Valerie Plame 'Fair Game' Movie Tosses Name Leaker Richard Armitage Down Memory Hole

The only way we even know the name of Valerie Plame (and fame seeking hubby Joe Wilson) is that that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage leaked her name as a CIA officer to columnist Robert Novak. That is what set in motion the long drawn out Plamegate affair in which only Scooter Libby was convicted of something other than leaking her name. So you would figure that the supposedly biographical movie scheduled for a November USA release about Plame, Fair Game, would feature Armitage front and center as the principal villain. Right? Wrong. The fact is that "Fair Game" has tossed Richard Armitage down the memory hole. The man who is responsible for the reason that any of us even know who Valerie Plame is appears nowhere in the extensive IMDB cast credits for this movie.

Of course, the aforementioned Scooter Libby (David Andrews) who did not leak her name is listed. Also listed in the cast is the Armitage-leaked name of Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts), fame seeking hubby Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), Nervous Analyst #1 (Louis Ozawa Changchien), Chauvinist Analyst (Sean Mahon),  Head Paparazzo (Harry L. Seddon), Four Seasons Waitress (Satu Rautaharju), Starbucks Employee (Angela Lewis), and Turkish Embassy Guest (Marsall Factora). However, as for the person who made the "Fair Game" movie possible by leaking Valerie Plame's name, he appears nowhere in the cast credits.

Ironically you can learn more about the real facts of the Plame case (and who leaked Plame's name) by reading the IMDB "Fair Game" message board than by seeing the movie itself. Some sample posts that delivers the information that the "Fair Game" propanda movie refuses to touch:

...The film conveniently leaves out the fact that we know who leaked her name and that character isn't even in the film...

Funny how neither Novak nor Armitage are in the film then, right? Libby didn't leak Plame's name. Armitage (a Bush critic and enemy) "leaked" it and only after he was specifically asked by Novak why on earth James Wilson was sent to Niger in the first place. Novak then called the CIA to make sure it was ok to publish her name, and they gave him what he considered the green light.

The CIA made absolutely no effort to convince him he shouldn't print the name, so he printed it. That's how real journalists in a free state operate. If the CIA wanted the name kept secret, they could have easily done so. Novak himself has kept names out of articles many times over the years for exactly such reasons. The CIA made no efforts, most likely because Plame wasn't all that "undercover" and they genuinely didn't have any valid reasons to convince Novak not to use her name, so they didn't bother. 

Wilson was hired by the CIA to investigate claims about yellow cake in Niger. He later wrote an op-ed piece attacking the Bush administration using his experience investigating in Niger as source of authority. It became a big news story. At that point, the smarter journalists started wondering who this Wilson guy was, and did some background checking on him. This background check left them puzzled, because their was nothing in Wilson's resume which would even remotely recommend him being sent on such a mission. So Washington DC based reporter Robert Novak called around trying to find out why Wilson got sent. Eventually, George W. Bush enemy and Colin Powell lap boy Richard Armitage told Novak that Wilson's wife works at the CIA and she's the one who pushed him for the job.

I am amazed how Hollywood is willing to lose hundreds of millions, if not billions, to sell their leftist progapanda. At some point this will be self-limiting, when they run out of money or studio stockholders tire of losing money. 

The final poster above has a point. "Fair Game" is doomed to become another leftwing proganda flick flop that will follow in the wake of many other such box office bombs. However, it is not too late for the producers of "Fair Game" to salvage this movie. Your humble correspondent recommends that they do some creative editing to remake this movie as a comedy. Keep all the original scenes but edit in one of my favorite actors, Bruce McGill (who also portrays the CIA Deputy Director for Operations Jim Pavitt), with a shaved head and a lot of jacket padding to play the part of a phantom Richard Armitage who nobody in the movie even notices. As the boring melodramatic "action" in the movie takes place, McGill as Armitage  appears in many of the scenes yelling things like, "HEY VALERIE! Nobody would even know you if I hadn't leaked your name! Why don't you or anybody else here even acknowledge my existence?"

Not only would such a movie be more accurate but it would draw much more box office sales than the doomed-to-fail original.