Valerie Plame Joins Ploughshares Fund's Board of Directors

September 3, 2015

Washington, DC – Global security foundation Ploughshares Fund today announced that former CIA covert operations officer, Valerie Plame, has joined its board of directors.

“Americans should listen when Valerie Plame talks about the urgency of reducing global nuclear weapons stockpiles.  She comes to Ploughshares Fund with a wealth of hands-on operational nuclear proliferation expertise,” said Ploughshares Fund President Joe Cirincione. “It is especially crucial right now that we listen when she talks about the agreement with Iran as the best way to stop the country from building a nuclear bomb.”

During her CIA career, Plame worked to protect America’s national security and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons. In 2003, White House officials illegally leaked her name to a Washington Post columnist in retaliation for public criticisms made by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, about the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq. 

Given her CIA experience in seeking to keep terrorists and rogue nation states from acquiring nuclear weapons, Plame firmly believes that nuclear weapons are the greatest existential threat on earth.

“We are at a crossroads on this issue and the decisions we make over the next 10 years will set us on a course either toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons or toward expanding existing arsenals and building new ones,” Plame said. “If the Iran nuclear accord slips through our fingers, we will lose the last chance we have to prevent Tehran from building a bomb without going to war. Thankfully, it now looks like Congress will be unable to block it. But we can’t forget that there are nine other countries with more than 16,000 nuclear weapons, all racing to modernize their arsenals. We can’t afford this. The cost to taxpayers – with a price tag of $1 trillion in the U.S. alone – and to human security is just too high.”  

Plame is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, “Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House,” which was made into a film starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. She is also a consultant to the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit research institute for multidisciplinary collaborations in the physical, biological, computational and social sciences, and a leader with Global Zero, the international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

“Valerie Plame’s unique real-world experience protecting our country from the threat of nuclear weapons will add tremendous value to Ploughshares Fund, “ said Ploughshares Fund Executive Director Philip Yun. “Her clear-eyed vision on the existential dangers presented by nuclear weapons aligns seamlessly with our own. We couldn’t be more pleased to welcome her on board.”