Plame says Bush administration treated her identity 'recklessly'

Valerie Plame, the former CIA covert agent whose outing led to the conviction of a top Bush administration official, told U.S. Congress on Friday she believes her identity was disclosed for "purely political reasons."

Plame's testimony beforea House of Representatives committee was her first publiccomment on therelease of her identity.

She said that she always knew information about her work as a spy could be discovered by foreign governments, but said she was surprised to be identified by her own country's administration.

"My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department," Plame testified before the House oversight and government reform committee.

"I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained."

'Hit in the gut'

Plame said she was horrified to see her name and secret CIA work revealed in a newspaper column by Bob Novak, a conservative who was then close to officials with the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.

"I felt like I had been hit in the gut," she said. "It [her CIA career] was over in an instant. I immediately thought of my family's safety, the ... agents I had worked with.Everything goes through your mind in an instant."

CBC's Washington correspondent, Michael Colton, said Plame's secret work in U.S. embassies abroad was about weapons of mass destruction, and the type of "unofficial" cover that she worked under meant she was in great danger if discovered.

Democrats are eager to make political fodder out of the 2003 leak scandal, but it's unlikely the hearing will offer any new information about the leak itself. California Democrat Henry Waxman, the committee chair, said even though prosecutors brought no charges for the leak, questions remain about whether policies were followed.

"It's not our job to determine criminal culpability, but it is our job to determine what went wrong and insist on accountability," Waxman said as he opened hearings.

Plame's testimony was not likely to include any behind-the-scenes details about the CIA or the White House.

No charges for leak itself

Waxman said he wanted to know whether the White House appropriately safeguarded Plame's identity.

During the obstruction of justice and perjury trial of U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's former top aide, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, it was revealed that many in the Bush administration knew Plame worked for the CIA but not that it was classified.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor who investigated the case,never charged anyone with the leak, and he told Waxman he could not discuss his thoughts on the case.

Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the committee, said that since Fitzgerald didn't charge anyone with the leak, the hearings were unlikely to add any insight.

"No process can be adopted to protect classified information that no one knows is classified," Davis said. "This looks to me more like a CIA problem than a White House problem."