Where's the Outrage?

It is good to see her in front of the House.

Update:  She was firm and tough.  She handled the questions very well.  She did what she had to do.  She had to say that she was a covert CIA agent and she did.  There was a large group of right wing TV talking heads that argued their way into believing that Valerie Plame was not covert.  At one time, they were saying that she wasn’t even an agent.  My argument is the same that is made in the book Hubris – if Ms. Plame was not covert then why did the CIA turn her name over to the Justice Department for investigation?  The only people that the CIA turn over to the Justice Department for investigation is covert agents. 

From WaPo:

Valerie Plame, the former CIA officer at the heart of a four-year political furor over the Bush administration’s leak of her identity, lashed out at the White House yesterday, testifying in Congress that the president’s aides destroyed a career she loved and slipped her name to reporters for “purely political motives.”

Plame, breaking her public silence about the case, contended that her name and job “were carelessly and recklessly abused” by the government. Although she and her colleagues knew 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.”

Plame calmly but firmly knocked down longstanding claims by administration allies that the disclosure was not criminal because she had not worked in a covert capacity.

“I am here to say I was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency,” Plame told House members, a horde of journalists and a few antiwar activists. Her work, she said, “was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit.”

Plame also provided the most detailed account to date of her role in a decision by the agency to dispatch her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to Niger five years ago to assess reports that Iraq had sought to buy nuclear material from the African nation.

Rebutting an assertion by White House officials to reporters that she had sent her husband on the trip, Plame said a CIA colleague broached the idea after a call in early 2002 from Vice President Cheney’s office seeking information about Iraqi activity in Niger. Plame said she “wasn’t overjoyed” at the idea because it would leave her alone at bedtime with their 2-year-old twins.

Still, she said, at the direction of her supervisor, she asked her husband whether he would come to CIA headquarters at Langley to discuss the possible trip and sent a quick e-mail about the prospect to the chief of the agency’s counterproliferation division, where she worked.

“I did not suggest him,” she said. “There was no nepotism involved. I didn’t have the authority.”

Plame’s poised, two-hour turn at the witness table, in the marbled hearing room of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was a theatrical sequel to the lengthy trial of Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, which ended last week. Libby was convicted of four felonies for lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about his role in disclosing Plame’s identity.

Her presence on Capitol Hill was part of a hearing called to examine the White House’s handling of classified information, but it largely allowed committee Democrats to flog President Bush and his aides with her testimony. They also accused the White House of a national security violation and of failing to conduct an internal investigation of the leak, as Bush once promised.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), portrayed Plame as a hero betrayed by her government. “They made you collateral damage,” Waxman said. “Your career was ended. Your life may have been in jeopardy, and they didn’t seem to care.”

 

 Valerie Wilson testifying [1:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Bush Administration, Iraq, Valerie Plame // View Comments