Plame Book Criticizes Bush

WASHINGTON — Four years after her CIA cover was blown in a newspaper column, Valerie Plame is settling scores with the Bush administration, Republican lawmakers and the journalists involved in the White House leak scandal.

Plame writes about the leak, the fallout and the perjury trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in her memoir, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House." The book is to be released Tuesday.

She offers harsh words for President Bush, whom she assails for administration "arrogance and intolerance." She also said criticism of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a "dress rehearsal" for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth effort that impugned Sen. John Kerry's war record during his failed presidential campaign in 2004.

"It was classic Karl Rove: go after your enemy's strong point," Plame writes, saying Bush's former political adviser was behind both efforts. "In Joe's case it was that he told the truth; in Kerry's case, it was his exemplary military service."

Plame often casts herself as a spectator to the scandal. She discusses being uncomfortable in the limelight, even as she poses for magazine photographs, attends posh Washington fundraisers and is whisked backstage at a rock concert as her husband becomes one of the Iraq war's most public critics.

She describes arriving home one day to find Vanity Fair photographers in her kitchen preparing a photo for the magazine's cover.