MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
October 25 – November 1, 2007 Edition

S&S Releases

Much Anticipated

Valerie Plame Book

NEW YORK, NY/10/22/07–Valerie Plame Wilson’s eagerly-awaited book, FAIR GAME, MY LIFE AS A SPY,MY BETRAYAL BY THE WHITE HOUSE, was released October 22 by Simon & Schuster, living up to media reports that the lady spy’s book calls President Bush and his administration “intolerant and arrogant.” The book was embargoed until today, but the Associated Press began reporting on its contents last week, and Ms. Wilson appeared in her first media interview Sunday October 21 on 60 Minutes with Katie Couric.

Plame found herself at the center of a political storm in 2003 when she sent her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to look for any evidence that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium to develop weapons of mass destruction. After Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” newspaper columnist Robert Novak revealed in that Ambassador Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative.

An FBI investigation followed and as a result Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby was later convicted of perjury in the case and sentenced to prison. President Bush later commuted Libby’s sentence. The Wilsons’ now have a civil suit against several officials in the Bush administration.

Much has been written about the “Valerie Plame” story, some stories true and others not, but Valerie herself has been silent, until now.

Valerie Wilson retired from the CIA in January 2006, and now is a wife and mother. Simon & Schuster bills the book as “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, the publisher has added an after word by national security reporter Laura Rozen to provide a context for Valerie’s story.

“Fair Game is the historic and unvarnished account of the personal and international consequences of speaking truth to power,” according to Simon & Schuster’s press materials.