Valerie Plame, the CIA operative at the heart of a political scandal, told the US Congress today that senior officials at the White House and State Department "carelessly and recklessly" blew her cover to discredit her diplomat-husband.
Plame, whose 2003 outing triggered a federal investigation, said she always knew her identity could be discovered by foreign governments.
"It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover," she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
"If our government cannot even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency and providing needed intelligence would think twice," Plame said in response to a question.
The hearing was the first time Plame has publicly answered questions about the case, which led to the recent perjury and obstruction of justice conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Her appearance was a moment of political theater. Only about half of the committee's members attended and they were well outnumbered by journalists and photographers.
Democrats questioned whether the Bush administration mishandled classified information by leaking her identity to reporters. No one has been charged with leaking her identity.
"It's not our job to determine criminal culpability, but it is out job to determine what went wrong and insist on accountability," Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said at the outset of the hearing.
The man who led the criminal investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, was not on the witness list. He told lawmakers Wednesday that federal law prohibited him from offering his thoughts on the case.
Nobody from the White House involved in the leak was scheduled to testify. Neither were officials from the State Department, where the first leak of Plame's identity occurred, or the CIA.
AP