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, is leaving the CIA on Friday, people familiar with her plans said.
Plame, 43, 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.
There has also been speculation that she would file a civil lawsuit against the Bush administration, which she contends leaked her identity and damaged her career.
"She did not have a career left," said Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA officer and a friend of Plame 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."...
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