Ex-CIA agent Plame barred from revealing tenure dates

NEW YORK — A federal judge ruled Friday that former CIA agent Valerie Plame cannot divulge the dates she worked for the agency in her forthcoming book, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House."

The decision by U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones was a victory for the CIA, which had argued such information was classified.

Plame was at the heart of a case in which Bush administration officials were accused of leaking news about her covert status in 2003 after her husband, former envoy Joseph Wilson, publicly raised questions about the intelligence used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The ruling came as a result of a lawsuit the author and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, filed in May. Plame and the publisher argued that the dates of her service before 2002 had been made public on a federal Web site and no longer should be considered classified.

The publisher said it still plans to publish the book.