally
figured that out and got professional help, then I was on my way. And I
learned a lot about it.

GROSS: You know, in spy movies, when women agent are recruited, they're often
asked to seduce their target in order to get intimate and therefore find out
the target's secrets. Was that ever expected of you in the CIA?

Ms. WILSON: You know, Terry, a lot of my job was like James Bond, but not
that part. Really.

GROSS: Was there sexism within the agency? Was there a double standard for
men and women?

Ms. WILSON: Oh, absolutely. But it's no different in that regard than, I
think, any Fortune 500 or law firm or any large organization. It's
unfortunately the way of the world. Women have come a long way, but you still
face a subtle sexism. It is there. Absolutely. I think I write about in my
book, when I got to my first job overseas, my boss asked me to come into his
office the first time. And I was really nervous and excited to see him and
sort of, `Oh, reporting to duty, sir.' And he had his feet up on his desk and
he was smoking a cigar, and he said, `Turn around.' You know, he made that
little twirling motion with his finger. And I thought, `What? What does he
want me to do?' `Twirl around!' So I turn around. And he said, `Yeah, yeah.
You'll do.' And it turns out that he, you know, he obviously hadn't gotten the
memo on how to treat female employees, but he turned out to be a very good
boss who was very caring, and I learned a lot from. So, you know, it's just
part of it.

GROSS: Well, Valerie Plame, thank you very much for talking with us.

Ms. WILSON: Thank you.

GROSS: Valerie Plame Wilson's new memoir is called "Fair Game: My Life as a
Spy, My Betrayal by the White House."

You can download podcasts of our show by going to our Web site,
freshair.npr.org.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.