WASHINGTON - It's hard to remember the last time a live blonde got this
much attention, and even the Republicans on the House oversight
committee that heard from Valerie Plame Wilson today seemed in awe of
the glam spy outed by the Bush administration.
"If I seem a little nervous," drawled Georgia Republican Lynn
Westmoreland, "I've never questioned a spy before." Why, baseball
players on steroids hadn't rated this kind of coverage, he noted.
That's because, in the nearly four years since 20 different
administration officials had leaked Wilson's name to various reporters --
and columnist Bob Novak finally took the bait and revealed it -- she had
maintained public silence.
She'd said nothing about the campaign of retribution that came after her
husband corrected the president's story about Saddam's Iraq trying to
buy uranium for a nuclear bomb in Africa.
She'd made no comment on the abrupt end of her career as an undercover
CIA operative, and none, either, on the cost to her colleagues of a
security breach orchestrated by her own government.
Because life rarely imitates art quite so attractively -- in Washington,
at any rate -- it was hard not to be distracted by the aesthetics of
Wilson's debut in a speaking role: Wow, great colorist. What a well-made
jacket. Sharon Stone or Laura Linney? In the movie, of course.
Yet when she did spill today, with the cool and control that must have
gotten her the job in the first place, even those panel members who
normally like asking questions better than they do listening to the
answers were attentive.
During committee chairman Henry Waxman's opening statement, Wilson
heightened the sense of expectation with just a nod here and there: At
the time Novak disclosed her identity to the world, "Ms. Wilson's CIA
employment status was covert." (Emphatic nod.) "She took on serious
risk on behalf of our country." (Slight nod.) Compared to the American
heroes mistreated at Walter Reed, "she faces much more favorable
circumstances now than some of the soldiers we met last week." (Nod,
nod, nod.) "But she, too, had been one of those anonymous people
fighting to preserve our freedom." Until, of course, she wasn't.
Waxman took pains to explain that the CIA had cleared every word he
spoke, and confirmed every word of this statement: "Ms. Wilson was undercover...Ms. Wilson's employment status was covert...Ms. Wilson
worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled
by the CIA...Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA...It is
accurate to say that she worked on the prevention of the development and
use of Weapons of Mass Destruction against the United States."
Clearly, the central purpose of the hearing was to knock down persistent
Republican claims that she was not undercover, and had never been placed
in any danger. And when at last she spoke for herself, she could not
have been clearer:
"In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the
counter-proliferation division of the CIA, still as a covert official,
whose affiliation with the CIA was classified." She developed "solid
intelligence for senior policy makers on Iraq's presumed WMD programs. I
also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital
intelligence. I loved my career because I loved my country."
"It was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit that
everyone knew where I worked," she said, refuting that particular claim
with a rather remarkable absence of attitude. "But all of my efforts on
behalf of our national security, all of my training, all of my years of
service were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed
irresponsibly."
Though even now she cannot provide details, she said, "the harm that is
done is grave...lives are literally at stake. We in the CIA always know
that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies. It was a
terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed
my cover."
And contrary to the story put out by the White House, Wilson said, it
was not she who had suggested her husband go to Niger to investigate the
claim that the Iraqis had tried to purchase uranium there.
After a colleague proposed his name, "I'll be honest, I was somewhat
ambivalent; at the time, we had two-year-old twins at home." All she
could think of, she said, was what bedtime would be like with Daddy in
Africa.