Valerie Elise Plame (born August 13, 1963) is an American writer, spy, novelist, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer.

[1] In the aftermath of the scandal, Richard Armitage in the U.S. Department of State was identified as one source of the information, and Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying to investigators.

[7] While attending Penn State, she joined Pi Beta Phi sorority[8] and worked for the business division of the Daily Collegian student newspaper.

"[11] Details about Plame's professional career are still classified, but it is documented that she worked for the CIA in a non-official cover (or NOC) capacity relating to counter-proliferation.

[20] A former senior diplomat in Athens remembered Plame in her dual role and also recalled that she served as one of the "control officers" coordinating the visit of President George H. W. Bush to Greece and Turkey in July 1991.

[25][26] David Corn and Michael Isikoff argued that the undercover work being done by Plame and her CIA colleagues in the Directorate of Central Intelligence Nonproliferation Center strongly contradicted such a claim.

[24] On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak, a journalist for The Washington Post, used information obtained from Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby, to reveal Plame's identity as a CIA operative in his column.

[27][29][30] In his press conference on October 28, 2005, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald explained the necessity of secrecy about his grand jury investigation that began in the fall of 2003—"when it was clear that Valerie Wilson's cover had been blown"—and the background and consequences of the indictment of then high-ranking Bush Administration official Scooter Libby as it pertained to her.

[11] Fitzgerald's subsequent replies to reporters' questions shed further light on the parameters of the leak investigation and what, as its lead prosecutor, bound by the rules of grand jury secrecy, he could and could not reveal legally at the time.

[11] Official court documents released later, on April 5, 2006, reveal that Libby testified that "he was specifically authorized in advance" of his meeting with Judith Miller, reporter for The New York Times, to disclose the "key judgments" of the October 2002 classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

"[31] According to his testimony, the information that Libby was authorized to disclose to Miller "was intended to rebut the allegations of an administration critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson."

A couple of days after Libby's meeting with Miller, then–National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told reporters, "We don't want to try to get into kind of selective declassification" of the NIE, adding, "We're looking at what can be made available.

"[32] A "sanitized version" of the NIE in question was officially declassified on July 18, 2003, ten days after Libby's contact with Miller, and was presented at a White House background briefing on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.

[33] The NIE contains no references to Valerie Plame or her CIA status, but the Special Counsel has suggested that White House actions were part of "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr.

[32] A court filing by Libby's defense team argued that Plame was not foremost in the minds of administration officials as they sought to rebut charges—made by her husband—that the White House manipulated intelligence to make a case for invasion.

On the current justice department position, Sloan stated: "We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous harm that Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson.

Subsequent reports in various news accounts focused on the following parts of her testimony: Plame's husband Joseph Wilson announced on March 6, 2007, that the couple had "signed a deal with Warner Bros of Hollywood to offer their consulting services—or maybe more—in the making of the forthcoming movie about the Libby trial," their lives and the CIA leak scandal.

[57] In May 2006, The New York Times reported that Valerie Wilson agreed to a $2.5 million book deal with Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House.

On October 31, 2007, in an interview with Charlie Rose broadcast on The Charlie Rose Show, Valerie Wilson discussed many aspects relating to her memoir: the CIA leak grand jury investigation; United States v. Libby, the civil suit which she and her husband were at the time still pursuing against Libby, Cheney, Rove, and Armitage; and other matters presented in her memoir relating to her covert work with the CIA.

[63] The Washington Post editorial page, led by editor Fred Hiatt, a vocal supporter of the Iraq War,[64] who blamed Wilson for Plame's identity being leaked,[65] described the movie as being "full of distortions—not to mention outright inventions",[66] while news reporters Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby at The Washington Post disagreed, saying "The movie holds up as a thoroughly researched and essentially accurate account—albeit with caveats".

[68] In August 2017, Plame set up a GoFundMe fundraising page in an attempt to buy a majority interest in Twitter and kick U.S. President Donald Trump off the network.

"[78] Ramesh Ponnuru and Caleb Ecarma have argued that the incident followed a pattern of her posting antisemitic content, and of Plame making jokes about "rich Jews".

[92] In December 2024 it was reported that Plame's husband was resigning his post as WNMU president in exchange for a severance package of nearly $2 million, as he and regents of the university were implicated in charges of wasteful spending.

"Plame was not a WNMU employee, she was issued a university credit card, which she used to buy" thousands of dollars of furniture and home and office accessories.