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Politics

Cover blown, ex-spy speaks

Valerie Plame, now known worldwide, tells what leaking her name cost.

By ANITA KUMAR
Published March 17, 2007

WASHINGTON - The room got quiet, and everyone instinctively leaned forward to hear.

For years, other people had spoken for her. But at a congressional hearing Friday morning, Valerie Plame, now a famous American spy, told her story for the first time. Her voice was smooth and even, a tad on the soft side.

She talked about how she was an undercover agent, taking issue with pundits and politicians who insisted otherwise. She talked about how she did not select her husband to go on a CIA fact-finding trip to investigate Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program. She talked about how officials in the Bush administration "carelessly and recklessly" leaked her name for political reasons.

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

Bush administration officials are accused of revealing Plame's name to the news media as retaliation against her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, who in a July 2003 column disputed the White House's reasons for the war in Iraq. No one was ever charged with the leak, but Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was convicted of lying in the three-year criminal investigation.

Plame, 43, was the unmistakable star witness at Friday's hearing examining the White House's procedures for protecting classified information. Wearing dark pants, a blazer and light makeup, she was seated alone at a long table facing two dozen photographers and 10 House members who each had a color-coded diagram of every person known to have leaked her name.

Almost all of the committee members who showed up at the hearing, on a day many House members were out of town, were sympathetic Democrats. Each thanked her for serving her country before proceeding to ask her the same few questions:

Was she really covert?

"I was a covert officer, correct."

Did she give anyone permission to reveal her name?

"No."

What were the repercussions of the leak?

"It has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence," Plame said. "Lives are literally at stake."

She disputed those who had repeatedly argued that she was not undercover because she had a "desk job" at CIA headquarters. She said only a handful of people knew she was a CIA agent who had traveled abroad on secret missions as part of the Counterproliferation Division as she tried to find and prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.

But Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia said he has seen no evidence that the leakers knew she was covert.

"What we haven't been able to establish here is who knew who was undercover and who was in a covert status," he said.

During nearly two hours of testimony, Plame said she and her husband "had indications" for about a week in the summer of 2003 that syndicated columnist Robert Novak might reveal her name. She reported that to her supervisors. A week later, on July 14, 2003, her husband came in with the morning newspaper, throwing it on the bed and declaring: "He did it."

"I quickly turned and read the article, and I felt like I had been hit in the gut," she said. "It was over in an instant."

Plame has said next to nothing publicly all these years, letting her husband speak for her every chance he gets. She became a Washington celebrity anyway.

There was that Vanity Fair photo shoot in a scarf and sunglasses, those A-list parties from Georgetown to Hollywood, and that seven-figure book deal. A movie is in the works.

A civil case she and her husband filed against several high-ranking members of the Bush administration will keep their names in the headlines long after their move to New Mexico.

Since the Democrats recaptured Congress in November, they have vowed to hold the Bush administration accountable.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee the same one that forced baseball stars to talk about steroid use is not only investigating who leaked Plame's name but also the faulty intelligence that led up to the war in Iraq.

The committee had tried to get Plame to testify a half-dozen times but succeeded only after the criminal trial of Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, ended in a conviction.

Plame told lawmakers that she did not ask her husband to go on the Niger trip in 2002 to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had bought uranium, a critical ingredient in nuclear weapons.

Plame said a CIA colleague suggested her husband, who had experience in Africa, go to Niger after the vice president's office called her unit asking for information about Iraq's nuclear weapons. Her first reaction, she said, was that her husband's trip would mean she would be alone taking care of the couple's then 2-year-old twins.

That same day, Plame's supervisor asked her to ask Wilson to come to CIA headquarters for a meeting the next week. The supervisor also asked her to summarize the plan in an e-mail to the Counterproliferation Division chief. Part of the e-mail would be used by her critics to show that she pushed Wilson for the trip.

"I did not recommend him," she said. "I did not suggest him. There was no nepotism involved. I did not have the authority."

That conflicts with senior officials at the CIA and State Department, who testified during Libby's trial and told Congress that Plame recommended her husband.

Now that Plame is finally talking, she doesn't plan to stop.

She is scheduled to appear on MSNBC today in her first national TV interview.

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report. Anita Kumar can be reached at akumar@sptimes.com or 202-463-0576.

Time line of events in CIA leak case

The conviction of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby followed 10 days of jury deliberations on charges stemming from the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name, though not the crime of exposing a covert agent.

2003

Jan. 28: President Bush asserts in his State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

March 19-20: The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq begins.

May 6: New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof reports that a former ambassador, whom he does not name, had been sent to Niger in 2002 and reported to the CIA and State Department well before Bush's speech that the uranium story was unequivocally wrong.

May 29: Libby asks an undersecretary of state about the Niger trip and learns that Joseph Wilson was the former ambassador who went.

June 11 or 12: The undersecretary tells Libby that Wilson's wife works at the CIA and that State Department personnel believe she helped plan the trip.

June 11 or 12: Vice President Dick Cheney advises Libby that Wilson's wife works at the CIA.

June 13: Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward interviews Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage for a book. Armitage tells Woodward in a taped interview that Wilson's wife works for the CIA.

June 23: Libby meets with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. During the meeting, Miller says, Libby tells her that Wilson's wife might work for the CIA. Libby denies saying that.

July 6: The New York Times publishes an opinion piece by Wilson under the headline "What I Didn't Find in Africa" and appears on NBC's Meet the Press. Wilson doubts Iraq obtained uranium from Niger, and said he thought Cheney's office knew the results of his trip.

July 7: Libby meets with then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. Fleischer says Libby tells him Wilson's wife works at the CIA and the information is "hush hush." Libby denies that.

July 8: Columnist Robert Novak interviews Armitage, who tells him Wilson's wife works for the CIA. Novak says White House political adviser Karl Rove confirmed it the next day.

July 10: Libby calls NBC newsman Tim Russert to complain about a colleague's news coverage. At the end of the conversation, Libby says, Russert tells him that "all the reporters know" that Wilson's wife works at the CIA. Russert denies saying it.

July 11: Fleischer, on a presidential trip to Africa, tells two reporters that Wilson's wife works for the CIA. Rove tells Time magazine's Matthew Cooper that Wilson's wife works for the CIA.

July 14: Columnist Novak writes that Wilson's wife is a CIA operative and that two unnamed senior administration officials said she suggested sending her husband to Niger to investigate the uranium story.

Sept. 26: A criminal investigation is authorized to determine who leaked Plame's identity to reporters. Disclosing the identity of CIA operatives is illegal.

Oct. 14 and Nov. 26: Libby is interviewed by FBI agents.

Dec. 30: U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald in Chicago is named to head the leak investigation.

2004

January: A grand jury begins investigating possible violations of federal criminal laws.

March 5 and March 24: Libby testifies before the grand jury. Libby tells jurors he forgot the information about Plame working for the CIA until he heard it from Russert.

2005

Oct. 28: Libby is indicted on five counts: obstruction of justice and two counts each of false statement and two counts of perjury.

2006

Sept. 7: Armitage admits he leaked Plame's identity to Novak and to Woodward. Armitage says he did not realize Plame's job was covert.

2007

Jan. 23: With jury selection complete, the trial begins.

Feb. 20: Prosecution and defense attorneys make closing arguments.

Feb. 21: Jurors begin deliberations.

March 6: Jurors return guilty verdicts on charges of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI. A not guilty verdict was returned on one count of lying to an FBI agent.

[Last modified March 17, 2007, 02:06:54]