The spy comes in from the cold

None of Valerie Plame's elaborate training to become an elite covert operative for the CIA prepared her for the byzantine, vicious and dispiriting smear campaigns directed against her and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, in George Bush's Washington.

When he felt compelled to tell the truth about President Bush's false rationale for the invasion of Iraq - the infamous 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union address claiming Saddam Hussein was securing yellow cake uranium for nuclear weapons - vice president Dick Cheney ordered the defamation of Wilson's reputation. When the White House apparatus was instantly set in motion, with Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby serving as the action officer on the op, and Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer relentlessly pressing the "scoop" on reporters, Plame still toiled away unknowing at her job at the CIA, seeking information about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, not only in Iraq but also Iran and other dangerous places.