Valerie Plame Wilson: spy left out in the cold

On the other hand, there is no love lost between Wilson and the CIA. Wilson reportedly charged in a lawsuit (ultimately unsuccessful) that the agency was interfering with her book by deleting references to her employment there before 2002. And after her cover was blown and she began receiving death threats, the agency refused to offer her or her family protection, she said.

“If you saw the movie, the part where the agency declined to provide temporary security on my residence for my family, even though there were credible threats to their safety? That felt like a betrayal all over again,” she said.

Today "Fair Game," starring Naomi Watts as Valerie Plame Wilson, and Sean Penn as her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, opens at theaters nationwide, and serves up a cold dish of revenge for those who believe that the Wilsons were smeared by the Bush administration. The movie offers a tense account of cutthroat politics balanced with a tender view of a marriage that almost comes apart under the pressure of the debacle.

The details of the event are familiar: As the U.S. prepared its case for war, Joseph Wilson was sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate purported sales of yellowcake uranium to Iraq. His conclusion: the sale never happened. When, in its hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration ignored his findings, Wilson wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, decrying the misrepresentation. Shortly after that, Valerie Plame's identity was leaked to Washington Post columnist Robert Novak, effectively ending her career as a covert operative.

The story is told with deft character strokes and a bit of filmmaker's license. (A few characters are invented, including a female Iraqi-American doctor, recruited by Valerie Wilson, who visits her scientist brother in Baghdad to ferret out information about Iraq's weapons program. The brother's jeopardy is a key suspense generator.)

It helps that the telegenic Naomi Watts portrays Plame Wilson as one-part Jane Bond, one-part harried mother of twins. Viewers might think it unlikely that a real-life spy would be as attractive as Watts, until they see period videotape of Valerie Wilson testifying before a House committee and realize that Watts is almost a doppelganger of the real thing.

Informed of the resemblance, Valerie Wilson answers, with a laugh, "You start right off with the flattery, good plan."

Her husband, listening in on the phone call, mentions that his wife may be slender, blond and good-looking, but she's also a deadly shot with an AK-47. "Take it from a guy that knows, she has given a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘yes, dear.'"

Valerie Wilson has long asserted that her husband's name wasn't "pulled out of the air," when he was sent to investigate purported uranium sales to Iraq. (And nor did she suggest his name, she says.)  "He had confronted Saddam Hussein, he had lived in Niger, there were all kinds of reasons to send him," she told the AJC.

When he wrote that the evidence of such sales was nonexistent, the Bush administration is portrayed as going after both husband and wife.

The fallout, for their marriage, was devastating.

"He was prepared for push-back from the government," said Valerie Wilson.

But should they have known she'd be "fair game" also?

"Shouldn’t I have expected that my government would commit treason?" asked the husband rhetorically.

The wife answers his question for him: "Not so much."