Former CIA agent's testimony mixes glamour, politics

Washington - A former CIA agent at the centre of a Washington scandal took the stage Friday to condemn the Bush administration, saying it destroyed her career by exposing her identity to the media. Valerie Plame's testimony to the US House of Representatives marked a new high point in what some have called 'Plamegate,' a political storm involving a glamourous blonde ex-spy, the White House, the war in Iraq and some of the nation's best-known journalists. Plame and her husband, former US diplomat Joseph Wilson, allege administration officials leaked her covert status to reporters in 2003 to retaliate for a newspaper column by Wilson that disputed one of President George W Bush's arguments for invading Iraq. 'My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department,' Plame, 43, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She dramatically recalled the morning of July 14, 2003, when she and her husband were cited in an article by conservative columnist Robert Novak - an expose that ended her undercover career at the Central Intelligence Agency. 'I found out very early in the morning, when my husband came in and dropped the newspaper on the bed and said, 'He did it,'' she said. 'I felt like I had been hit in the gut. Everything goes through your mind in an instant.' 'I could no longer do the work that I had been trained to do,' she said. Plame testified at the request of the centre-left Democrats, who have launched a series of inquiries into the Bush administration's conduct since they won congressional elections last year. Though highly anticipated by US media, her appearance was unlikely to yield major new insights into the affair because public testimony on the CIA is highly restricted and the leakers have already been publicly identified. In the highest-level fallout, US Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff was found guilty on March 6 of perjury, obstruction and lying to investigators who probed the Plame leak. I Lewis 'Scooter' Libby denies wrongdoing and has not been sentenced. His lawyers have said they will seek a new trial. However, no one has been charged with exposing Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative, which is potentially a crime. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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rojayMar 17th, 2007 - 05:03:55

Well, it's interesting to note that Fox news online has NOTHING on the Congressional hearing today. What does that tell you about 'We Report, You Decide?' FOX News is a joke.

Valerie Plame was a covert operative. Her position in the CIA is classified. Even though Bush said there would be an internal investigation of this matter, there wasn't one. Classified information was leaked and a covert operative was outed. Heads should have rolled.

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