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Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House [Hardcover]

Valerie Plame Wilson
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)


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Book Description

October 22, 2007
FROM THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF THE BOURNE FILMS COMES THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING SEAN PENN AND NAOMI WATTS

Based on Fair Game, Valerie Plame Wilson’s historic and unvarnished account of the personal and international consequences of speaking truth to power.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On July 6, 2003, four months after the United States invaded Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson's now historic op-ed, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," appeared in The New York Times. A week later, conservative pundit Robert Novak revealed in his newspaper column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative. The public disclosure of that secret information spurred a federal investigation and led to the trial and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and the Wilsons' civil suit against top officials of the Bush administration. Much has been written about the "Valerie Plame" story, but Valerie herself has been silent, until now. Some of what has been reported about her has been frighteningly accurate, serving as a pungent reminder to the Wilsons that their lives are no longer private. And some has been completely false--distorted characterizations of Valerie and her husband and their shared integrity.

Valerie Wilson retired from the CIA in January 2006, and now, not only as a citizen but as a wife and mother, the daughter of an Air Force colonel, and the sister of a U.S. marine, she sets the record straight, providing an extraordinary account of her training and experiences, and answers many questions that have been asked about her covert status, her responsibilities, and her life. As readers will see, the CIA still deems much of the detail of Valerie's story to be classified. As a service to readers, an afterword by national security reporter Laura Rozen provides a context for Valerie's own story.

Fair Game is the historic and unvarnished account of the personal and international consequences of speaking truth to power.



Read the First Chapter from Fair Game

Joining the CIA
Our group of five--three men and two women--trekked through an empty tract of wooded land and swamp, known in CIA terms as the "Farm." It was 4 a.m. and we had been on the move all night. Having practiced escape and evasion from an ostensible hostile force--our instructors--we were close to meeting up with our other classmates. Together we would attack the enemy, then board a helicopter to safety. This exercise, called the final assault, was the climax of our paramilitary training. Each of us carried eighty-pound backpacks, filled with essential survival gear: tents, freeze-dried food, tablets to purify drinking water, and 5.56 mm ammunition for our M-16s. The late fall weather was bitter, and slimy water sloshed in our combat boots. A blister on my heel radiated little jabs of stinging pain. My friend Pete, a former Army officer, usually ready with a wisecrack and a smirk, hadn't spoken in hours, while John, our resident beer guzzler, carried not only his backpack but at least fifty extra pounds of body weight. His round face was covered with mud and sweat.

Read the Publisher's Note and First Chapter from Fair Game




From Publishers Weekly

The problem with this book is that it has been heavily redacted by the CIA—and in parts is almost impossible to read. In order to understand Plame it helps to read journalist Laura Rozen's afterword—basically a straightforward Plame biography—first.

Plame's story is now part of the history of the Iraq War. An undercover CIA agent, she suggested that her husband, former Iraq ambassador and Africa expert Joseph Wilson—at the urging of the vice president's office—be sent to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein tried to obtain yellowcake uranium—one of the Bush administration's apocalyptic talking points for the war. After he wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times called "What I Did Not Find in Africa," Plame was "outed" as a CIA operative by columnist Robert Novak. [She was "fair game" according to Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist.] In a drawn out melodrama, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald rounded up the usual Beltway suspects (Rove, Ari Fleischer, Matt Cooper, Judy Miller etc.) before a grand jury, but eventually Lewis I. (Scooter) Libby, VP Cheney's chief-of-staff, was the only one sentenced in the case for perjury and obstruction of justice (which was soon commuted by Bush).

Plame's personal nightmare began with Bush's 2003 State of the Union address when the president declared "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"—the 16 famous words which directly contradicted Wilson's Niger findings. When Condoleezza Rice denied on Meet the Press that anyone in the White House knew that the Niger pancake uranium stories were untrue, Plame says it was "the last straw" for her husband and he wrote his Times piece.

Although the cast of villains in "Plamegate" is now legendary, a new one emerges in Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, and then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Working closely with Cheney, Roberts did a lot of the White House's political bidding and made life particularly uneasy for the Wilsons by a careful distortion of the facts before the 2004 presidential election.

Kudos go to special prosecutor Fitzgerald ("highly intelligent, compassionate person") and barbs go to Judith Miller of the New York Times ("I distrusted her reporting in articles she had written in the run-up the war"). Plame relates a bizarre chance meeting with Matt Cooper of Time magazine, then under Fitzgerald's screws—who asked Wilson "Could you do something for me?"—to ask the judge for leniency. Plame says the whole First Amendment fight with Miller and Cooper "was the Pentagon Papers or Watergate turned on its head...These reporters were allowing themselves to be exploited by the administration and were obstructing the investigation. It didn't make much ethical sense to me."

Plame also has harsh words for the Washington Post and its editorial writer Fred Hiatt: "I suddenly understood what it must have felt like to live in the Soviet Union and have only the state propaganda entity, Pravda, as the source of news about the world." She continues to batter the press at what came out at the Libby trial, which "showed how eagerly [journalists] accept spoon fed information from official sources...The trial did not show American journalism at its finest hour."

Although Plame guards her personal life with Wilson, she is blunt in acknowledging that the controversy surrounding them put a strain on their marriage, which "seemed balanced on a knife's edge." There was apparently resentment on Wilson's part that his CIA wife could not defend him against some of the attacks: "He deeply resented that I had not adequately come to his defense." When Wilson asked her "Why are you choosing the Agency and your career over your marriage?" it forced her to rethink her marriage and led to a reconciliation. She also reveals the intimate details of her post-partum depression which followed the birth of her twins in 2000.

Plame seems paranoid about events that have happened to her. Was a IRS audit normal or was it triggered by something else? Why did the bolts on a brand new deck suddenly come out? And why did the CIA almost scuttle her book through censorship. [In one of the great ironies of the book, the part about the redactions is heavily redacted.] Plame asks: "Was the White House also responsible for the stalling of my book?"

The book reveals little not already known about Plamegate—although it would have been interesting to see what would have been the result without the massive redactions of the CIA.


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 411 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Simon & Schuster Hardcover Ed edition (October 22, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1416537619
  • ISBN-13: 978-1416537618
  • Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #173,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

It's a good book, and one American's should read. Sweet D  |  14 reviewers made a similar statement
It's a shame that did not happen. Savy Shopper  |  6 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Burn Notice October 5, 2008
Format:Paperback
While the book certainly makes the case that Plame was a covert operative who was wronged by the administration, I think what makes it most interesting can be appreciated by anyone outside of their political leanings. We get a candid portrait of what it's like in the center of one of these media storms and Plame offers up plenty of detail on the toll this affair took on herself and her marriage. People should be outraged.

The large section of redacted passages are tough to get around -- I wish the material included at the end could have been inserted as footnotes throughout so the reader doesn't have to jump back and forth.
Was this review helpful to you?
143 of 170 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but adds little new to the discussion October 30, 2007
Format:Hardcover
As is ever the case with books on controversial topics, particular those political, reviews of Mrs. Plame Wilson's book has attracted countless reviews, often from those who one must suspect have not read the book. Indeed, time and again one sees reviews which make assertions patently false such as that Mrs. Wilson was not undercover (the Judge in the Libby case, Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald, and CIA Director General Hayden have all made plain that she was), or that her husband Joseph Wilson was not an ambassador (again, he was, to Gabon). Yet such attempts by individuals to create their own facts has little bearing on what Mrs. Wilson's book offers.

There is little new here in terms of the facts of the case of Robert Novak's "outing" of Mrs. Wilson which could not be found in the court record or a simple Lexus search. This perhaps more than anything makes the frequent redactions (demanded by the CIA and published in the volume as black lines) so patently absurd; time and again matters clearly part of the public record are removed, a penchant for privacy that should give every American citizen pause. That said, Mrs. Wilson writes with gusto and given her silence up until now, one must acknowledge a certain satisfaction in seeing her get her piece.

More than anything this is a highly person memoir, recounting - to the degree the CIA's over busy redactors allowed - her years of service as well as the trauma she and her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson were forced to endure. While this book offers little new for the record of events, it does give a window into the damage done by those at the eye of the storm. I can only scratch my head in wonder at how many people have continued to sharpen their long knives after Mrs. Wilson's savage treatment.

What is incontrovertible is that Mrs. Wilson, daughter of an Air Force colonel and sister of a marine did render years of loyal service to the defense of the United States, in return for which she has seen her career ended and her reputation smeared, all for political ends in the service of an agenda that was wrongheaded both at the time and in retrospect, all of which brings to mind the iconic words of Joseph Welch: "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" The answer is a tragic no.

On a final note, to avoid confusion readers should begin with Laura Rozen's afterwards to the book which reviews the public record and all of the details that are available, but which the CIA insisted Mrs. Wilson could not write.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Her story- U.S. Government versus Valerie September 22, 2008
By Sweet D
Format:Paperback
This isn't a spy-intrigue-action book, so please don't expect it to be. It's Valerie Plame Wilson's story about ow she happened to become a CIA agent, what it took to reach the levels in the institution that she did. How the scandal started who was and wasn't involved. She explains how the government managed to touch every part of her being to her personal life, social life, professional life, motherhood, finances, you name it. It's a good book, and one American's should read. Especially approaching this 2008 election.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars The redactions did not enhance the story
I had to view a hardbound copy to understand why my online version was missing pages - whole print pages were redacted and this does not show up in the on-line version; the pages... Read more
Published 22 minutes ago by Marianne Blackwell
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating autobiography.
This is a story I was not all that familiar with beyond what I remember from the news at the time. I found the "redacted text" frustrating and while I understand the point... Read more
Published 17 days ago by Renee gunter
1.0 out of 5 stars Not very Interesting
Seems more like her way of complaining. It'd be about 1/2 the size if not for the censorship, get the uncensored version.
Published 21 days ago by Vampire
2.0 out of 5 stars Fair Game: My Life as a Spy Review
Very slow and not well written. I realize the redacts contributed to this.
This was a read for book club. Read more
Published 21 days ago by Antoinette L. Lipinski
1.0 out of 5 stars 50% of the audio on the Audio book is listening to the sound,...
I really wanted to listen to her story, unfortunately the audio book version makes it impossible for even the most patient and persistent listener to put up with the ever present... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kelly Smith
2.0 out of 5 stars Fair Game
Too hard to read, as so much of it was redacted. I watched the movie with my husband on television instead.
Published 2 months ago by Lora Toles
1.0 out of 5 stars I want a refund
This book is a waste of money because [this text has been redacted].

If you don't find that summary enjoyable, you will not like this book.
Published 2 months ago by Niamago
4.0 out of 5 stars good treatment of political twists and turns, and her struggle to...
slightly self-serving with respect to involvement in husband's nomination to visit Africa and report back on WMD's in Iraq. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ashton G. Eldredge, Jr.
3.0 out of 5 stars Book: Fair Game
There was so much of blacked out information, it made it difficult to connect the dots !!! I actually enjoyed more of the personal relationship information regarding family and... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Gail Sanborn
4.0 out of 5 stars CIA Redactions Turn This into a Mystery
The numerous black strips indicating redactions required by the CIA make for slow reading, if you do as I did--try to guess what they wanted to hide. It also stripped Mrs. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Gloria Wolk
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Questions About the Valarie Plame Wilson Story
Actually, the lawsuit wasn't thrown out for lack of evidence, it was thrown out for jurisdictional reasons, and the judge also ruled that the defendants couldn't be sued for what they did.
Nov 8, 2007 by freyw |  See all 5 posts
Non-Review
Plame was in the counter-proliferation division. Our political leaders are threatening to start a war with Iran over proliferation. Based on our casualties in Iraq, we're talking about a LOT of dead Americans ... and that's even IF the proliferation is stopped. If a nuke actually gets built and... Read more
Oct 23, 2007 by R. WINN |  See all 35 posts
I can't wait to read this book. Be the first to reply
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