Valerie Wilson is a former operations officer who worked at the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), writer and spy novelist.
Background
Valerie Elise Plame was born on August 13, 1963, on Elmendorf Air Force Base, in Anchorage, Alaska, to Diane (née McClintock) and Samuel Plame III. Plame's paternal grandfather was Jewish, the son of a rabbi who emigrated from Ukraine, the original family surname was "Plamevotski". The rest of Plame's family was Protestant (the religion in which Plame was raised). She was unaware of her grandfather having been Jewish until she was an adult.
Education
She graduated in 1981 from Lower Moreland High School, in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, and attended Pennsylvania State University, graduating with a B.A. in advertising in 1985. While a student at Penn State, she joined Pi Beta Phi sorority and worked for the business division of the Daily Collegian student newspaper.
After graduating from college, moving to Washington, D.C., and marrying Sesler, Plame worked at a clothing store while awaiting results of her application to the CIA.
She was accepted into the 1985–1986 CIA officer training class and began her training for what became a twenty-year career with the Agency.
While using her own name, "Valerie Plame", her assignments required posing in various professional roles in order to gather intelligence more effectively. Two of her covers include serving as a junior consular officer in the early 1990s in Athens and then later an energy analyst for the private company (founded in 1994) "Brewster Jennings & Associates," which the CIA later acknowledged was a front company for certain investigations.
Beginning in 1997, Plame's primary assignment was shifted to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
She became the subject of a widespread government controversy when members of the Bush administration were accused of leaking her identity as an undercover Central Intelligence Agency agent to members of the media. Filed lawsuit against members of the Bush administration in 2006.
After graduating with a B.A. in advertising from Penn State in 1985, Plame was married to Todd Sesler, her college boyfriend. The marriage ended in divorce in 1989.
In 1997, while she was working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Plame met former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV, "at a reception in Washington "..." at the residence of the Turkish Ambassador." According to Wilson, because Plame was unable to reveal her CIA role to him on their first date, she told him that she was an energy trader in Brussels, and he thought at that time that she was "an up-and-coming international executive." After they began dating and became "close," Plame revealed her employment with the CIA to Wilson. They were married on April 3, 1998, Plame's second marriage and Wilson's third.
Plame and Wilson are the parents of twins, Trevor Rolph, and Samantha Finnell Diana, born in January 2000.