Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007) is a memoir by Valerie Plame Wilson. Wilson is the former covert CIA officer whose then-classified non-official cover (NOC) identity as "Valerie Plame" was leaked to the press in July 2003, after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV, had criticized the George W. Bush administration's rationale for the Iraq War. The outing made her the center of the American political scandal known as the Plame affair. Her public outing led to her decision to resign from the CIA in December 2005, when she attempted to retire early at the age of 42. Being told that she could not collect her pension until the age of 56, she determined to write this book both as a means of telling her own story in her own words and as a means of earning income to replace her deferred retirement annuity. She encountered resistance from the CIA in the course of chronicling her work with the organization.Adam Liptak, "Judge Backs C.I.A. in Suit On Memoir", The New York Times August 3, 2007, accessed March 23, 2008.John Solomon, "Rove Learned CIA Agent's Name from Novak", USA Today, July 15, 2005, accessed July 15, 2006.Joel Seidman (Producer, NBC News), "Plame Was 'covert' Agent at Time of Name Leak: Newly Released Unclassified Document Details CIA Employment", NBC News, May 29, 2007, accessed August 10, 2007.Bonnie Goldstein, "Free Valerie Plame's Memoirs!" , Slate, June 15, 2007, accessed October 28, 2007.
As Janet Maslin writes in her review in The New York Times on the day of publication, "the story of how her career was derailed and her C.I.A. cover blown ... has its combative side. But the real proof of Ms. Wilson's fighting spirit is the form in which her version of events has been brought into the light of day."
Title
Contexts of allusions in title
"Wilson's wife is fair game"
The phrase "fair game" in the title of Wilson's memoir refers to a comment that President George W. Bush's Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning and Senior Advisor Karl Rove reportedly told Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's television show Hardball with Chris Matthews: "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, 'Wilson's wife is fair game.Russ Hoyle, "The Niger Affair: The Investigation That Won't Go Away". "Foreword" (xiii-xlix) in Joseph C. Wilson IV, The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir, rev. ed. (2004; New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005) xl: "Rove reportedly told MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the host of the political talk show Hardball, that the White House considered Wilson and his wife fair game for political payback." Cf. Joseph C. Wilson, "The Sixteen Words", chap. 1 in The Politics of Truth: Wilson's Wife is Fair Game. Those are fighting words for any man, and I'd just had them quoted to me by MSNBC's Chris Matthews. It was July 21, 2003, barely a week since a column by Robert Novak in The Washington Post had named my wife, Valerie, as a CIA officer, and now the host of Hardball was calling to tell me that as far as the White House was concerned, they had declared open season on my family. ... In his signature staccato, Matthews was blunt: "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, 'Wilson's wife is fair game. (1; cf. 4-5, 351, 373)Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff, "Secrets and Leaks: Pssst ... You Might Think This Washington Leak Investigation Will Peter Out Like Most Others, with No Culprits and No Penalties. But Here's Why This One May Be Different", Newsweek, online version, October 13, 2003 ("Updated: 1:20 p.m. ET July 12, 2005"): 3 (of 4 pages), accessed August 15, 2007. "Fair Game" serves as a metaphor derived from more recent contexts of her life that the author relates in this book; given the nature of covert espionage, it may suggest multiple meanings.Murray Waas, "Plugging Leaks: More Details Emerge on the Plame Investigation, As Karl Rove's Testimony Is Revealed for the First Time", The American Prospect, March 8, 2004, accessed August 23, 2007. (Web only.)Harold Meyerson, Fair Game' Question for Bush: Has the President Asked Karl Rove, His Indispensable Aide, about His Role in the Valerie Plame Case?" , Newsday, July 14, 2005, rpt. in Common Dreams, "Featured Views", accessed August 23, 2007.
Karl Rove's disavowal of the phrase "fair game" After the title of Valerie Plame Wilson's book had already been widely disseminated, on August 19, 2007, on Meet the Press with David Gregory, Gregory asked Rove, who identified himself as an "avid Republican",Meet the Press' Transcript for Aug. 19, 2007", NBC News, August 19, 2007, accessed August 21, 2007. (Page 1 of 6 pages.) among other statements pertaining to the CIA leak grand jury investigation attributed to him, whether he "considered her fair game in this debate" between her husband and The White House over the President's so-called "sixteen words". Rove responded that the phrase "fair game" attributed to him by Chris Matthews was Matthews' phrase not his own and that he himself did not consider Wilson (in Gregory's phrase) "an appropriate target in this debate."Meet the Press' Transcript for Aug. 19, 2007", NBC News, August 19, 2007, accessed August 21, 2007: Mr. Gregory: Do you think you owe Valerie Plame an apology? Mr. Rove: No. Mr. Gregory: You do not? Mr. Rove: No. Mr. Gregory: You considered her fair game in this debate? Mr. Rove: No. And you know what? Fair game, that wasn't my phrase. That's a phrase of a journalist. In fact, a colleague of yours [Matthews]. Mr. Gregory: Was she an appropriate target in this debate? Mr. Rove: No. Mr. Gregory: She was not. Mr. Rove: No. (Page 3 of 6 pages.)
Related contexts In October 2003 Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff reported in Newsweek that "The White House spokesman dismissed as 'ridiculous' the charge that Rove outed Plame."Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff, "Secrets and Leaks: Pssst ... You Might Think This Washington Leak Investigation Will Peter Out Like Most Others, with No Culprits and No Penalties. But Here's Why This One May Be Different", Newsweek, October 6, 2003, online version, October 13, 2003 ("Updated: 1:20 p.m. ET July 12, 2005"): 3 (of 4 pages), accessed August 22, 2007: A source familiar with Rove's conversation acknowledged that Rove spoke to Matthews a few days after Novak's column appeared, but said that Rove never told Matthews that Wilson's wife was "fair game"—rather, that it "was reasonable to discuss who sent Wilson to Niger." Novak wrote last week that the leaker was "no partisan gunslinger." That suggests that the original leak came from someone in the White House national-security apparatus, which holds itself above politics. Many White House staffers are potential suspects, but various press reports have suggested that the Feds will want to interview I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, an aggressive consumer of intelligence regarded by some CIA analysts as an intimidating figure. As Thomas and Isikoff note, "It may be significant that both Rove and Libby deny leaking classified information. They may say that in talking to reporters they used her name without knowing that she was undercover."
Chris Matthews reportedly declined to discuss the telephone conversation that he had had with Rove, according to Thomas and Iskikoff in Newsweek, who quote the conversation that Wilson reported having with Matthews and then add parenthetically: "(Matthews told Newsweek: 'I'm not going to talk about off-the-record conversations.')" David Corn of The Nation notes Matthews' statement to Newsweek "that he would not discuss off-the record conversations", adding, also parenthetically, that, earlier, "he [Matthews] told me the same."As cited in David Corn, "The Spin Is Not Holding", Capital Games (blog), The Nation, October 4, 2003, accessed August 22, 2007: The newsmagazine [Newsweek] also notes that, according to a source close to Wilson, shortly after the leak occurred Bush's senior aide Karl Rove told Hardball host Chris Matthews that Wilson's wife was "fair game." Matthews told Newsweek that he would not discuss off-the-record conversations. (He told me the same weeks ago when I made a similar inquiry about this chat with Rove.)Cf. "Legal Affairs: Reporter Says Libby, Rove Told Him of Plame's Work", All Things Considered, National Public Radio, January 31, 2007, accessed August 23, 2007; includes audio link (NPR Player).
Matthews was one of over twenty-five journalists subpoenaed by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald regarding their conversations with high-level Bush administration officials pertaining to the CIA leak grand jury investigation (2003–2005), leading to the indictment and prosecution, conviction, and sentencing of Scooter Libby in United States v. Libby (2007).
Ultimately, whereas Fitzgerald's grand jury did not indict Rove for committing any alleged crimes, and, in October 2005, it did indict Libby not for allegedly having leaked Wilson's identity but for allegedly having lied in his sworn testimony pertaining to the leak investigation, federal felonies for which a jury convicted and a judge sentenced him, a sentence which was commuted by Presidential proclamation. On July 19, 2007, a district court judge dismissed the Wilsons' civil lawsuit (Plame v. Cheney) which charged related offenses by the various government officials. The dismissal was on jurisdictional grounds, that the case belonged in federal court. The Wilsons appealed that decision, but on August 12, 2008, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the dismissal in a 2–1 decision. On June 21, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal.
On April 6, 2006, Matthews stated his own point of view on the CIA leak publicly in some detail in his conversation with Senator John Kerry on Hardball with Chris Matthews, describing as "high drama" Scooter Libby's testimony that the President of the United States via the Vice President of the United States had "ordered" Libby to leak classified information pertaining to national security in order to bolster the case for the Iraq War after it began in March 2003."Kerry: 'Immoral to allow our kids to be killed': Sen. John Kerry talks to Chris Matthews about Iraq, CIA leak: Following the CIA leak disclosure, Chris Matthews sat down with Senator John Kerry in his Capitol office to discuss the big developments in the CIA leak case and vision for Iraq policy", Hardball with Chris Matthews, NBC News, April 6, 2006, accessed August 22, 2007 (Transcript):Let's talk about the timing of this and we all remember this. It was July 6th that Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who had been sent down there by the CIA to the government of Niger to check out the story which appeared mysteriously in an Italian newspaper, that there had been a deal by Saddam Hussein to purchase nuclear materials, uranium yellow cake, from the government of Niger. Within two days, the vice president of the United States said the president of the United States wanted Scooter Libby to leak to Judy Miller, someone he had been working with on stories, had written stories that were supportive of the war, in effect, if not in intent, to tell her, this is a specific determination by the president. You tell Scooter to go tell Judy that there was a real case for these aluminum tubes being material for use in developing a nuclear weapon. You tell her this. This is the conversation we're getting recounted under oath from Scooter Libby. Pretty high drama here, isn't it? I mean, it tells you that the president himself was in charge of this operation. He wasn't some, faded backroom guy getting orders from the vice president. He was in fact, calling the shots particularly, and making the case for the war after the fact.