The CIA’s least secret officer

“It’s so sad; she’s had a lot of anguish,” said Diane Plame, Valerie’s 77-year-old mother, by telephone from her home in Atlantic Beach. “She lived a lie for 20 years, and the only people she really could talk with, she’s leaving them and her career behind forever.”

Whatever pain there is, it may be cushioned by the prospect of more than a few dollars. Valerie could make more than $2 million if the CIA allows Simon & Schuster to publish her book, tentatively titled Fair Game. It would recount her life in the CIA and what happened after a Bush administration official disclosed that she was an operative. It was that disclosure that set in motion the case against I Lewis Libby Jr, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was convicted on Tuesday of lying to a grand jury and to FBI agents investigating the leak of her covert identity.

Warner Brothers bought the movie rights to Valerie’s book, and there is already chatter of Nicole Kidman or Diane Lane taking the part of the blonde CIA operative.

They have to overcome a single hurdle: the CIA. “The problem is that the agency is living in an Alice-in-Wonderland world where they don’t want to admit that she worked for them before 2002,” said Joseph Wilson. “We just might have to sue them, and they will be reminded this is not the Soviet Union.”

Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, said Valerie’s book was under review. “The concern is that the manuscript as it was originally submitted would cause additional damage to operational matters,” said Mansfield, who added that most operatives were able to eventually publish.

Valerie’s mother recalled that when her daughter was in her senior year at Pennsylvania State University, she sent her an advertisement for work at the CIA. Valerie became an undercover operative in Europe; officially she was an “energy consultant.” Mother and daughter never again talked about work.