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. Mrs. 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.