Valerie Elise Plame Wilson (born 19 April 1963), known as Valerie Plame, Valerie E. Wilson, an Valerie Plame Wilson, is a former United States CIA Operations Officer whose covert identity was classified and the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. After working for the CIA for twenty years, she retired in December 2005, as a result of the publication and compromising of her classified cover identity by an American journalist in the summer of 2003.