I just watched this and thought it was good. I didn't think it was great in terms of pure entertainment value or being a great thriller, but it is was good as it was based on a true story, and hence I think it was quite good infotainment.
It is based on the true story of Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joe Wilson.
The movie covers the period in 2002 when the US was claiming it had evidence for WMD in Iraq, as a pretext for war. It dramatizes well the top-down pressure within the administration and the CIA to come up with a narrative supporting the existence of WMD, without regard to the actual evidence.
Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative working to avoid nuclear proliferation. In the movie, she is shown questioning whether aluminum tubes imported by Iraq were really meant for a nuclear facility, as people higher up in the chain of command are insisting. Her husband Joe Wilson was a US ambassador. After leaving that role, he went on a trip to Niger to investigate whether 500 tons of yellowcake uranium had been sold to Iraq, and came to the conclusion that it wouldn't have been possible.
When George Bush Jr claimed that British Intelligence had reported that Iraq had imported yellowcake from an African country, Joe Wilson wondered if this was referring to what he had investigated in Niger, and concluded that if it were, then this intelligence had already been shown to be false. Wilson at this point wrote the article "What I Didn't Find in Africa" for the NY Times, which is still online here:
_http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/what-i-didn-t-find-in-africa.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1
This article went very much against the desired official narrative of Iraq having WMD. Not being able to counter Wilson's article directly with actual evidence about Iraq importing yellowcake, the CIA decide to try and attack Joe Wilson by releasing the identity of his wife as a covert CIA operative. Permission to do this comes from an executive order of the President, and the information is given by Richard Armitage to a reporter of the Washington Post, Robert Novak. The release of her identity is particularly troubling to Valerie in the movie, as she is in the middle of getting former nuclear scientists transported safely out of Iraq, and their safety becomes jeopardized.
The movie has quite a strong message about power being corrupted at the highest levels. Joe Wilson's character quotes Benjamin Franklin after Franklin was asked in 1787 what kind of government had been created - "a republic, if you can keep it". Joe Wilson is played by Sean Penn, and Valerie Plame Wilson by Naomi Watts. The bonus feature on the DVD has Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson giving a running commentary on the movie. Another good scene is at a dinner party, where the guests end up talking politics, and Joe Wilson gets annoyed with them for parroting the messages about Iraq and Saddam Hussein without actually knowing anything.
Valerie Plame Wilson wrote a book about her experiences, "Fair Game", published in 2007, on which the movie is based. Publication was delayed a few months while she and her publisher Simon and Schuster tried unsuccessfully to sue the CIA over some content of the book. (The CIA did not allow the actual dates Valerie Plume Wilson had worked for them to be included in the book.) She has gone on to write articles for the Huffington Post, and also to write crime fiction, co-authored with another writer.
Joe Wilson has also written a book, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir" (2004).
