Plame And Wilson Urge Action At "Fair Game" Screening

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Unless Karl Rove snuck in, there wasn’t a dry eye in the Silver Theater Tuesday night as more than 400 DC Labor FilmFest attendees gave Valerie Plame (l, with FilmFest Director Chris Garlock), Joe Wilson and Doug Liman a standing ovation at the Closing Night screening of Fair Game. The new thriller dramatically depicts the infamous “outing” of former CIA agent Valerie Plame -- and its personal, political and legal aftermath -- by the Bush administration in retaliation for Wilson’s exposure of the falsity of Bush’s claims that Iraq was developing “weapons of mass destruction.” Plame, as glamorous as Naomi Watts -- the actress who portrays her in “Fair Game” -- spoke for nearly an hour after the film, along with husband Joe Wilson (not nearly as grizzled as Sean Penn, who plays him in the movie) and director Doug Liman, taking questions from the rapt audience and interviewer Neil Conan, host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation. As in the film, Plame and Wilson spoke out strongly on the responsibility of citizens in a democracy to speak and act, a central theme of the FilmFest’s second annual Whistleblower Series. “When America stopped being what we all thought it was, someone needed to stand up” for democracy, said Wilson. “These are divisive times,” added Plame, “but we’ll get through them together; we’re a great nation.” - photo by Adam Wright