At Hearing, Plame Rebukes Bush Administration

Former CIA officer Valerie Plame, left, and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, arrive for a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington in this July 14, 2006, file photo. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson, File) (Lawrence Jackson - AP)

Plame, 43, who introduced herself to the House Oversight Committee as Valerie Plame Wilson, testified that she served as "a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency" before the leak and that her "affiliation with the CIA was classified." She said she helped manage "secret worldwide operations" against Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction program from CIA headquarters and "traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence."

In reply to a question, Plame told the committee she had traveled overseas on a secret mission within five years of today's hearing. Plame retired from the CIA last year.

Her employment "was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit," she said in her opening statement. "But all of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, all the value of my years of service, were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly."

Plame said she was "shocked by the evidence that emerged" in the Libby trial about the leaking of her identity.

"My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department," she testified. "All of them understood that I worked for the CIA. And, having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer."

She said the harm done by blowing a CIA cover is "grave," but that she could not provide details in her case. In general, she said, such breaches have endangered CIA officers, destroyed networks of foreign agents and discouraged others from trusting the U.S. government to protect them.

"We in the CIA always know that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies," Plame said. "It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover." She added that testimony in the Libby trial "indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives."

In an opening statement, Waxman, the committee chairman, said the purpose of the hearing was to determine how the leak of Plame's identity occurred, whether the White House took appropriate investigative and disciplinary steps afterward and what changes are needed to prevent a recurrence.

"It's not our job to determine criminal culpability, but it is our job to understand what went wrong and to insist on accountability and to make recommendations . . . to avoid future abuses," he said.

Waxman and other Democrats on the committee rebutted charges by the Bush administration's defenders that Plame was not in covert status at the time her name was leaked and did not have a sensitive position at the CIA.

"Any characterization that minimizes the personal risk of Ms. Wilson that she accepted in her assignments is flatly wrong," Waxman said. "There should be no confusion on this point." He said her work was so sensitive that she is still prohibited by the CIA from publicly discussing many details of it.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), the top Republican on the committee, said the leak of Plame's identity "was wrong," but he questioned whether the hearing would accomplish anything.