Fair Game – Valerie Plame Wilson

 fair-game

Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 10, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416537627
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Valerie Plame Wilson is a former CIA covert agent. She worked for the CIA during the Bush Administration. That is until her cover was blown. Was it done purposefully? Was their political motivations? The questions remain. However this book is her story, and a look back at her life and career in the CIA. This was a life spent very undercover. Most people thought she was in a type of foreign business relations career. This career went great, until the moment her boss asked her to get her husband (a diplomat) to go on a special assignment for them. This assignment uncovered contradictions regarding the Bush Administration, Iraqi WMD’s, and Nigerian “yellow cake” uranium. There were many times throughout the book where she was frightened for her families life. When the story broke, many family members and friends were surprised to discover what she truly did.

I think the book was well written. While a lot of the mission specific stuff was redacted, it did make it hard to get into the flow of the narrative at times. Since she was under no-disclosure agreements, the book was under the approval of the CIA. There was many parts the CIA wouldn’t approve though they were public knowledge. To get around this, the publishers had an independent author go through chapter by chapter and write an appendix of sorts detailing the information that Ms. Plame was not allowed to disclose, but was public knowledge.

It was tough to get into this book at first, because whole pages would be redacted, but once I got through that and could follow the story, it was very interesting. I’d have loved to see all the details that were left out. It goes a lot deeper into things, such as the trials, etc. that came about. However, in the interest of writing a bi-partisan review, I’ll leave information from that out and just tell you if you’d like to read her story in addition to the official administration story, then by all means check this book out. If you can get past all the redacting, it’s really a pretty good book.  You can discuss it here

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