cue the orchestra:

“She has been silent nearly four years. Today, the CIA officer whose unmasking fueled a political uproar and criminal probe that reached into the White House is poised to finally tell her own story — before Congress.

Valerie Plame’s testimony will have all the trappings of a “Garbo speaks” moment on Capitol Hill, with cameras and microphones arrayed to capture the voice of Plame, the glamorous but mute star of a compelling political intrigue. But while she hopes to clear up her status as an agency operative when her name first hit newspapers in July 2003, America’s most publicized spy is unlikely to betray any details in open session about her mysterious career.

The reason: Plame remains gagged by the same secrecy rules that governed her 20 years as a CIA employee working overseas and at Langley in classified positions.

People close to Plame say her primary goal in testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is to knock down persistent claims that she did not serve undercover. “She is so tired of hearing that,” her mother, Diane Plame, said in an interview earlier this week.

In the years since her outing, the debate over Plame’s CIA status has often devolved into hairsplitting feuds over nomenclature and legalisms, arguments awash in partisan bile. Little about her work is publicly known, leaving commentators to speculate on her cloak-and-dagger activities. She has remained opaque, this willowy blonde with the beguiling smile. Into a factual void the public has poured its imagery of the female spy, from Halle Berry and Eva Green in James Bond movies to Jennifer Garner on TV’s “Alias.”

Yeah, partisan bile……

I’m gonna be sick….and Walter (Pinko) Pincus wrote this to add insult to injury.

More to come….

Live feed here.

Quote from Garbo:

“The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is great” and this classic, ” “I felt hit in the gut”.

As Mother used to say, “Woman Please!”

How about this from Byron York…

“In early May [2003], Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, at which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it, but not name him.

Is that account accurate? If so, please describe what you said to your fellow attendees, either publicly or privately, at the Democratic Policy Committee meeting.”

The fact is that you outed yourself at that breakfast with Kristof, months before Novak, so just what in the hell are you trying to pull?

Harm? Not half the harm you and your husband did to national security you traitor - the real story about who you and your cohorts are is about to be told. Bet on it - you’re done.

UPDATE I: Classic, “I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained.”

Yeah, like covering up the illegal uranium trade?

Someone call the Academy Awards, Plame was robbed!

UPDATE II: Clifford May:

“There never was a conspiracy on the part of Libby or others in the White House to reveal the identity of a secret agent. Valerie Plame‚Äôs name was first leaked to columnist Robert Novak by Richard Armitage, a State Department official who was not seeking to harm Plame or her husband, Joseph Wilson. (This is obvious to anyone who knows anything about Armitage; had it been otherwise, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would, without doubt, have brought charges against him.)

The bad news: The CIA actually did send Wilson — a retired ambassador with no investigative skills and a blatant bias against the Bush administration — to conduct a highly sensitive investigation.

Key to that decision was Plame‚Äôs recommendation. Despite Wilson‚Äôs insistence that his wife played no role, a memo from Plame on behalf of Wilson was sent to the CIA’s directorate of operations. That memo was retrieved and revealed by Senate investigators.

Among the national-security questions this raises: Did CIA officials have no qualified agents they could assign? Or did they regard the inquiry into whether Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase uranium in Africa as not worthy of serious attention? “

No Cliff they couldn’t be bothered with the facts because they got in the way of what they were trying to accomplish, which was to throw us off the scent of what would have been a scandal - with subsequent indictiments - on the CIA.

Cliff is right:

“The CIA‚Äôs errors and misjudgments in this and other matters should be investigated by a panel that would propose to the president and the congressional committees overseeing intelligence ways to fix what is broken.”

I am going to begin a push for that panel as of today.

UPDATE III: This is called perjury:

“I did not recommend him, I did not suggest him, I did not have the authority.”

Also her General analogy is stupid. One can be a cop and not be an “uncover” cop.

Again, “Woman Please!”

UPDATE IV: More perjury:

“In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified,‚Äù ……While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.‚Äù

Well I guess that was privey news to the Georgetown cocktail circuit.

A colleague - familar with her “assignment” just blurted out “Bull Shit” when he heard that, adding, “Perhaps someone should go for a seal of her personnel records before they get doctored up”

Words that will come back to haunt.

UPDATE V: Time for a FOIA to request the assignment records of Ms. Plame for the five years previous assignments prior to June of 2003. Meanwhile Victoria Toesing is ripping the Waxman circus to shreds, transcript to come.