Plame, Valerie Plame: former CIA agent takes fast track in campaign video

[September 10, 2019]  By Makini Brice

(Reuters) - Allow her to reintroduce herself.

Valerie Plame, the former U.S. intelligence officer whose cover was blown by officials in the administration of President George W. Bush during the lead-up to the Iraq war, released a congressional campaign video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICW-dGD1M18&feature=youtu.be on Monday that was about as glossy as any Hollywood spy movie.

In the video, Plame, a Democrat who announced in May her bid for an open congressional seat in New Mexico, speeds across the desert in a sports car, kicking up clouds of dust as she drives in reverse and recounts her family's military background and her time as a CIA operative.

"Yes, the CIA really does teach us how to drive like this," Plame says.

The video, which made a splash on social media, shows a photo of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Bush administration official who was convicted of lying in an investigation into the unmasking of Plame, adding that U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Libby last year.

"Now I'm running for Congress because we're going backwards on national security, healthcare and women's rights," Plame says in a voiceover before pulling the car to a stop, stepping out of the vehicle and whipping off her sunglasses.

"And Mr. President, I've got a few scores to settle," Plame adds.

Plame is one of about a half dozen people running for New Mexico's 3rd Congressional District seat. The district's current lawmaker, Ben Ray Lujan, is making a U.S. Senate bid.

While working undercover for the CIA, Plame recommended that the Bush administration send her then-husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, to Niger to probe allegations that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Wilson later published an op-ed in The New York Times that cast doubt on the Bush administration's rationale for the war in Iraq.

Libby, a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, told journalists in private briefings that Plame was the person who had recommended Wilson for the trip, which led to her cover being blown.

Plame said she moved to New Mexico the day after Libby was convicted of lying by a grand jury.

(Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Paul Tait)

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