Monday on CNN’s “New Day,” former CIA agent Valerie Plame explained why she was running for Congress in 2020 for New Mexico’s third congressional district.
Plame said the motivation was a desire to serve her country again.
“Maybe this sounds corny, but I couldn’t help but be attracted to the opportunity of perhaps serving my country again,” she said. “The last time I did it as a covert CIA operations officer got cut short. My twins have gone off to college, and I’m ready for a new chapter. And I thought I would like to at least try. My home is northern New Mexico, and I love that maybe I can give back.”
In 2017, Plame tweeted a story featured in The Unz Review titled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars,” which claimed “American Jews are pushing for war in the Middle East,” and considered to be antisemitic. Plame acknowledged the antisemitism in the story and claimed her tweet was a result of not reading the article in its entirety.
“I didn’t like it,” she said. “All I was looking at, the only thing that I focused on in that article was I thought it was a very bad idea to get out of the Iran nuclear deal. That’s very much what I was focused on. I stupidly did not read the rest of the article. And when I did, I was really horrified. It was antisemitic. That has no place at any time anywhere. It is not who I am. It’s not what I believe. And I apologized as sincerely and with heartfelt conviction as I possibly could. And there will be people that understand, ‘She’s human, she messed up, she didn’t read the whole article.’ And I look forward to moving forward and contributing in other ways.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.