NEW YORK – Former CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose outing led to the indictment of a White House official, has agreed to write her memoirs for Simon & Schuster, weeks after a reported seven-figure deal with the Crown Publishing Group fell through.
"It will be a very interesting book by a key figure of our time," Simon & Schuster spokesman Adam Rothberg said Thursday.
Financial terms were not disclosed and no publication date has been set. In early May, Crown announced that it would publish Plame's book, but the two sides could not agree on a final contract.
Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA operative whose identity was revealed after syndicated columnist Robert Novak named her in a column on July 14, 2003. Novak's column appeared eight days after Wilson alleged in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war.
Novak's column led to an extensive government investigation and the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby faces trial in January on perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges, accused of lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about when he learned Plame's identity and what he subsequently told reporters.
Libby is also being sued by Plame and Wilson. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., accuses Libby, Cheney, presidential adviser Karl Rove and 10 unnamed administration officials or political operatives of conspiring to destroy her career.
Plame will not necessarily get to write about everything she knows. Because she is a former CIA official, the contents of her book are subject to an agency review. She was reportedly involved with intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
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