Early October, 2003: Plame Wilson Interviewed by Senate Staffers

Senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson testifies to the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of its investigation into the failures and possible misuse of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq invasion (see July 9, 2004). In 2007, Plame Wilson will write that she and her husband hope that the committee will “reveal how the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify going to war with Iraq [and] show that the decision to go to war was premature; the intelligence community simply did not have the hard evidence from current, reliable human sources to match the confident rhetoric coming from the White House and its supporters.” Plame Wilson is accompanied in her appearance before the committee by a CIA attorney, whose job is to represent the agency’s interests, not hers. She is not questioned by any senators, but by four young staffers, two Democrats and two Republicans. When the staffers begin asking her about the story of the Iraq-Niger uranium connection and how she learned about it, it becomes obvious to her, as she will recall in her 2007 book Fair Game, that they “knew very little about how CIA cover actually worked, yet they acted as if they were veterans of the intelligence community.” One aggressive Republican staffer asks why she recommended her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to go to Niger to investigate the uranium allegations (see February 13, 2002); Plame Wilson will recall, “In my desire to be as accurate and truthful as possible, I answered, stupidly, ‘I don’t believe that I recommended my husband, but I can’t recall who suggested him for the trip.” She fails to recall that a CIA records officer actually recommended her husband for the trip (see February 19, 2002). She also forgets during the interrogation that it was a phone call from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office that set the entire trip into motion (see (February 13, 2002)). And she forgets that it was her branch supervisor who asked that Wilson come in to the CIA to discuss the possibility of such a trip (see February 19, 2002). She does recall staying out of the initial CIA interview with her husband. In 2007, she will blame her memory failures on her own lack of composure, her lack of preparation for the interview, and her refusal to compare memories with her husband out of a sense of propriety. After 45 minutes or so, she leaves the interview, fairly sure that she handled herself well, but with “a little voice in my head [saying] it felt like a setup.” She will write: “In retrospect, it was clear they weren’t seeking information, but simply confirming their already closed conclusions. But in my naivete, my heart actually felt light because I believed in our democratic institutions. I believed that the truth would prevail, but I would soon find out that in Washington, the truth is not always enough.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 167-169]