Judge Backs C.I.A. in Suit on Plame's Memoir

From NY Times:




Valerie Wilson may be the best known former intelligence operative in recent history, but a federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that she was not allowed to say how long she worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the memoir she plans to publish this fall.


Although the fact that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. from 1985 to 2006 has been published in the Congressional Record and elsewhere, the judge, Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said Ms. Wilson was not free to say so.

“The information at issue was properly classified, was never declassified and has not been officially acknowledged by the C.I.A.,” Judge Jones wrote.

Asked whether the ruling would affect the book’s scheduled publication date in October, Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for Ms. Wilson’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, said only that the book would appear “this fall,” suggesting that revisions required by the decision may cause a slight delay. David B. Smallman, a lawyer who represented Ms. Wilson and Simon & Schuster in the suit they had filed to include the information, said his clients had not decided whether to appeal.

C.I.A. employees sign agreements requiring them to submit manuscripts to the agency for permission before they are published. The C.I.A. has publicly acknowledged only that Ms. Wilson worked there from 2002 to January 2006, when she resigned.

But a February 2006 letter from the C.I.A. to Ms. Wilson about her retirement benefits said that she had worked for the agency since Nov. 9, 1985, for a total of “20 years, 7 days,” including “six years, one month and 29 days of overseas service.” The letter was published in the Congressional Record in connection with proposed legislation concerning Ms. Wilson’s benefits, and it remains available on the Library of Congress’s Web site.

Hmmm.. Ms. Wilson's 20 years of service with the CIA is public records yet the judge won't allow her the freedom to tell the truth of Ms. Wilson's employment as a public servant to this country. Maybe Judge Jones should pay former CIA Robert Baer a visit or visit Amazon.com of Mr. Baer's books. In Baer's book, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, Baer states in the back of his book his prior employment with the CIA: Directorate of Operations of CIA from 1976-1997. The blocking of Ms. Wilson's freedom to give her years of service of the CIA in her upcoming book is nothing but political to silence her.