Valerie Plame Running for Senate in NM

Former CIA spy Valerie Plame will be seeking the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Tom Udall of New Mexico, The Washington Examiner reported Friday.

But the 55-year-old, who plans to run as a Democrat, will have to answer questions of past tweets linked to an anti-Semitic group, the Examiner noted.

In 2017 Plame retweeted and UNZ Review article tited "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars," which said that Jews "own the media," stated they should wear labels while appearing on national television and that their beliefs are as dangerous as "a bottle of rat poison."

Plame initially played down the issue, saying, "First of all, calm down. Re-tweets don't imply endorsement. Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish." Later, however, she admitted, "OK folks, look, I messed up. I skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and shared it without seeing and considering the rest."

The Examiner noted that Plame later apologized and resigned from the board of the the anti-nuclear weapons group, the Ploughshares Fund. Still, the website noted, Plame over three-year period had posted nine UNZ articles, one titled "Why I Still Dislike Israel" and one on "Dancing Israelis" on 9/11.

Plame was outed as a spy in 2003 by conservative columnist Robert Novak. Novak attributed the leak to "two senior administration officials" in the George W. Bush White House. Plame says the outing was payback for her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson, writing an opinion piece questioning the intelligence used to justify the Iraq War.