The Plame affair or CIA leak scandal  (rel. CIA leak grand jury investigation) are the common terms for an ongoing United States political scandal which has origins in the Iraq disarmament crisis of late 2002, and concerns the identification of Valerie Plame, wife of retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction" in a July 2003 column in the Washington Post by conservative pundit Robert Novak.

Novak's column was published only eight days after the publication of a New York Times op-ed written by Wilson, which was highly critical of the Bush administration's use of "unreliable" "yellowcake" documents as part of its rationale for the Iraq War. Wilson claims that Novak had conspired with Bush administration sources to expose his wife's identity as political retribution for his earlier criticism. Divulging the identity of an undercover CIA operative is, in some circumstances, a federal crime in the United States.

The Plame Affair includes the subsequent Special Counsel investigation by appointee Patrick Fitzgerald into the actions of Bush administration officials — including Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Ari Fleischer, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and unknown others — regarding their knowledge of the leak of Plame's identity. In addition to Novak, six other journalists are reported to have known Plame's identity before the Novak column was published, including Judith Miller of The New York Times, who spent eighty-five days in jail for failing to divulge the identity of her confidential administration source to a grand jury.

On October 28, 2005 Fitzgerald announced at a press conference, that the grand jury had indicted Lewis Libby, who was then the Chief of Staff and assistant for National Security Affairs to Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States, and Adviser on National Security directly to President Bush.[4]

While Fitzgerald is bound by grand jury secrecy rules from disclosing whether more indictments are planned, some believe that his remarks might indicate that further indictments are unlikely. 

Valerie Plame was a CIA agent for 20 years. Blowing her cover could be harmful for all her contacts in the past as a covert agent. It could also make it more difficult for other CIA agents in the future to find trustful cooperation with persons all over the world.

The President's father, former president and former Director of the CIA, said once at a speech (rededicating CIA headquarter in Langley, Virgina as the George Bush Center for Intelligence), about those who expose clandestine CIA officers (as Valerie Plame): "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those, who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors....". (April 26, 1999 at CIA, Langley, Virginia). However, it is worth noting that President Bush was referring to CIA-employed Agents, something Plame was not.