On Nov. 12, the Second US Appeals Court ruled to uphold a 2007 New York district court decision in Wilson v. Central Intelligence Agency, the case in which former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her publisher, Simon & Schuster Inc., challenged the CIA's heavy-handed redactions from her book, Fair Game, under charges that they violated Wilson's First Amendment rights. (More of Wilson's story is in an earlier post here.)

But last week, the federal court affirmed that the CIA was in the right: Whatever Wilson wanted to disclose about her pre-2002 service with the Agency would have to stay secret. Further, the grounds on which Plame Wilson had claimed rights to disclose—that the CIA had disclosed the information itself, in a 2006 letter to Wilson, and that the dates of her service are already widespread knowledge—were deemed insufficient by Circuit Judge Reena Raggi.

"Evidence of public disclosure does not deprive information of classified status," Raggi wrote in her decision. "That Ms. Wilson's service may have been cut short by the failure of others to respect the classified status of her employment may well have warranted investigation.  But these circumstances do not absolve Ms. Wilson of her own secrecy obligations."

Wilson's response:

Regarding the decision, my legal team is evaluating whether to file a petition for rehearing and/or rehearing en banc of the 12 November decision.  If a petition is filed, it will occur during December...Any petition that is filed would address and respond to the relevant findings and holdings of the appellate panel that issued the 12 November 2009 decision.