Download the Summons & Complaint (PDF) filed today in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.
Well, the CIA pushed Valerie into a corner and she has now pushed back. This is not a case about Valerie wanting to give away national security secrets. She’s not going to divulge sources and methods that CIA censors disallow. It is simply about being able to put on paper what any person who has ever heard the name, Valerie Plame, knows.
She started at the CIA in September of 1985 and we were in the same Career Trainee class. Every single member of our class was undercover from day one. She would have stayed anonymous to the world were it not for the actions of Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and Richard Armitage. At that point, anyone who had worked with her became aware of her CIA connection.
(cont.)
So what’s the problem? The CIA will only confirm that she was a CIA employee–a covert one at that–from January 2002 until outed in July 2003. They won’t let her write about her experiences prior to January 2002. But the CIA screwed up. They’ve tried to argue that her life before January 2002 is a deep, dark secret. Except the boneheads sent her an unclassified letter through snail mail detailing her years of previously classified service. Once the toothpaste is squeezed out of the tube you don’t put it back in.
There also is a fairness issue. Other CIA employees (e.g., Gary Schroen, Lindsay Moran, and Robert Baer) have published books with very few restrictions on what they could say about their previous secret lives. Others, like Ty Drumheller and Gary Berntsen, faced more draconian reviews because their stories were unkind to the Bush Administration. In fact, Berntsen was prevented from putting items into his book while the CIA gave Gary Schroen permission to publish the same items. Ty Drumheller faced a similar issue on the CIA proscribing him from writing about Curveball while they gave George Tenet carte blanche in his book.
And in Valerie’s case it is even more ridiculous. The story of the betrayal of her covert status is world news and anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the internet can find out in short order that she worked at CIA starting in September 1985. But the CIA wants to pretend that is not the case.
Valerie, her publisher, and her attorneys tried to negotiate this matter in good faith. Unfortunately there is no good faith from General Hayden. The word I hear from former colleagues (not Valerie) is that Hayden has been told by the White House to keep the lid on Plame. With this suit the lid is off and Val can fight back. This is about fairness and right vs. wrong. Many in the media have spent four years helping spread false stories about Valerie and her life at the CIA (e.g., “she was just a desk clerk”, “she was just an analyst”, “she wasn’t under cover”, etc.). It is now time for Valerie to tell her side. Hopefully this suit will lift the gag.
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SEE SusanHu’s diary for screen captures of the summons and complaint, and additional links.
READ ALL: Download the complete Summons & Complaint filed today in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.
NEWS STORIES: Reuters story || New York Times story
Reuters: “NEW YORK (Reuters) – An ex-spy whose unmasking led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of unconstitutionally interfering with publication of her memoir.”
From the NYT story:
Ms. Wilson’s suit said she worked with agency officials for 10 months to avoid disclosing national security information. But the agency’s refusal to allow her to include material already in the public domain, the suit said, violates her right to free speech.
