Judge Denies Former CIA Officer's Request To Keep Her Home Address a Secret

A federal judge has denied a request by a former CIA employee, Valerie Plame, and her husband, Joseph Wilson, not to make public their home address as part of a lawsuit claiming Bush administration officials deliberately exposed Ms. Plame's undercover status.

The couple had asked to keep their address under wraps for privacy reasons, but Judge John Bates said yesterday the couple's address was already evident to anyone who sought it. "In less than thirty minutes, the Court was able to ascertain plaintiffs' residential address from multiple publicly available sources," the judge wrote. "Indeed, an attorney who filed this motion on plaintiffs' behalf has stated in a national circulated newspaper that he is plaintiffs' next-door neighbor, and the residential address of that attorney also is readily ascertainable."

A lawyer for the couple, Christopher Wolf, wrote in USA Today that he lived next door to them in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington for five years without knowing of her tie to the CIA.