NPR interview with Valerie Plame

Click here to view interview.
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/28/226529040/i-spy-valerie-plame-makes-her-fiction-debut-in-cia-thriller

Vanessa Pierson, the heroine of Valerie Plame's first novel, is — ahem — "blonde, lithe, and nicely sexy." She is also a CIA agent, determined to lasso a nuclear arms dealer named Bhoot before he arrives at an underground nuclear facility in Iran.
But just as her informant is about to tell her where Bhoot will be, he's shot by a sniper who misses Vanessa — or does he simply overlook her? How will Vanessa Pierson halt the terrorists, protect the world and, by the way, also keep the secret of her forbidden romance with David, a fellow CIA ops officer with green-flecked hazel eyes?
Blowback moves through assorted picturesque world capitals, including Vienna, Paris, London and Prague, with occasional glimpses of the comparatively mundane suburbs around Washington D.C. The authors are Sarah Lovett, a career suspense novelist, and Valerie Plame, who may be the most famous former CIA covert operations officer who was ever portrayed by Naomi Watts in a major motion picture.
As a spy thriller, the book contains its fair share of shootouts and high-speed chases, but Plame tells NPR's Scott Simon that she and Lovett wanted the novel to paint a "realistic portrait" of a female operations officer. Someone, she says, "who is genuine and isn't just using sex and guns — although they're great, too — to collect intelligence."

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Interview Highlights

On the similarities between herself and Pierson
The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better. I think Vanessa is a smarter version of where I was. And it's definitely informed by my experiences in the CIA.
It is fiction, but of course I was able to draw on my experience. I developed my expertise in the agency in nuclear counterproliferation. And that's why that's the main theme of this first book, hopefully in a long series. But it's sort of ripped from the headlines.

More on Valerie Plame

On why Pierson blames herself after her asset is shot
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.
On the isolation of having a job you can't discuss
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.
On the glamour of spy thrillers versus the reality of CIA operations
I would say ... there's a lot of downtime. You spend a lot of time waiting. You're waiting in a bar, or in a restaurant, or at a corner to make your meeting. You're doing a lot of surveillance detection routes to make sure that no one is on your tail. You can't put that in a book before the reader puts it down really quickly. However, both Sarah and I felt very strongly [that] we wanted to make it a realistic portrait, particularly of a female operations officer in the CIA. For the most part, to my mind ... how they're portrayed in popular culture is paper dolls — really props more than anything else. And I wanted a strong but realistic character.
On the recent NSA leaks, and being surprised and outraged by what they revealed
I find it absolutely astounding. The revelations about the extent and the breadth of the NSA is nothing short of breathtaking. This goes to the very essence of the Fourth Amendment and, broader, what we want as a democracy and that very perilous tension and dynamic between security and privacy. And we really do need to have a national dialogue on this, on how much we are willing to give up to be kept safe.
On reclaiming her life after the 2003 leak
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. We moved away from Washington and have settled into a new community and, you know, rebuilt our lives.

May 2014 book: Blowback

Cindy has announced her selection for May 2014: Blowback by Valerie Plame. "My choice is one I have been thinking about for some time since I heard a review of the book and interview of author," she said.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Introducing Blowback, an exhilarating new espionage thriller by former CIA ops officer Valerie Plame and thriller writer Sarah Lovett.

Covert CIA ops officer Vanessa Pierson is finally close to capturing the world’s most dangerous international nuclear arms dealer: Bhoot, alias the ghost. One of her assets has information about Bhoot’s upcoming visit to a secret underground nuclear weapons facility in Iran—in only a few days. But just as Pierson’s informant is about to give her the location, they’re ambushed by an expert sniper. Pierson narrowly escapes. Her asset: dead.

Desperate to capture Bhoot and the sniper before they inflict more damage, Pierson enlists all of the Agency’s resources to find them. But with each day, the pressure of the manhunt mounts, causing her to push her forbidden romance with a fellow ops officer to its limit when she asks him to do the impossible. Despite the risks, she refuses to halt her pursuit of the terrorists, and she puts her cover and her career—and her life—at risk.

With rapid-cut shifts from European capitals to Washington to the Near East, and with insider detail that only a former spy could provide, Blowback marks the explosive beginning of the hunt for Bhoot, the villain whom Vanessa Pierson devotes her life to capturing, dead or alive.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
There is another book out there that talks about who she is. Here is that book description:

On July 6, 2003, four months after the United States invaded Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson's now historic op-ed, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," appeared in The New York Times. A week later, conservative pundit Robert Novak revealed in his newspaper column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative. The public disclosure of that secret information spurred a federal investigation and led to the trial and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and the Wilsons' civil suit against top officials of the Bush administration. Much has been written about the "Valerie Plame" story, but Valerie herself has been silent, until now. Some of what has been reported about her has been frighteningly accurate, serving as a pungent reminder to the Wilsons that their lives are no longer private. And some has been completely false -- distorted characterizations of Valerie and her husband and their shared integrity.

Valerie Wilson retired from the CIA in January 2006, and now, not only as a citizen but as a wife and mother, the daughter of an Air Force colonel, and the sister of a U.S. marine, she sets the record straight, providing an extraordinary account of her training and experiences, and answers many questions that have been asked about her covert status, her responsibilities, and her life. As readers will see, the CIA still deems much of the detail of Valerie's story to be classified. As a service to readers, an afterword by national security reporter Laura Rozen provides a context for Valerie's own story.