Valerie Plame’s Modern Odyssey (and Cautionary Tale) of Speaking Truth to Power
On July 6, 2003, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's historic op-ed, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," appeared in The New York Times. A week later, Robert Novak revealed in his Washington Post column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. It ended her covert career and set off a political scandal that rocked the Bush/Cheney White House. 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, and the Wilsons' civil suit against top officials of the Bush administration. Valerie had worked to protect America’s national security and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in particular, nuclear weapons. All that ended, with the public disclosure. Valerie has amazing resilience and skillsets. Today she is serves on a number of boards and is affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute, the trans-disciplinary scientific think tank created by two Nobel Prize winners to address the most compelling and complex problems in the world today. Valerie has lectured throughout the country and internationally on cyber security issues, national security, nuclear proliferation, women in intelligence, and the NSA revelations, and authored The New York Times best-selling memoir Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, which was also released as a major motion picture of the same name starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. Along with Sarah Lovett, she’s written two fictional spy thrillers Blowback and Burned. She also served as the narrator and appeared as an expert in the film Countdown to Zero, a documentary on the threat of nuclear war. Valerie also heads up the TED-like annual conference, Spies, Lies, and Nukes in Santa Fe. Valerie has lived her life in full in public, and private service and is an inspiration to each and every one of us.