What did Mrs. Plame do as an agent? Write memos from home about what she gleened during the day or try to influence events? Did she have much to actually do for the CIA in this job each day, or was it more occaisional work?
Did she have the job and then pick up cloak-and-dagger on the side, or get placed by the CIA into that job? If placed there, didn’t she have to build up a career before she could report much of substance? What is her career like in the CIA if her day job prevents her for doing much of anything else?
Also, how do they pay you as an agent when you have a job? Two salaries or just add onto to the overt job, so to speak, to bring it up to par? Also, what limitation is there on CIA agents being placed in jobs, do they have to be there for certain material reasons only?
Speaking in general, a covert agent is someone who works for the CIA and then is often placed under official cover as holding a job in another government agency, such as the Department of State. When sent overseas, the covert agent would often perform the routine duties of someone legitimately holding that position (eg, serving as an economic advisor in a US embassy). Then they do their sneaking around in addition to those routine duties. When in these positions, they would have every appearance of working for the State Dept: they’d have a diplomatic passport, be paid by the State Department, live in embassy housing, etc. They don’t get two salaries, government agencies collaborate on these sorts of things. Ideally, when operating under cover, an agent’s colleagues shouldn’t be able to tell that Harvey over in Consular Affairs is actually a spook.
The typical job of a covert agent would be to recruit people who are willing to betray their own government, such as passing along state secrets to the covert agent. One could reasonably conclude that much time is spent trying to meet new people in influential positions in foreign government, get to know them, and then make a pitch for them to help Uncle Sam, and then maintain the network of folks that they recruit, getting info from them, passing along cash “thank yous” for work well done, writing intelligence reports of information gathered from them, etc.
What Plame personally did, in terms of where she was posted, who she recruited, and so forth, would be highly classified information.