WASHINGTON – Valerie Plame, the diplomat’s wife whose secret resume was exposed in a newspaper column that eventually led to the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, is leaving the CIA on Friday, people familiar with her plans said.
Plame, 42, worked undercover for the CIA tracking weapons proliferation but saw her clandestine career imperiled after she was identified as an agency operative in the summer of 2003 in a syndicated column by Robert Novak.
Friends said the mother of 5-year-old twins wanted to spend more time with her family, and that although she once appeared in a photo spread about the case with her husband in Vanity Fair magazine, she had no plans to speak out.
“She did not have a career left,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a friend of Plame’s since the two were in the same agency training class in the 1980s. “She was no longer able to work as a clandestine officer, which was her reason for being.”
California: No charges for officer
A Los Angeles police officer will not face charges in the shooting death of a 13-year-old boy who rammed a stolen vehicle into a patrol car after a short chase, prosecutors announced Monday. Officer Steven Garcia fired 10 rounds and struck Devin Brown six times during the confrontation Feb. 6 in South Los Angeles. An investigation concluded there was “insufficient evidence to initiate criminal proceedings,” District Attorney Steve Cooley said.
Kansas: Army charges dropped
The Army dropped murder charges Monday against an officer accused of giving soldiers in his platoon permission to kill two Iraqi civilians. Second Lt. Erick J. Anderson, 26, of Twinsburg, Ohio, could have gotten life in prison if convicted at Fort Riley. At a hearing last month, one soldier who had accused Anderson changed his story, and another refused to testify.
Pennsylvania: Plea in shooting
A man charged in Doylestown with killing a co-worker seven years after he allegedly heard the victim tell a racist joke pleaded guilty but mentally ill on Monday. Before entering his plea, Stanford A. Douglas Jr., 30, of Philadelphia disrupted his Bucks County Court hearing by overturning chairs, cursing and demanding to be sent home. William Berkeyheiser, 62, was shot to death March 27 after he opened the front door of his home.
Florida: Suicide threat delays trial
A Fort Lauderdale hearing that could mean a return to prison for convicted killer Lionel Tate, once the youngest person in modern U.S. history sentenced to life behind bars, was postponed Monday after he sent the judge a letter threatening suicide. Tate, convicted at age 13 of beating and stomping to death a 6-year-old girl, was set to appear before Circuit Judge Joel Lazarus, who could send him back to prison if he finds Tate violated his probation. Tate, now 18, is accused of robbing a pizza delivery man at gunpoint. However, the judge said that because of the letter, he decided to wait until after a Dec. 19 competency hearing for Tate.
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