For a book that takes place in my hometown, I bent the
definition of hometown just a little bit with Valerie Plame Wilson's Fair Game. I’ve worked and socialized in DC for
several years and grew up just outside the beltway. Most people aren’t from my
little slice of suburbia and, after hearing Plame Wilson speak, I wanted to
experience her story.
I was in high school and college when all of this was
happening so I never really caught much of it while it was happening. I always
knew I never liked the Bush administration but this just adds to the list of
reasons. It’s surreal that while all of this was going down, I was too wrapped
up in petty drama to notice.
Because the CIA redacted so many things, I had to go to the afterword
and use that to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately the afterword was much dryer
but it provided helpful information. It became apparent that the redactions
were largely out of spite because even the review committee couldn’t understand
what they were trying to protect with so much of that information now out in
the public.
When I heard her speak, she talked about how they redacted
the word “station chief” but less than a year after that, they published a
memoir with the title Station Chief. I can’t be sure exactly how many times
they did this but they did it at least once on page 33.
Despite several powerful people in Washington ruining her
career and almost destroying her marriage, Plame Wilson still says she’s a
patriotic American. I feel like that’s more of the correct answer than the
honest one. I’m sure she still loves her country but I think she is far more
jaded than her book would have you believe. You’d have to read it to truly see
what I mean but I think she subscribes to the notion that “It’s not slander if
it’s true.” Very interesting read.
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