Valerie Plame Quotes

Joe was being called a liar and a traitor; I'm being accused of nepotism, of being a glorified secretary. The stresses that that places on an individual and, of course, a marriage were tremendous. It was - there were some dark days.

- Valerie Plame

When we were subjected to a vicious character assassination campaign orchestrated by senior White House officials and championed by their allies in the right-wing echo chamber, Hillary reached out to us. Her counsel during that tumultuous period was as timely as it was wise.

- Valerie Plame

I've moved on to Plan B now, writing novels.

- Valerie Plame

I am angry when I hear things like Cheney whispering into Bush's ear on the way to Obama's inauguration to ask him to pardon 'Scooter' Libby and not to 'leave a soldier on the battlefield'. What kind of metaphor is that for his petty partisan views, when you have men and women giving the ultimate sacrifice? I have nothing but contempt.

- Valerie Plame

I really believe the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons is the world's most ominous threat.

- Valerie Plame

Looking back at my career, I wish I knew then what I know now... that gender bias is built into the system, and it's unconscious in many ways. I wish I had the maturity and courage to have pushed back more. I was always trying to be a 'good girl' and play by the rules.

- Valerie Plame

Over the years, from serving in the CIA to sitting on non-profit boards, I have observed first-hand what the addition of even one woman to a meeting or to a decision-making body can do. Put simply, in very many instances, group dynamics improve markedly.

- Valerie Plame

Of course the job has a lot of glamour. But it really is about being smarter than your average bear. Your mind is your best weapon. It's great when you're a good shot with an AK-47, but it's about being clever.

- Valerie Plame

I find it really hard to relate to the Bond women or Angelina Jolie in 'Salt.' And of course it's informed by my experiences and the people I've met along the way and the places I've been.

- Valerie Plame

North Korea is the errant teenage child, aren't they? Or toddler - they're holding their breath until they get their way.

- Valerie Plame

In the CIA, they recruit you to be an officer, an ops officer, in part due to how well you cope with stress and how well you adapt to new situations.

- Valerie Plame

The options are war versus peace, and I am delighted that, so far, it appears that peaceful negotiation has won the day.

- Valerie Plame

We need the best and the brightest to go into public service.

- Valerie Plame

According to the 2000 'Report of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation,' the long-lasting effects of nuclear testing can be qualified in simple scientific terms: 'Radiation exposure can damage living cells, causing death in some of them and modifying others.'

- Valerie Plame

Of course, when you're a parent, that's your paramount concern, for your children, and there were some very credible and frightening threats, and the agency declined to provide any security, and it felt like a betrayal all over again. It was really painful.

- Valerie Plame

When you work for the C.I.A. or as a diplomat, or serve in the military, you're not serving as a Democrat or a Republican; you serve as an American, whatever your personal moral compass or political views might be. So that would describe me.

- Valerie Plame

I think, honestly, my largest concern, there are a lot of unbalanced people out there, and all of a sudden, I'm the CIA poster girl, and our home in Washington, the front door was about 20 feet from the street. I went to the agency at a certain point and asked for security on a residence.

- Valerie Plame

Any time you're a poster child for the CIA, there are a lot of people that are - either have ideological or they are mentally unbalanced - that are going to try to find you and perhaps cause you harm.

- Valerie Plame

The entire intelligence community is so bloated and so reliant on contractors. There's no question there's many tasks that make sense to outsource, and yet, we have followed blindly this dogma that if it's private contracting, it must be better.

- Valerie Plame

If Russia did interfere in our election - and, by most accounts, they did - then it is imperative for the health of our democracy to have a thorough and unbiased investigation into the matter.

- Valerie Plame

It's lonely. That's why, in many ways, the CIA is the world's biggest dating agency, I think. I imagine it's much like two actors that get married because they understand that universe. You know, I'm pretty sure the agency's divorce rate is rather high.

- Valerie Plame

The human and environmental devastation caused by nuclear weapons - whether by testing, mistake or malice - is the very reason we need to eliminate them altogether.

- Valerie Plame

There's no way you can possibly intellectually justify, 'Well, it's okay for the Western Judeo-Christian countries to have nuclear weapons, but not for a country like Iran.' That logic goes nowhere fast.

- Valerie Plame

I'm not terribly confrontational, but I've gotten better at holding my ground.

- Valerie Plame

From a counter-intelligence viewpoint, the OPM breach is really scary - but if we continue to see the erosion of purely commercial enterprises, where people lose confidence, the economy falters.

- Valerie Plame

Joe and I are still very aware of the fact that we live in a country where he criticised the government and lived another day. That trumps all. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the other forms of government. You constantly have to fight for it; you have to keep your government honest.

- Valerie Plame

After I resigned, I could eventually speak for myself, but when it first happened, I was in complete shock, and it took a long time for me to overcome it.

- Valerie Plame

There is definitely a sense that when you, as a CIA ops officer... are handling assets, they are delivering to you their trust and their well-being. And you feel very protective of them, even if they're not very nice people.

- Valerie Plame

The intelligence community really is a vast bureaucratic entity, and it has been politicized in ways that are not effective for the gathering of intelligence and giving it to senior policymakers.

- Valerie Plame

When you're in the CIA, you anticipate the possibility that you'll be betrayed by a foreign government or a source, but you never anticipate that it would be by your own government.

- Valerie Plame

There's a huge impact on national security and intelligence. The new normal is going to be more and more of these hacks, whether it's Target or Home Depot or the Office of Personnel Management or Jennifer Lawrence's nude photos.

- Valerie Plame

Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons.

- Valerie Plame

I've been working with Global Zero. They are a great organization leading the resistance against nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons.

- Valerie Plame

The truth is, as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not safe.

- Valerie Plame

Donald Trump has done a lot of horrible things on Twitter. From emboldening white supremacists to promoting violence against journalists, his tweets damage the country and put people in harm's way.

- Valerie Plame

After President Obama's election in 2008, there was a widespread hope that it would mark an end to unseemly partisan nastiness.

- Valerie Plame

Regarding Wikileaks, I have profound ambivalent feelings about it. I am a firm believer in a strong intelligence service. There's a need for classified information.

- Valerie Plame

My take is, privacy is precious. I think privacy is the last true luxury. To be able to live your life as you choose without having everyone comment on it or know about.

- Valerie Plame

These are issues we've been grappling with since the Constitution was written: how you hold your government to account for its words and deeds. It's all about power and the abuse of power.

- Valerie Plame

When I was happily married and found myself pregnant, I just thought that this would be just the next, normal chapter. I was absolutely thrilled. So what a surprise it was when it turned out to be the hardest thing I've ever done.

- Valerie Plame

We in no way are naive to think that just because Russia and the United States agree to reduce their arsenals, that everyone else will fall in line.

- Valerie Plame

Whatever you think of Trump, I think most people would agree he is impulsive, and we certainly have an impulsive leader in North Korea in Kim Jong-un. That's an unholy combination.

- Valerie Plame

I want to shine a spotlight on showing how dangerous Trump and his Twitter button can be.

- Valerie Plame

My CIA colleagues were smart, dedicated, funny, and creative. Yes, there was sometimes stifling bureaucracy, boredom, colleagues who never should have been there, and later, deeply disturbing stories of the CIA's involvement in torture. Still, I got to do work I thought was incredibly important and, many times, had fun doing it.

- Valerie Plame

I was working for the CIA and prohibited from speaking publicly.

- Valerie Plame

I did a book event with a former colleague, Bob Bauer, and was so relieved that he said I got all the CIA stuff right.

- Valerie Plame

Of course we wish that more people involved in the leak of my true CIA identity had been prosecuted, but the system worked.

- Valerie Plame

I have always been appalled by the depiction of female CIA operatives.

- Valerie Plame

So many times, genuine health workers and genuine NGO folks are really just trying to help other humans in whatever capacity they can. But they are perceived as being CIA, and therefore, it blocks their effectiveness.

- Valerie Plame

I didn't appreciate how special and sometimes strange my CIA world was - until it suddenly and spectacularly ended in a newspaper column.

- Valerie Plame

I first learned the power of trust in the CIA. There is no question that when I joined the Agency as a covert operations officer, it was still run along the 'old boys' network' model.

- Valerie Plame

Hollywood does tend to portray CIA officers as totally the honey trap. Looks matter as they do in any profession. But the most important thing for me when I was working was blending into my environment.

- Valerie Plame

We don't have to sit by while Trump uses his enormous global platform to undermine our national security. We would love to be able to actually force Twitter's hand to live up to its rules, explicitly forbidding hate speech and encouraging violence.

- Valerie Plame

How lucky are we to have Naomi Watts and Sean Penn playing us? We've seen the final cut now a couple times, and the scenes with the marriage fraying at the edges are still very difficult to watch. However, our hope was that no matter your political persuasion, you're taken with the idea that it's important to hold power in check.

- Valerie Plame

She was very kind to us when Joe and I went through the darkest days of the leak of my name in 2003. And, of course, Joe worked in the Clinton White House.

- Valerie Plame

Of course, we all watch James Bond with envy - knowing the U.S. government would never pay for the lifestyle he enjoys.

- Valerie Plame

One characteristic that I hope I never relinquish is an intense curiosity about the world around me.

- Valerie Plame

I love my career. I thought, if I was lucky, I would retire as a senior intelligence officer, still working on the issues of counterproliferation. But that didn't happen, so - new chapter.

- Valerie Plame

We have known Hillary Clinton both professionally and personally for close to 20 years, dating back to before President Bill Clinton's first trip to Africa in 1998 - a trip that they both acknowledge changed their lives and gave considerable meaning to their post-White House years and to the activities of the Clinton Foundation.

- Valerie Plame

Hillary stood with us, as she has stood with so many over the years, and we are proud to stand with her for our country now.

- Valerie Plame

Even those that hate Hillary admit she is a work horse and not a show horse. She gets down into the nuts and bolts and figures out, 'What's the policy, what's the substance?'

- Valerie Plame

Leaks are always bad news.

- Valerie Plame

Hair and make-up always helps. I did always try to be well-groomed, professional at all times. Take your job seriously - but not yourself.

- Valerie Plame

Certainly, if we had not invaded Iraq on intelligence that was clearly manipulated and cherry picked, we would be in a different position today.

- Valerie Plame

I certainly didn't reach out to my old assets and ask 'em how they're doing, although I would have liked to.

- Valerie Plame

When President Ronald Reagan negotiated some significant arms reduction deals with the then-Soviet Union, he was considered a real hero, someone who was advocating for peace.

- Valerie Plame

I think it's the height of patriotism to continue to exercise your right as a citizen and to hold your government to account. Isn't that what the very essence of democracy is about?

- Valerie Plame

A chief of station is the head of all intelligence operations in any given country.

- Valerie Plame

When an issue is so fraught with partisanship, a special counsel provides some modicum of transparency and accountability rather the the veil of politics.

- Valerie Plame

I think feeling bitter or angry is really useless.

- Valerie Plame

I would never jeopardize classified information. I served my country well and loyally, and I had to sue the C.I.A. on First Amendment grounds.

- Valerie Plame

I believe in much more diplomacy, not less.

- Valerie Plame

My father was an air officer in the Second World War. My brother was a marine in Vietnam. When I was given this opportunity, I leapt at the chance because I thought it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what my friends were doing.

- Valerie Plame

In many, many parts of the world, being a female, you're really just wallpaper. If you take care to blend in, no one would think in a thousand years that you were doing anything suspicious.

- Valerie Plame

I don't care if you are for having Mexico pay for the border wall, or you want to repeal and replace Obamacare, or if you want women to have complete access to reproductive rights - I don't care. The fact is, if you don't get the nuclear issue right, none of the other ones matter.

- Valerie Plame

Americans want to believe that we are a nation of laws, and no one is above them, including the president. Mr. Trump's and his associates' actions during his campaign and during his brief time in office are extremely troubling.

- Valerie Plame

We've made some good beginnings with the New START Treaty, but a lot more can be done.

- Valerie Plame

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which in 1996 set out to ban nuclear tests, is an important step, but we need to do more - and we can.

- Valerie Plame

Our critics would love nothing more for us to go away and just be quiet. And we won't give them that satisfaction. We have young children that, one day, when they understand more of what's happened and what's transpired, we wanna be able to say to them, you know, we did our best. And we told the truth.

- Valerie Plame

I do not subscribe to the 'Trump is crazy like a fox' thing. I think that's being too generous.

- Valerie Plame

I know having a Jason Bourne all alone in a field firing at bad guys is much more dramatic, but it's not real.

- Valerie Plame

When I was outed on July 14th, 2003, I was, until that moment, covert. That means no one outside of a very small circle knew where I really worked.

- Valerie Plame

I come from a family in which public service was something to aspire to.

- Valerie Plame

I think the Bush Administration was bound and determined on regime change, and we will be paying the price of that for some time to come.

- Valerie Plame

I go to my kids' sports games and don't have to carry the enormous burden of secrecy with me every day. However, adrenaline still courses through my body whenever I go through passport control to another country.

- Valerie Plame

The fundamental problem is not that Trump has access to the nuclear launch codes, but that they exist at all.

- Valerie Plame

The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.

- Valerie Plame

There is no question that what we are seeing - the horrible advance of ISIS - goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq.

- Valerie Plame

Privatization is more efficient and effective in some cases, but not in intelligence.

- Valerie Plame

I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases to see did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Who did she see?

- Valerie Plame

There is not adequate whistleblower protection.

- Valerie Plame

To my knowledge, no one has died from a cyberattack... but there is a gray area between peace and war.

- Valerie Plame

It's some weird idea to think that you've always got to say everything is great and perfect.

- Valerie Plame