Fair Game [Kindle Edition]

Valerie Plame Wilson (Author), Laura Rozen (Afterword)

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.

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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

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From Publishers Weekly

The government redacted much of the significant information in the first section of Wilson's memoir, which concerns her career in the CIA. In print, a black bar omitted the words and passages; on audio, a tone does the deleting. Once the novelty of the beeps wears off, the incompleteness of Wilson's narrative, at first tantalizing, becomes frustrating. The constant interruptions make it difficult for a listener to assemble a coherent story. Once Wilson's identity is leaked by White House insiders, the memoir's redactions cease for the most part. Unfortunately, her distress over the attempted destruction of her and her husband's professional reputations is considerably less riveting than her spy career. Whiles neither a prose stylist or an actress, Wilson reads clearly, with immediacy and sincerity and a note of barely suppressed anger. Laura Rozen's afterword (occupying the last two CDs) fills in the gaps removed by the CIA. It's intriguing and considerably more polished. The two narratives create an interesting, if not entirely satisfying, account of a disturbing contemporary scandal.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 1068 KB
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Simon & Schuster Hardcover Ed edition (October 22, 2007)
• Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000WJVK7G
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (99 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,323 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #38 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Current Events > Freedom & Security > Intelligence
  • #56 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > History > Americas > United States > 21st Century

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

135 of 159 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but adds little new to the discussion, October 30, 2007

By 

J. A Magill (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House (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.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Burn Notice, October 5, 2008

By 

EddieLove "EddieLove" (NYC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government (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.

12 of 12 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 (Chicago, IL U.S.A) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government (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.