Valerie Plame Wilson was on a covert operation.

Her mission was clear as she walked briskly through downtown State College.

Finally, she found her target: a store open before 11 on a Sunday morning where she could buy Nittany Lion sweatpants and knit hats for her 8-year-old twins in an effort to turn them into Penn State fans.

In the 23 years since Wilson attended Penn State, the former CIA spy's life has taken several unexpected turns, culminating in the leak of her identity in The Washington Post.

Nearly five years have passed since Robert Novak outed Wilson's undercover status in a Post column published on July 14, 2003.

The case surrounding the leak of Wilson's name implicated officials at the highest levels of the president's administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former aide to President George W. Bush Karl Rove.

The road for this former Penn Stater, since her 1985 graduation, has been long and arduous, but starts with a humble beginning.

Loyal Lion

One memory stands out in Wilson's mind about her experience at Penn State: a close-knit group of friends, or "sisters," she met during freshmen orientation.

"As soon as we met, I just knew we would be friends for awhile," said Sue Leech Seiff, who met Wilson during her first day at the university.

While at Penn State, Wilson was a loyal Nittany Lion fan, never missing a home football game or the chance to tailgate with her friends.

"I thought Penn State was the quintessential college experience," she said. "When I was here, there were two national football championships -- I thought that was normal."

Active in the Pi Beta Phi sorority starting her junior year, Wilson said she didn't let the sorority take over her social life.

"When I was a junior, you have a certain amount of seniority to say, 'I'm sorry. I'm not going to do that really silly thing. What are you going to do, make me?' " she said. "I enjoyed the sorority life, but it was by no means the center around which everything radiated."

The nightlife wasn't for Wilson either, Seiff recalled.

"She was just not a real partier at all," she said. "A late night for Valerie was 10 o'clock."

Wilson also spent time in the basement of the Carnegie Building, selling advertising for The Daily Collegian's business division, in order to make some money on the side.

During her senior year, Wilson and her friends rented an apartment on the top floor of the still-present Victorian-style red house on the corner of College Avenue and Atherton Street.

As the spring of 1985 loomed, Wilson, a liberal arts major who studied business and German, didn't have any plans for life after graduation.

"I always had a better idea of what I didn't want to do than what I wanted to do," she said.

Secret Agent

Because she signed a confidentiality agreement when she joined, Wilson cannot publicly disclose many specifics of her CIA career, including when she was recruited, except to say she worked for the agency from January 2002 until her resignation in January 2006.

"What I can say is there was a tradition of public service in my family," she said. "My father was an Air Force officer; my brother was a wounded Vietnam Marine Corps veteran. So I liked the idea of serving my country and doing what seemed to me to be an interesting career."

However, an afterword in Wilson's book by Laura Rozen, a reporter, divulges that the former spy was recruited soon after graduating from Penn State.

Wilson was still at Penn State when her mother, Diane Plame, sent her an ad she had clipped out of The Philadelphia Inquirer that stated the CIA was looking for new recruits.

The confidentiality agreement is also the reason why many lines in Wilson's book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, were grayed out by the CIA before publication. Most of the redactions disclose the dates of Wilson's service -- facts that are available in the public domain.

Wilson, along with her publisher, Simon & Schuster, filed a lawsuit against the CIA for not allowing her to reveal how long she was in the CIA, a move she believes is censorship and an infringement on her First Amendment rights, she said.

"I believe that the agency's position is not driven by genuine national security concerns but rather further indication of an administration that seeks to be punitive and vindictive," she said. "I don't believe that any national security would be harmed if I can say how long I had served my country."

The case was heard last summer, but Wilson lost after the CIA submitted a classified brief to the judge, which neither Wilson nor her lawyers could view.

"It must have said the world would stop spinning if the public knew how long I had served my country," she said, adding that an appeal has been filed.

Wilson can talk about her interviews with the CIA, however, and said the process was lengthy.

"It's a long involved process of many tests, psychological exams, interviews, background checks, medical," she said. "I was thrilled when I finally got an offer."

After her acceptance, Wilson went to "the Farm" where CIA recruits go through paramilitary training.

"That's where you get to do things like fire a variety of automatic weapons, practice escape and evasions in the woods ... skin a deer, all those sort of survival things," she said.

Ask Wilson specifically about her career as an undercover agent, and she must say: "I can't comment on that."

Even though she cannot acknowledge it, the afterword in her book details that in 1996, Wilson became a Nonofficial Covered Officer, a move that required her to erase all connections with the U.S. government and didn't afford her the protection of a diplomat status if her covert activities were discovered.

Wilson acknowledged that her experience in the CIA did lead to dangerous situations, "but don't tell my mother," she said.

Despite the inherent dangers, Wilson said she loved her career.

"There were times when I was doing things [and I thought] 'I can't believe they're paying me to do this,' " she said.

A Cover Blown

It took just 16 words in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address to start a firestorm.

After Bush's statement that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Wilson's husband, Joe, a former diplomat, began using his backchannels to determine how those 16 words had worked their way into the speech.

He later learned that the claim was based on forged documents, and when the administration failed to come clean, Wilson's husband decided to write an opinion piece, publicly challenging the administration's claim that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium to develop nuclear weapons.

Entitled "What I Did Not Find in Africa," the op-ed ran July 6, 2003, in the New York Times and detailed Joe Wilson's trip to Niger, more than a year earlier, where he had looked into the possible sale of yellowcake uranium to Iraq, but found nothing, Wilson said.

"It was the first time anyone had challenged them and it was particularly on the most important, salient point they had made about the case for war, which was the nuclear threat. I mean, how many times did we hear 'the smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud?' " Wilson said. "... I think they felt that they had to react, and they decided to do it by discrediting him by revealing my identity."

It took Robert Novak, a Post columnist, only 20 words to reveal Valerie Plame Wilson's identity just eight days after her husband's op-ed: "[Joe] Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," the July 14, 2003 column read.

When Wilson saw her name in print, she said she was "mortified" and her thoughts raced to her assets, the safety of her children, as well as her career.

"I knew that was over," she said.

On March 6, 2007, "Scooter" Libby was found guilty on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and one count of making false statements to the FBI for his role in leaking Wilson's identity, Wilson wrote in her book.

Libby's trial showed that there was a multitude of senior Bush administration officials that played a role in revealing Wilson's name, she said.

"In the scheme of things, [Novak]'s really just a toady," she said. "He was doing someone else's bidding."

Libby's 30-month prison sentence was later commuted by President Bush.

A civil suit filed by the Wilsons against Cheney, Libby, Rove and Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State, was dismissed on July 19. Wilson said she is currently in the process of appealing.

The trials and appeals are frustrating, Wilson said, "but justice takes awhile."

Looking Forward

With Bush's term winding down, Wilson is looking forward to the end of the current administration.

"I think it is the worst administration we have ever experienced," Wilson said, "and I would like to think that even without my own personal experience, I would still feel that way because they have truly trampled our rights and our liberties in an attempt to perpetuate their hold on power."

Wilson has already endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., in her race for the Democratic nomination.

No matter who wins, Wilson has some demands for the future president.

"For starters, restore our international credibility, our moral authority, our political authority," she said. "I think our civil liberties have been undermined. I think our Constitution has been shredded."

Wilson has no definite plans for the future, but hopes to contribute to society again in some way, she said, mentioning teaching as a possible outlet.

Last year, Wilson left Washington, D.C., and moved her family to Sante Fe, N.M. Her book, published last October, rose to No. 6 on the New York Times Best Sellers List, and a paperback edition is set for release in June, she said.

"This is my story; it's the truth," she said. "I think it also tells, I hope, that there's a real person behind this. It's not just politics as usual."