On the Record

(Fox News) - The new book by former CIA operative Valerie Plame contains conflicting accounts of the events leading up to the leaking of her name — and paints an unflattering picture of husband Joe Wilson.

Plame insists that she neither suggested nor recommended that Wilson go to Niger to investigate whether Iraq had been trying to buy weapons-grade uranium. But elsewhere in the book she relates how she wrote an e-mail to colleagues detailing her husband's qualifications and contacts in Niger.

She paints Wilson as given to wild emotional outbursts and hungry for media attention — and says the tension between them almost destroyed their relationship. She writes — "The frequent fights, seething accusations, hurtful words, and entrenched bitterness pushed us both to the brink ... It became obvious that our marriage was in deep trouble." The couple has since left Washington and live in New Mexico.