By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Friday, June 1, 2007

Valerie Plame and her publisher filed suit yesterday against the CIA, its director, Michael Hayden, and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, charging that they are wrongly blocking her from disclosing certain details of her agency career in her forthcoming memoir.

The details in question? The exact dates of Plame's federal service, which the intelligence agency claims are classified . . . though, hold on to your hats, because we're about to spill the beans: She joined the feds on Nov. 9, 1985, and served for 20 years 7 days.

How'd we know? The CIA said so in a February '06 letter to Plame -- which was later read into the Congressional Record as part of a bill trying to help her get her pension early. "Ergo it's irretrievably public," said Adam Rothberg of Simon & Schuster, set to release Plame's "Fair Game" this fall. "You can't make the information disappear in a free society."

But the CIA -- which tripped on the details while screening the manuscript for top-secret info, as it does with those of all employees-turned-authors -- insists that the information was released in error, and that officials tried to stop it from going public. The letter "contained classified information and should not have been mailed to her," spokesman Mark Mansfield said. Does it really matter if those dates go public? Mansfield said the "sole yardstick" for deciding what an ex-agent can print always "has been the simple requirement that their writings contain no classified information." Or, as one intelligence source said, if the CIA lets some such material get by, "it could cause someone on whom we rely to think we don't take protecting certain equities seriously."

Does it really matter if Plame, who starts her promotional rounds tomorrow at New York's BookExpo, doesn't get to print those dates? It seems S&S also views this in scary-precedent terms. "There are real implications here that go beyond this book," Rothberg said. "We need to be able to publish public information down the line."

Another Bush-Cheney victory? Woodrow Wilson High School juniors Charlotte Bush and Alexis Chaney teamed up for yesterday's student council elections for president and veep -- a gimmick they hatched two years ago. "It was sort of a joke -- 'Ha, ha, we should run' -- but it's become this serious thing," Bush (no relation to Dubya) told us.

The two candidates drafted a platform -- better student-teacher relations, access to restrooms, fix the school's AC -- and embarked on a tongue-in-cheek campaign contrasting them with their homonymic counterparts. Posters contrasted the teenagers -- "against the war, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-environment and pro-humor" -- with "Them" -- "for the war, pro-life(?!), homophobic, gas-guzzlers and humorless" -- and played off presidential malaprops: "Don't Misunderestimate."

The week-long campaign got favorable poll numbers from most of the students, but one rival was pretty steamed. "Us running on the humor platform has kind of thrown her for a loop," said Bush. Election results are expected today.

Lindsay Lohan is addicted to all sorts of bad things -- including alcohol and the painkiller OxyContin -- claims estranged dad Michael Lohan. (Then again, what does he know? Pops spent most of the past two years in prison for drunk driving.) The 20-year-old actress was arrested for DUI, passed out at an L.A. club and this week checked into Promises clinic in Malibu for her second stint of rehab. The good news? Producers of "Poor Things," including co-star Shirley MacLaine, tell People magazine they'll rearrange the shooting schedule to keep her in their movie: "We wish her love and the blending of mind, body and spirit."

"Don't go sell it on eBay."

-- President Bush, upon giving a presidential coin to families who lost soldiers in Iraq, according to Elaine Johnson. The antiwar activist, who lost a son in November 2003, told NPR's "Tell Me More" yesterday that she met with the president later that month at Fort Carson, Colo., where, she said, Bush presented the coin to a few families. "We never discuss the president's private conversations with family members of the fallen," White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said .