Video Highlights From Plame Testimony

Thanks to our invaluable friends at politicsTV.com, we have some good video from today's hearings before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the testimony of Valerie Plame, the covert CIA officer whose identity was revealed from within the Bush administration.

Here's an excerpt of Plame's opening statement:

"Every single one of my former CIA colleagues, from my fellow covert officers, to analysts, to technical operations officers, and even the secretaries understand the vulnerability of our officers and recognize that the travesty of what happened to me, could happen to them.

"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. Furthermore, testimony in the criminal trial of vice president Cheney's former Chief of Staff, who has now been convicted of serious crimes, indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives."

Here's the video of her full statement:



PoliticsTV also provides us with highlights of Plame's testimony, including where
Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth talked to Plame about the day before Robert Novak published his column revealing her identity in the Chicago Sun-Times. Here Yarmuth makes the clarifying statement "my understanding is that on that date you were covert."

Plame: I was a covert officer. Correct.

Yarmuth: What does covert mean?

Plame: My understanding is that the CIA is taking affirmative steps to ensure that there are no links between the operations officer and the Central Intelligence Agency.

And the video:



This is going to get more and more interesting…