Posted on 12/20/2007 8:33:04 PM PST by Lorianne
When former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson got the redacted manuscript of her draft memoir back from the CIA Publications Review Board (PRB) earlier this year, her book publisher realized it had a problem. "We were looking at a manuscript where 20 percent of the author's story was deemed classified by her former employer [even though] much of the information was probably in the public domain," explains an editor at the publishing house, Simon & Schuster. "So the challenge was, if Valerie can't tell her own story because she is bound by her agreement, then how is this story going to be told, inside her own book, given the confines presented by the Agency and her confidentiality agreement?"
The publisher's solution was to hire a reporter to write an 80-page "afterword" for the book (which was published in October under the title Fair Game: My Life As a Spy, My Betrayal By the White House), based on interviews and any information that could be found in the public domain. Which is how, in May, I ended up with a draft of Plame's memoir, with all of the CIA's blacked-out redactions, and about six weeks to learn as much as I could, write and deliver essentially a biography of the famous former spy.
(Excerpt) Read more at motherjones.com ...
Like what? Couldn’t tolerate reading about Plame!
Apparently this story will never die. Every time it rears its ugly head, I will point out Six Reasons the Plame Episode is a Farce:
You're absolutely right, but damned if they don't keep trying. Gott'a give 'em credit for being persistent.
What was interesting? I’m missing the point.
forget the classified stuff, if the CIA redacted the outright lies in it the book would be a two pager.
Many people believe that Bush’s commutation of Libby’s conviction was somehow wrong. Can you begin to imagine how ignorant someone would have to be to actually believe that? Those people must live in some sort of information vacuum — they probably get their news from the NYT.
Anyone who understands something of the rules of classification knows that just because something is in the public domain doesn't mean it isn't also classified. That is not as contradictory as it sounds.
There is a wealth of scientific and technical information in the public domain. Whether it is generated by public Universities, donated (to the public domain) by businesses, released under FOIA requests, the fruit of publicly funded research, etc. Fine, the information is out there. But it is "unofficial" at that point. It really only is classified if it is official that X happend, or that Y program uses the Z algorithm, etc. etc.
Similarly with "softer" non-technical information... It is all just rumor, speculation, and supposition until someone that purportedly would/could/should know makes it "official." Then it is classified. So she is just out of luck, she is not allowed to say, period. She should remember signing something to that effect, under penalty of prosecution, etc. etc. :-/
No need to waste time reading after this point. Anyone who doesn't know the basic facts of the case has no business writing about it.
I happen to believe that it should have been "exoneration."
Couldn’t read it all tonight but very good!
Plame was outed by her husband, who was tellign everyone in town. Taht’s why Armitage was so surprised when the information seemed to be new to Novak.
Remember General Paul Vallely of Fox tel;ling us that Jope Wilson told him about Mrs. Wilson’s identity in the green room lon before it came out in public?
“I happen to believe that it should have been “exoneration.”
I certainly won’t argue with that.
In fact, let me go one further. I think Fitzgerald should be investigated. You can bet that if he had pulled a stunt like that on the Dems, the media would be all over it, demanding an investigation into why a peripheral player in a non-crime was prosecuted (or more accurately, persecuted) for so long.
“I knew about ... her husband’s later learning from a Senate Intelligence Committee report that she had written an email to her boss recommending him for the Niger trip (though she did not initiate the idea and, as the parent of infant twins, was ambivalent about him going) But I wasn’t allowed to talk about what I was doing.”
Laura Rozen confirms that Plame recommended her husband for the Niger trip, which contradicts Plame’s testimony to the US Senate.
That's only tasteless.
Any further comment would be pointless.
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