Victim Valerie Plame

In July 2003, beautiful, accomplished CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame was outed publicly and fell victim to the cutthroat dishonesty of the George W. Bush administration.

It appears clear that the Valerie Plame was not the actual target of the administration's wrath. The real target was her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson had been sent to Iraq to access the situation there prior to the ill-considered and botched U.S. invasion of that country. His findings did not mesh with what the administration wanted to hear, and members of the Bush administration at the highest levels released information to a favored columnist, Robert Novak, that revealed Plame as a CIA undercover agent.

The couple brought a civil suit against Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, but the suit was dismissed by a judge.

Regardless of how one feels about the work of the CIA, it must be allowed that to "out" a secret agent for purely political reasons is not good policy. In a frightened and ill-informed America, however, the administration was allowed to get away with this and many other abuses of power.