Swing State Project

SENATE AND HOUSE DEMOCRATIC PANELS TO HOLD OVERSIGHT HEARING ON NATIONAL SECURITY CONSEQUENCES OF DISCLOSING THE IDENTITY OF A COVERT INTELLIGENCE OFFICER

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) -- The U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) and the U.S. House Government Reform Committee Minority will conduct a joint hearing at 10:00 AM, Friday, July 22, in Room 138 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, to examine the national security implications of disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence officer. The hearing will be co-chaired by Senate DPC Chairman Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Government Reform Committee.

The panel of witnesses will include former intelligence officers and analysts who will discuss the impact of such disclosures, based on decades of experience and service to our country on intelligence and national security matters.

The hearing comes only days after the witnesses who will appear at the hearing, along with other former intelligence officers and analysts, delivered to the House and Senate leadership a letter expressing deep concern over both the disclosure of the identity of a covert intelligence officer and the continuing partisan attacks on that officer. The letter said that public statements questioning her status and the significance of disclosing her identity "reveal an astonishing ignorance of the intelligence community and the role of cover."

Details on Monday's hearing follow:

WHO: Members of Congress: U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), and other members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Witnesses: Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst; Jim Marcinkowski, former CIA

case officer; David McMichael, former CIA case officer; Mel Goodman, former

senior CIA analyst.

WHAT: Oversight hearing on the impact of disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence officer

WHEN: 10:00 AM, Friday, July 22, 2005

WHERE: Room 138 - Dirksen Senate Office Building, United States Senate, Washington, D.C.

WHY: To examine the national security consequences of disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence officer.

And the scandal is not going away:

• We now know that Karl Rove disclosed Plame's status to at least two reporters, contradicting two year old White House denials that Karl Rove had "no involvement" in the leak. We know that White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer read a classified State Department memorandum which revealed information about Plame's CIA status in a paragraph marked '(S)' for secret, a day before Karl Rove confirmed this information to the columnist Robert Novak. We know that the Vice President's Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, confirmed Plame's status to at least one reporter. We know that the CIA classified Valerie Plame's identity as covert and she wasn't, as Rove's defenders say, just a desk jockey at Langley. We know that President Bush promised to fire "those involved" in the leak and is now backing away from that promise.
  
• And we learned in today's Washington Post, that the State Department's own investigations "already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger" in February 2002 -- nearly a year before President Bush tried to terrify the American people by including that claim in his State of the Union speech. In the end, this matter all comes back to Iraq. The White House got into this trouble through its concerted and coordinated effort to smear anyone questioning its erroneous intelligence about WMD in Iraq [USA Today 7/24/03]. Continuing to stonewall and smear opponents will not get them out of it.
  
• Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will determine if the White House officials' leaks violated the law. But it is undeniable that the White House has violated the public's trust. President Bush should put an end to the stonewalling and explain to the American people the facts about his White House's role in this grave matter.