The public testimony of former CIA officer Valerie Plame before a House committee last week conflicts with what she told a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee three years ago, a government source told The Examiner this week.
The difference centers on Plame’s role in a CIA supervisor’s decision in 2002 to send former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, her husband, on a trip to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein pursued uranium for nuclear bombs.
The trip eventually embroiled the White House in a three-year criminal investigation.
Plame has filed suit against current and former Bush officials for leaking her covert CIA occupation to the news media. Her version of events would represent a major piece of evidence if the suit reaches trial. Her lawyer declined to respond to questions submitted this week by The Examiner.
Before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, Plame testified under oath that a CIA colleague, whom she did not name, first mentioned her husband as a trip candidate during a discussion at Langley headquarters. She denied recommending her husband, as Republicans have reported in their attempt to show why Bush officials discussed her occupation.
According to a U.S. government source, who spoke to The Examiner this week on condition of anonymity, Plame did not mention this incident when she provided secret testimony to the Senate Intelligence committee in 2004.
“This is a whole new story,” the source told The Examiner.
A 2004 committee report quoted a CIA worker, whom it identified as a “reports officer,” as telling staff that Plame offered up her husband’s name. It also quoted from a memo Plame wrote recommending her husband for the trip.
“We have checked the transcript of the comments made to the committee by the former reports officer and I stand by the committee’s description of his comments,” said Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I stand by the findings of the committee’s report.”
Bond said he was willing to re-interview witnesses. Melvin Dubee, spokesman for committee chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he has heard no such talk on the Democratic side.
Wilson wrote in a 2003 New York Times column that the CIA sent him to Niger after Vice President Dick Cheney made a request to investigate a report of a Saddam-Niger connection. Wilson said he found no evidence of an uranium deal.
The Wilson column brought news media inquiries about the trip. Several administration officials, in explaining that the White House had no role in sending him to Niger, told reporters his wife worked at the CIA and had recommended him.
In other words, there was an explanation for discussing his wife other than the allegation from Wilson that the White House outed a covert officer purely to punish him for his New York Times column, they say.
