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Valerie Plame (“Fair Game: My Life as a Spy”, “My Betrayal by the White House”) is the CIA agent whose career was destroyed because her husband Joe Wilson told the truth. The only weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were in the minds of the Bush administration.

The story is now set to become a film with Nicole Kidman starring as Plame.

Now director Doug Liman (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Bourne Identity) has his eye on Russell Crowe for the role of Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson. We already know Crowe can play just about anything or anyone, and he has experience playing a whistle blower – remember The Insider? He certainly can do a fine job playing Joe Wilson.

In an election year it’s an interesting story to take on. It was Wilson who wrote the op-ed piece in the NY Times which denied that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium yellowcake.

There were no weapons of mass destruction, and the intelligence reports being touted as proof were lies.

Wilson’s story was a contradiction to the Bush administration’s steady drumbeat for war. He was seen as a threat to the grand scheme. His determination to tell the truth exposed the faulty intelligence and lies that were hurtling the country towards a disastrous and unnecessary conflict.

It was determined that Wilson had to be punished, and the target was chosen, Wilson’s wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame.

To that end her name was handed to Robert Novak, columnist for the Washington Post, who in a scurrilous act, outed Plame, endangering her and any intelligence agent, US or foreign she’d ever worked with.

Sure, Scooter “I was just following orders” Libby, was convicted on four felony counts. But those above him, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, for whom Libby fell on his sword, have slithered away, destined to collect hefty pensions for playing at Vice President and President.

Will the film have an audience? I sincerely hope so. I hope the film, no matter who plays Wilson, opens people’s minds to what happened when one man dared to tell the truth.