Valerie Plame Wilson said she may not be the image of what many would consider to be a CIA agent.
“I left my sequin gown with the thigh-high slit back home,” she said.
Wilson, the infamously outed CIA covert operations agent, spoke to an audience of more than 400 Wednesday night in the Reitz Union about her life jumping out of planes and making sure “the bad guys” didn’t get their hands on weapons of mass destruction.
“This is a story of power and the abuse of power,” she said. “It’s also the story of the price of speaking the truth.”
She said she felt the need to tell her whole story because most people in the audience were in the fifth grade when it was going on.
Not many can throw around titles like mom, writer and former CIA agent in the same sentence.
Wilson is one of them, but not by choice.
On July 14, 2003, her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, threw the newspaper on their bed and said “the SOB did it.” Wilson’s identity had been disclosed by columnist Robert Novak in a reaction piece to her husband’s column on the misinformation on entering the war in Iraq.
“The moment she knew it was over, it was touching,” said John Parks, a Gainesville resident.
Parks said he enjoyed the talk very much and that he had seen her husband speak at UF in 2003.
Wilson described the days following the leak as a “character assassination campaign.”
She said there were dark days, some where she said she was called a glorified secretary.
“Because what can a girl do in the CIA?” she said.
She resigned from the CIA in 2006 and sued some of the main sources of her identity leak, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and his former Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Libby was convicted in 2007 for obstructing justice and lying to the FBI about leaking Wilson’s name.
A student thanked Wilson for suing Cheney.
“I had to get in line,” Wilson said.
ACCENT chairman Zack Goldstein said the bureau paid the Greater Talent Network, the agency representing Wilson, $23,400 for her appearance.
