CIA panel blocks book by outed agent Valerie Plame

According to Newsweek magazine, the CIA panel that must approve writings by former employees ruled Plame can't even mention the widely-known fact she worked for the agency because she had "nonofficial cover," posing as a private business-woman instead of a government official.

"She believes this will effectively gut the book," one of her advisors told the magazine asking not to be named.

The magazine noted that while other former CIA officers have published books, all of which cleared the panel, few with nonofficial cover have.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield told Newsweek the panel was still having "ongoing" talks with Plame to resolve the dispute.

"The sole yardstick," he said, is that books "contain no classified information." A spokesman for Simon and Schuster, Plame's publisher, declined to comment.

In July 2003, conservative writer Robert Novak cited unnamed senior administration sources when he revealed that Plame was a CIA operative in a column criticizing her diplomat husband, Joe Wilson.

A federal investigation into the leak of her identity led to the jailing of a New York Times reporter Judith Miller after she refused to reveal who told her the secret information. Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, will go on trial for perjury and obstruction in the case next week.

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