Valerie Plame, the former CIA officer caught up in a controversy during the George W. Bush administration, is running for Congress.
Plame now lives in New Mexico, and announced Thursday in Santa Fe that she will seek election to the House of Representatives in the state’s heavily Democratic northern 3rd District.
The incumbent congressman, Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) is running for the Senate.
“Plame said in a statement she considers herself best-known as ‘the covert CIA operations officer who was illegally outed by the Bush administration in 2003,’” says the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Plame’s identity as a CIA operative was leaked by an official in the Bush administration in 2003 “in an effort to discredit her then-husband Joe Wilson. Wilson is a former diplomat who criticized Bush’s decision to invade Iraq,” says the Albuquerque Journal. About 4,500 American troops and at least 150,000 Iraqis died in the conflict.
“My career in the CIA was cut short by partisan politics,” Plame said in her statement, “but I’m not done serving our country. We need more people in Congress with the courage to stand up for what’s right.”
“A former State Department official eventually admitted to leaking her name to the media, and Scooter Libby, then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, was convicted for lying to investigators,” says NBC News.
President Trump pardoned Libby last year.
Plame faces plenty of competition in the election: at least five other candidates, four Democrats and one Republican, are also in the race.