|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
March 16th,
2007 - Subject of C.I.A. Leak Testifies on Capitol Hill News article by the New York
Times |
|
Subject of
C.I.A. Leak Testifies on Capitol Hill By David Stout New York Times March 16, 2007 Washington - Valerie Plame
Wilson testified today that the career she loved as an undercover C.I.A.
agent was “over in an instant” when her role was disclosed in the summer of 2003. Speaking in public for the
first time about the episode that touched off a scandal in the Bush
administration, Ms. Wilson told a House committee that her undercover status
“was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit,” as some people
have suggested. Nor did she recommend her husband for a now-famous trip to
Africa as some of the couple’s critics have asserted, Ms. Wilson said. Ms. Wilson said she felt as
though she had been “hit in the gut” when her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV,
dropped a newspaper on their bed on the morning of July 14, 2003, and she saw
that the columnist Robert D. Novak had mentioned her C.I.A. status in
passing. Ms. Wilson said she realized
at once that “I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly
trained.” “It was over in an instant,”
she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “That career
path was terminated.” Ms. Wilson appeared before
the panel while the memory of the conviction of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice
President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, was still fresh, and the
committee’s Democrats, led by Chairman Henry A. Waxman of California, seemed
to relish the opportunity to flail the administration. Ms. Wilson did not
disappoint, telling the panel she felt hurt and betrayed by members of the
administration who not only failed to protect her identity but, indeed, “were
the ones who destroyed my cover.” She said they knocked her off a career path
that had included numerous secret trips overseas and exciting, satisfying
work in the unit of the Central Intelligence Agency that tries to prevent the
spread of weapons of mass destruction. “I loved my career because I
love my country,” she said. Nor did she have “a desk job” at C.I.A.
headquarters in Virginia, as some administration allies have asserted, Ms.
Wilson said. “I could count on one hand
the number of people who knew who my true employer was,” Ms. Wilson
testified. Ms. Wilson said she
considered intelligence-gathering “more an art than a science,” but that
intelligence is useless, or worse, if it is tainted by political
considerations. “I feel passionately about that,” she said. Intelligence, and whether it
was tainted for political reasons, was a big part of the episode that led to
Ms. Wilson’s appearance today. Her husband, a former
diplomat with considerable experience in Africa, traveled to the continent in
2002 to investigate rumors that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire uranium
from Niger to build Iraq’s nuclear arsenal. In July 2003, an Op Ed essay by
Mr. Wilson in The New York Times expressed deep skepticism about Iraq’s
arsenal, and by implication skepticism about President Bush’s justification
for the war that toppled the Iraqi dictator. Soon afterward, Ms. Wilson
was unmasked by Mr. Novak. That incident led to an investigation to find who
had leaked her name, possibly in violation of the law. While no one was
prosecuted for the leak itself, Mr. Libby was found guilty of lying to grand jurors
and F.B.I. agents during the investigation. Administration critics have long
asserted that Ms. Wilson’s name was leaked to intimidate others who differed
with the White House. Ms. Wilson said she was
shocked at what the Libby trial showed about the extent of the
administration’s efforts to discredit her husband and retaliate for his
findings. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the White House
political adviser Karl Rove and the former White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer are all known to have discussed Ms. Wilson’s C.I.A. employment with
reporters in the summer of 2003. Ms. Wilson told the
committee that, despite what has been written and said repeatedly, she did
not recommend her husband for the trip to Africa. In fact, she said, she had
unhappy visions “of myself at bedtime with a couple of two-year-olds” to
handle alone if her husband went overseas. (The Wilsons have young twins.) “I did not recommend him, I
did not suggest him, there was no nepotism involved,” she said. “I did not
have the authority.” Ms. Wilson said she did
sound out her husband about the trip after she was asked to do so, but that
her husband was picked for the trip because of his background in Africa. Committee Democrats seized
on the opportunity to paint the Bush administration in an unflattering light.
Their questions to Ms. Wilson contained allusions to unrelated episodes, like
the firing of Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill; the early predictions of
Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, that several hundred
thousand troops would be required to keep the peace in Iraq, and even the
administration’s stance on global warming. Under questioning from the
committee’s top Republican, Representative Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia,
Ms. Wilson said that she was not demoted after her covert status was
revealed, and that she went on to “other jobs with commensurate
responsibilities.” But the job she enjoyed
most, and the possibility that she might go overseas again when her children
were older “came to an abrupt end,” she said. With her covert life ended, Ms.
Wilson is to move with her husband to Santa Fe, N.M. She hopes to write a
book about her life in the C.I.A. and what happened after her cover was
blown. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/washington/16cnd-plame.html |