Spy comes out of the cold, into a media circus

WASHINGTON — Valerie Plame stepped out of the shadows of the spy world and into the spotlight Friday.

For nearly four years, she had been a silent figure at the center of a consuming scandal. Her unmasking as a CIA officer launched a criminal investigation that led to the conviction of a top White House official.

On Friday, she offered her inside account, testifying before a congressional committee that she felt as if she had been "hit in the gut" when her once-secret identity appeared in the media and accusing the Bush administration of "recklessly" blowing her cover.

Plame answered questions about her husband's role in investigating one of the Bush administration's most alarming prewar claims about Iraq and provided new details on the maneuvering between the White House and the CIA in the approach to the war.

But spectacle often trumped specifics. When she emerged from a doorway at the corner of the committee chambers, dozens of lenses swung in unison to catch her entrance. As she sat down to testify, twice as many photographers as lawmakers were arrayed before her.

At one point, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., alluded to the oddity of publicly questioning a woman who spent the bulk of her career hiding her identity.

"I've never questioned a spy before," Westmoreland said.

"I've never testified under oath before," Plame shot back.

In her opening statement, Plame made it clear she has been waiting for a chance to confront critics. She said her identity was not "common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit," as some have whispered in an effort to discount the damage of the disclosure of her identity.

She said she has been on secret foreign missions within the past five years and was undercover when her name appeared in a newspaper column in 2003.

She also came prepared to settle scores with members of the Bush administration who carried out a campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, after he surfaced as a potent critic of the case for war in Iraq.

"We in the CIA always know we might be exposed by foreign enemies," Plame said. "It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover."

She also blamed President Bush for refusing to fire anyone who leaked. "Karl Rove clearly was involved in the leaking of my name, and he still carries a security clearance to this day."

Wilson did not attend Friday's hearing.

Plame was accompanied by two former CIA colleagues who said Wilson and the couple's children were traveling in the West. Wilson and Plame recently bought a home in Santa Fe, N.M., after selling their Washington property.

Wilson, 57, has published a memoir. Plame, 43, also has written a book, "Fair Game," that is undergoing a review by the CIA.

Friday's hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was supposedly designed to assist lawmakers in drafting improved procedures for safeguarding classified information. But the unacknowledged purpose was to give a platform to someone who had been a mystery figure in a scandal bearing her name.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the committee, said the panel had negotiated ground rules for the hearing with the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information, including details of Plame's background.

As a result, Plame offered only a general outline of her 20-year career at the agency, saying she was working in the counterproliferation division of the agency — a branch devoted to tracking the global spread of illicit weapons — when her identity was exposed.

For the first time, she offered her version of the chronology leading up to that breach.

In early 2002, Plame said, she was approached by a "junior officer" who was "very upset" after getting a call from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney asking about a report that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from the African nation of Niger.

Plame characterized the call as part of a broader effort by Cheney to pressure the CIA, a charge that Cheney and senior CIA officials who were at the agency at the time have denied.

"Certainly Vice President Cheney's unprecedented number of visits to the CIA in the run-up to the war might be one example" of his efforts to pressure analysts, Plame said.

Bush administration officials later claimed Plame had proposed sending her husband to Niger to investigate, casting the trip as a boondoggle. But Plame insisted that was not the case.

"No. I did not recommend him, I did not suggest him, there was no nepotism involved," Plame said.

Instead, Plame said, the idea was proposed by another officer in her division, and her only role was to ask her husband if he would be interested.

"We had 2-year-old twins at home, and all I could envision was me by myself at bedtime with a couple of 2-year-olds. So I wasn't overjoyed with this idea."

Wilson traveled to Niger and returned to file a report with the CIA that he found no evidence backing up the uranium claim. Nevertheless, the allegation was included in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

After the U.S. invasion, when it became evident that Iraq had no banned weapons, Wilson came forward publicly to accuse the White House of twisting the prewar intelligence, prompting a White House campaign to discredit him.

Plame said she was at home when she learned her name had been published in a column by Robert Novak. She said her husband threw a copy of the newspaper on the bed and said, "He did it," meaning Novak had printed her name.

"I felt like I had been hit in the gut," she said.

Plame also said she immediately recognized and was subsequently informed by a superior at the agency that her clandestine career was over.

She was able to testify in part because the criminal investigation of the leak ended earlier in March when I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, formerly Cheney's chief of staff, was convicted on four felony counts of lying to investigators in the probe of Plame's unmasking. Neither Libby nor any other government official has been charged with leaking Plame's identity.

Even so, Rep. Waxman said CIA Director Michael Hayden had informed the committee that at the time Plame's identity was exposed, she was an undercover officer, and any disclosure of her employment status with the agency was prohibited by executive order.

Material from the New York Daily News is included in this report.