News: When I agreed to write the afterword for Valerie Plame's memoir, I faced a formidable task: Put together the former CIA operative's life story—including all the parts the government won't let her write about. Oh, and you can't talk to her (read an excerpt here).
By Laura Rozen - December 15, 2007
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
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.
There was just one person I could not contact for the project: Valerie Plame Wilson, who had signed an agreement with the CIA that she would submit to their censorship for the rest of her days. It was a firewall that everyone involved with the book project took extremely seriously—making for a somewhat paradoxical situation: publishers, editors and writers, plus armies of lawyers and a literary agent, all sweating to make sure they were abiding by the rules of government censorship.
Not that they gave up without a fight. In May, Plame and Simon & Schuster sued the CIA and its director on first amendment grounds, charging the censorship went far beyond the requirements of preserving national security. The specific basis of the lawsuit involved a short letter. When Plame retired from the Agency two years after being outed by the White House, the CIA provided her a declassified letter listing the dates of her service, for pension purposes. After that letter had been entered into the Congressional Record, the CIA changed its mind and decided to reclassify it.
For purposes of the book, that meant that Plame could not refer to her government service before 2002. Plame had another court setback when a judge determined that the civil case she and her husband, Joe Wilson, had filed against administration officials for exposing her identity, did not fall under his jurisdiction. In updating her manuscript to reflect these developments, Plame had to submit any changes to the CIA—even as her lawsuits against it continued.
rest of the article here @ the link:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2007/12/after-fair-game-story-valerie-plame-could-not-tell.html?src=email&link=hed_20071217_ts4_The%20Story%20Valerie%20Plame%20Couldn%27t%20Tell
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