After studying a lower university degree in political science in South Carolina, USA, Stubb started at the age of 26, in 1994, a one-year master's studies at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. The educational institution still offers EU studies primarily to young people who dream of an EU career.

At the same time, an American girl was also working on EU studies, whom Stubb says he met in his memoirs "Alex" (2017). Although they parted ways after a year, the woman still sent letters and cards to Stubb.

In July 2003, the Washington Post revealed that the woman, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. The revelation ended Plame's work as an agent, and Plame also ended his already eight-year relationship with Stubb.

If the reasons for the long contact had been purely personal, it could have been assumed that the contact continued even after Plame was exposed. If, on the other hand, Stubb was only part of the network that Plame had acquired around him as an agent, it is clear that the network lost its meaning when Plame had to give up his duties as an agent.

When Plame was exposed in July 2003, Stubb had advanced to become one of the advisors of then EU Commission President Romano Prodi. It cannot be a coincidence that on the same day, July 14, 2003, when Plame was exposed, it was announced that Stubb would give up his position as an advisor in the EU Commission and return to the Finnish EU delegation, where he had already worked before becoming Prodi's advisor in 2001. https ://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/stubb-palaa-suomen-eu-edustustoon

What was CIA agent Plame doing at the EU university anyway? At the College of Europe, Plame got close to the EU's ideological, strategic and operational core and made contacts with future EU officials and politicians.

Certainly, Plame saw, on the one hand, Stubb's sense of purpose, who had studied at the Yankees, on the other hand, his spinelessness, that is, the readiness to sacrifice the truth and his own people if necessary in front of the money and power represented by the USA. That's why it was worth keeping him. When Stubb announced right after the first round of the presidential election that he would not answer Putin's congratulatory call, that was exactly what Uncle Samuli on the other side of the Atlantic wanted to hear.

Of course, it is not in the interest of the EU's sovereignty, value, public image and future that the core of its commission has connections with CIA agents, and so in July 2003 Stubb got the boot from the commission. There is no mention of this surprising transfer from the Commission back to Finland's EU representation in Stubb's memoirs.