Distorted Valerie Plame Flick Bombed at the Box Office

He who laughs last:

You might think that given the abysmal box office record of left-wing movies about the Iraq war that "Fair Game," a highly distorted version of the tired controversy surrounding former CIA non-agent Valerie Plame Wilson, would never have been made.


Of course, since Hollywood is dominated by leftists, economic sanity did not prevail. Economic reality did prevail, though, as "Fair Game" ended up being a total bomb. It grossed just $9.5 million domestically. Add in the international ticket sales and the fiction flick just barely managed to recoup its production budget of $22 million.


My source for those numbers of the St. Petersburg Times which still seems to believe the utter fiction that the Plame "disclosure" was the work of the nefarious Bush White House:


Fair Game was a generally well-regarded movie (it got a good 79 percent favorable rating on the movie website Rotten Tomatoes) that starred big-name actors in Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. It was about CIA operative Valerie Plame (played by Watts) whose cover was blown in Bob Novak's widely read Washington Post political column.


The information was allegedly leaked to Novak by White House officials to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson (played by Penn), who had written a column in the New York Times in 2003 that said the Bush administration distorted intelligence information to justify the invasion of Iraq.


The staff reporter throws in "allegedly" for good measure but that really doesn't cut the mustard. But don't take my word for it, SPT, just listen to the Washington Post which took the rare move of denouncing a movie (this one) in an editorial last year, as noted by NB's Noel Sheppard:


"Fair Game" also resells the couple's story that Ms. Plame's exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy - but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.


The Post's conclusion is right on the money as well:


Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; "Fair Game" is just one more example. But the film's reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth - not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife - the myth endures. We'll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

WaPo Editor Says Valerie Plame Movie "Fair Game" Is 'Full Of Distortions' And 'Outright Inventions'

Hollywood shuffling in the name of continued Bush Derangement Syndrome by the Left. And by the way, the facts have long stated that there was no big conspiracy, Richard Armitage 'outed' Valerie Plame because he simply screwed up:

WE'RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film "Fair Game" - which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq - deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame's exposure as a CIA agent. "It's accurate," Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: "For people who have short memories or don't read, this is the only way they will remember that period."


We certainly hope that is not the case. In fact, "Fair Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post's Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.


The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson's reporting did not affect the intelligence community's view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush's statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.


"Fair Game" also resells the couple's story that Ms. Plame's exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy - but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.


Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; "Fair Game" is just one more example. But the film's reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth - not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife - the myth endures. We'll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

New Valerie Plame Biopic Fails To Mention Name Leaker Richard Armitage

More revised history by the Hollywood-Left:

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.

Despite Lawsuit Being Dismissed, Liberals Still Chasing Dick Cheney For Valerie Plame

CNN.com:

Former vice president Dick Cheney told a special prosecutor in 2004 that he had no idea who leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, according to newly released FBI documents.

Cheney was questioned as part of an investigation on how journalists came to know the identity of Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was a critic of the Iraq war.

In the interview, Cheney responded to many questions with "I do not recall."

However, he took a few stabs at the CIA in its handling of White House allegations that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger to manufacture nuclear weapons.

Wilson was dispatched to Niger on a CIA assignment to explore the charges and later said that the Bush administration was twisting facts to support an invasion of Iraq. He implied in a newspaper article that his trip was at the behest of the vice president.

Cheney's reaction to the article was that it was "amateur hour" at the CIA, according to the FBI documents, released after the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a watchdog group in Washington, sued under the Freedom of Information Act. The 28-page summary of the Cheney interview was made public more than five years after it took place.

Cheney, his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and presidential adviser Karl Rove, were named in a 2006 federal civil lawsuit by Plame and Wilson. Plame contended she was the victim of intentional and malicious exposure and that both she and Wilson suffered a violation of rights. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2007.

Only Libby was tried and convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about the Plame leak. President George W. Bush later commuted his sentence.

Bush Derangement Syndrome once again rears its ugly head. Dick Cheney dares to speak out against The One and his minions on the Left will do anything to shut him up, including trying to get him brought up on charges he released information on a former CIA secretary that no one cares about. Of course, what they never mention is that Richard Armitage was the sole person responsible for "leaking" Plame identity, but why let something like facts get in the way when you're suffering from major BDS.

Supreme Court Wants No More Of Bush-Hating Valerie Plame

MSNBC.com:

The U.S. Supreme Court will not revive a lawsuit that former CIA operative Valerie Plame brought against former members of the Bush administration.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

A lower court last year threw out the lawsuit in which Plame and Wilson accused former Vice President Dick Cheney and several former high-ranking administration officials of disclosing her identity to reporters in 2003. Plame and Wilson said that violated their constitutional rights.

The lawsuit named former presidential adviser Karl Rove; Cheney's former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The U.S. Court of Appeals said that Plame and Wilson did not meet the legal standard for constitutional claims, in part because the lawsuit hinges on alleged violations of the Privacy Act — a law that does not cover the president or the vice president's offices.

Richard Armitage "outed" former secretary Valerie Plame, not Karl Rove, not Scooter Libby or anyone else in the Bush administration. Now it's about time the book on the arrogant pricks that are Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame be closed.

The Plames Lose In Court

The witchhunt for Karl Rove's hide keep coming back to bite the Plames in the ass:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge in Washington is tossing out a lawsuit filed by Valerie Plame. The former CIA operative sued members of the Bush administration over the CIA leak scandal.

She had accused Vice President Cheney and others of conspiring to leak her identity. She said it violated her privacy rights, and that it was an illegal act of retribution for her husband'scriticism of the administration.

Her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a prominent critic of the administration's justifications for the war in Iraq.

The judge dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, and said he wouldn't express an opinion on the constitutional arguments. The vice president's former chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was convicted of obstructing the investigation into the leak. He was fined and sentenced to two and a-half years in prison, but the prison sentence was commuted by President Bush.

Unfortunately, this bit of news doesn't mean that 'ol Valerie and Richard will be going away anytime soon.

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