December 4, 2010
JUST CONSIDER THE FILM THEY BLEW AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE...:
Hollywood myth-making on Valerie Plame controversy (Washington Post, December 3, 2010)
["F]air Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post's Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson's reporting did not affect the intelligence community's view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush's statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.
"Fair Game" also resells the couple's story that Ms. Plame's exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy - but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.
...CIA operative who opposes liberating the Shi'a of Iraq puts her own cover at risk by manuevering to have her husband sent to Niger to cover-up Iraq's attempted purchases of yellow cake. Then, when her plotting is exposed, the bureaucrat claims victimhood status in order to try and topple an elected president. It's got all the makings of a great noir.
